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Octopus | How can an octopus defend against predators? | To defend against predators, an octopus can hide, flee quickly, expel ink, or use color-changing camouflage. | data/set1/a10 | Octopus
The octopus is a cephalopod of the order Octopoda. Octopuses have two eyes and four pairs of arms and like other cephalopods are bilaterally symmetric. An octopus has a hard beak, with its mouth at the center point of the arms. Most octopuses have no internal or external skeleton, allowing them to squeeze through tight places. Octopuses are highly intelligent, probably the most intelligent of all invertebrates.
The octopus inhabits many diverse regions of the ocean, especially coral reefs. For defense against predators, they hide, flee quickly, expel ink, or use color-changing camouflage. An octopus trails its eight arms behind it as it swims. All octopuses are venomous, but only the small blue-ringed octopuses are deadly to humans. Unimelb.edu.au, Tentacles of venom: new study reveals all octopuses are venomous, University of Melbourne, Media Release, Wednesday 15 April 2009
In the larger sense, there are around 300 recognized octopus species, which is over one-third of the total number of known cephalopod species. The term octopus may also be used to refer only to those creatures in the genus Octopus.
A Common Octopus (Octopus vulgaris)
Octopuses are characterized by their eight arms, usually bearing suction cups. The arms of octopuses are often distinguished from the pair of feeding tentacles found in squid and cuttlefish. Norman, M. 2000. Cephalopods: A World Guide. ConchBooks, Hackenheim. p. 15. "There is some confusion around the terms arms versus tentacles. The numerous limbs of nautiluses are called tentacles. The ring of eight limbs around the mouth in cuttlefish, squids and octopuses are called arms. Cuttlefish and squid also have a pair of specialised limbs attached between the bases of the third and fourth arm pairs [...]. These are known as feeding tentacles and are used to shoot out and grab prey." Both types of limbs are muscular hydrostats. Unlike most other cephalopods, the majority of octopuses those in the suborder most commonly known, Incirrina have almost entirely soft bodies with no internal skeleton. They have neither a protective outer shell like the nautilus, nor any vestige of an internal shell or bones, like cuttlefish or squid. A beak, similar in shape to a parrot's beak, is the only hard part of their body. This enables them to squeeze through very narrow slits between underwater rocks, which is very helpful when they are fleeing from morays or other predatory fish. The octopuses in the less familiar Cirrina suborder have two fins and an internal shell, generally reducing their ability to squeeze into small spaces.
An octopus moving between tide pools during low tide
Octopuses have a relatively short life expectancy, and some species live for as little as six months. Larger species, such as the North Pacific Giant Octopus, may live for up to five years under suitable circumstances. However, reproduction is a cause of death: males can only live for a few months after mating, and females die shortly after their eggs hatch. They neglect to eat during the (roughly) one month period spent taking care of their unhatched eggs, but they don't die of starvation. Endocrine secretions from the two optic glands are the cause of genetically-programmed death (and if these glands are surgically removed, the octopus may live many months beyond reproduction, until she finally starves).
Stauroteuthis syrtensis, a finned octopus of the suborder Cirrina
Octopuses have three hearts. Two pump blood through each of the two gills, while the third pumps blood through the body. Octopus blood contains the copper-rich protein hemocyanin for transporting oxygen. Although less efficient under normal conditions than the iron-rich hemoglobin of vertebrates, in cold conditions with low oxygen pressure, hemocyanin oxygen transportation is more efficient than hemoglobin oxygen transportation. The hemocyanin is dissolved in the plasma instead of being carried within red blood cells and gives the blood a blue color. Octopuses draw water into their mantle cavity where it passes through its gills. As mollusks, octopuses have gills that are finely divided and vascularized outgrowths of either the outer or the inner body surface.
Octopuses are highly intelligent, likely more so than any other order of invertebrates. The exact extent of their intelligence and learning capability is much debated among biologists, NFW.org?, Is the octopus really the invertebrate intellect of the sea, by Doug Stewart. In: National Wildlife. Feb/Mar 1997, vol.35 no.2.
Giant OctopusâMighty but Secretive Denizen of the Deep Slate.com, How Smart is the Octopus? but maze and problem-solving experiments have shown that they do have both short- and long-term memory. Their short lifespans limit the amount they can ultimately learn. There has been much speculation to the effect that almost all octopus behaviors are independently learned rather than instinct-based, although this remains largely unproven. They learn almost no behaviors from their parents, with whom young octopuses have very little contact.
An octopus opening a container with a screw cap
An octopus has a highly complex nervous system, only part of which is localized in its brain. Two-thirds of an octopus's neurons are found in the nerve cords of its arms, which have a remarkable amount of autonomy. Octopus arms show a wide variety of complex reflex actions arising on at least three different levels of the nervous system. Unlike vertebrates, the complex motor skills of octopuses in their higher brain are not organized using an internal somatotopic map of its body. Zullo L, Sumbre G, Agnisola C, Flash T, Hochner B. (2009). Nonsomatotopic organization of the higher motor centers in octopus.
Curr Biol. 19(19):1632-6. PMID 19765993 Some octopuses, such as the Mimic Octopus, will move their arms in ways that emulate the movements of other sea creatures.
In laboratory experiments, octopuses can be readily trained to distinguish between different shapes and patterns. They have been reported to practice observational learning, Octopus intelligence: jar opening although the validity of these findings is widely contested on a number of grounds. What is this octopus thinking?. By Garry Hamilton. Octopuses have also been observed in what some have described as play: repeatedly releasing bottles or toys into a circular current in their aquariums and then catching them. What behavior can we expect of octopuses?. By Dr. Jennifer Mather, Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Lethbridge and Roland C. Anderson, The Seattle Aquarium. Octopuses often break out of their aquariums and sometimes into others in search of food. They have even boarded fishing boats and opened holds to eat crabs.
In some countries, octopuses are on the list of experimental animals on which surgery may not be performed without anesthesia. In the UK, cephalopods such as octopuses are regarded as honorary vertebrates under the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 and other cruelty to animals legislation, extending to them protections not normally afforded to invertebrates. United Kingdom Animals (Scientific Procedures) act of 1986
The octopus is the only invertebrate which has been conclusively shown to use tools. At least four specimens of the Veined Octopus (Amphioctopus marginatus) have been witnessed retrieving discarded coconut shells, manipulating them, and then reassembling them to use as shelter. This discovery was documented in the journal Current Biology and has also been caught on video. /ref> /ref>
Greater Blue-ringed Octopus (Hapalochlaena lunulata)
An octopus's main (primary) defense is to hide, either not to be seen at all, or not to be detected as an octopus. Hanlon, R.T. & J.B. Messenger 1996. Cephalopod Behaviour. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Octopuses have several secondary defenses (defenses they use once they have been seen by a predator). The most common secondary defense is fast escape. Other defenses include the use of ink sacs, camouflage, and autotomising limbs.
Most octopuses can eject a thick blackish ink in a large cloud to aid in escaping from predators. The main colouring agent of the ink is melanin, which is the same chemical that gives humans their hair and skin colour. This ink cloud is thought to reduce the efficiency of olfactory organs, which would aid an octopus's evasion from predators that employ smell for hunting, such as sharks. Ink clouds of some species might serve as pseudomorphs, or decoys that the predator attacks instead. Caldwell, R. L. (2005). "An Observation of Inking Behavior Protecting Adult Octopus bocki from Predation by Green Turtle (Chelonia mydas) Hatchlings." Pacific Science 59(1): 69â72.
This small octopus species travels with shells it has collected for protection.
An octopus's camouflage is aided by certain specialized skin cells which can change the apparent color, opacity, and reflectiveness of the epidermis. Chromatophores contain yellow, orange, red, brown, or black pigments; most species have three of these colors, while some have two or four. Other color-changing cells are reflective iridophores, and leucophores (white). This color-changing ability can also be used to communicate with or warn other octopuses. The very venomous blue-ringed octopus becomes bright yellow with blue rings when it is provoked. Octopuses can use muscles in the skin to change the texture of their mantle in order to achieve a greater camouflage. In some species the mantle can take on the spiky appearance of seaweed, or the scraggly, bumpy texture of a rock, among other disguises. However in some species skin anatomy is limited to relatively patternless shades of one color, and limited skin texture. It is thought that octopuses that are day-active and/or live in complex habitats such as coral reefs have evolved more complex skin than their nocturnal and/or sand-dwelling relatives.
When under attack, some octopuses can perform arm autotomy, in a similar manner to the way skinks and other lizards detach their tails. The crawling arm serves as a distraction to would-be predators.
A few species, such as the Mimic Octopus, have a fourth defense mechanism. They can combine their highly flexible bodies with their color changing ability to accurately mimic other, more dangerous animals such as lionfish, sea snakes, and eels. Norman, M.D., J. Finn & T. Tregenza (2001). Proceedings of the Royal Society 268: 1755â1758. Norman, M.D. & F.G.Hochberg (2005). The "Mimic Octopus" (Thaumoctopus mimicus n. gen. et sp.), a new octopus from the tropical Indo-West Pacific (Cephalopoda: Octopodidae). Molluscan Research 25: 57â70. Abstract
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When octopuses reproduce, males use a specialized arm called a hectocotylus to insert spermatophores (packets of sperm) into the female's mantle cavity. The hectocotylus in benthic octopuses is usually the third right arm. Males die within a few months of mating. In some species, the female octopus can keep the sperm alive inside her for weeks until her eggs are mature. After they have been fertilized, the female lays about 200,000 eggs (this figure dramatically varies between families, genera, species and also individuals). The female hangs these eggs in strings from the ceiling of her lair, or individually attaches them to the substrate depending on the species. The female cares for the eggs, guarding them against predators, and gently blowing currents of water over them so that they get enough oxygen. The female does not hunt during the roughly one-month period spent taking care of the unhatched eggs and may ingest some of her own arms for sustenance. At around the time the eggs hatch, the mother leaves the lair and is too weak to defend herself from predators like cod, often succumbing to their attacks. The young larval octopuses spend a period of time drifting in clouds of plankton, where they feed on copepods, larval crabs and larval starfish until they are ready to descend to the ocean bottom, where the cycle repeats. This is a dangerous time for the larval octopuses; in the plankton cloud they are vulnerable to plankton eaters. In some deeper dwelling species, the young do not go through this period.
Eye of Octopus vulgaris
Octopuses have keen eyesight. Octopuses, like other cephalopods, can distinguish the polarization of light. Color vision appears to vary from species to species, being present in Octopus aegina but absent in Octopus vulgaris Kawamura, G., et al. (2001). . Nippon Suisan Gakkashi 67(1): 35â39. . Attached to the brain are two special organs, called statocysts, that allow the octopus to sense the orientation of its body relative to horizontal. An autonomic response keeps the octopus's eyes oriented so that the pupil slit is always horizontal.
Octopuses also have an excellent sense of touch. An octopus's suction cups are equipped with chemoreceptors so that the octopus can taste what it is touching. The arms contain tension sensors so that the octopus knows whether its arms are stretched out. However, the octopus has a very poor proprioceptive sense. The tension receptors are not sufficient for the octopus brain to determine the position of the octopus's body or arms. (It is not clear that the octopus brain would be capable of processing the large amount of information that this would require; the flexibility of an octopus's arms is much greater than that of the limbs of vertebrates, which devote large areas of cerebral cortex to the processing of proprioceptive inputs.) As a result, the octopus does not possess stereognosis; that is, it does not form a mental image of the overall shape of the object it is handling. It can detect local texture variations, but cannot integrate the information into a larger picture. Wells. Martin John. Octopus: physiology and behaviour of an advanced invertebrate. London : Chapman and Hall ; New York : distributed in the U.S.A. by Halsted Press, 1978.
The neurological autonomy of the arms means that the octopus has great difficulty learning about the detailed effects of its motions. The brain may issue a high-level command to the arms, but the nerve cords in the arms execute the details. There is no neurological path for the brain to receive feedback about just how its command was executed by the arms; the only way it knows just what motions were made is by observing the arms visually.
Octopuses swim headfirst, with arms trailing behind
Octopuses move about by crawling or swimming. Their main means of slow travel is crawling, with some swimming. Jet propulsion is their fastest means of locomotion, followed by swimming and walking. Locomotion by Abdopus aculeatus, C.L. Huffard 2006
They crawl by walking on their arms, usually on many at once, on both solid and soft surfaces, while supported in water. In 2005 it was reported that some octopuses (Adopus aculeatus and Amphioctopus marginatus under current taxonomy) can walk on two arms, while at the same time resembling plant matter. Science, vol. 307, p. 1927 This form of locomotion allows these octopuses to move quickly away from a potential predator while possibly not triggering that predator's search image for octopus (food). Octopuses lack bones and are extremely vulnerable to predators.
Octopuses swim by expelling a jet of water from a contractile mantle, and aiming it via a muscular siphon.
An adult North Pacific Giant Octopus, Enteroctopus dofleini
The North Pacific Giant Octopus, Enteroctopus dofleini, is often cited as the largest octopus species. Adults usually weigh around 15 kg (33 lb), with an arm span of up to 4.3 m (14 ft). Smithsonian National Zoological Park: Giant Pacific Octopus The largest specimen of this species to be scientifically documented was an animal with a live mass of 71 kg (156.5 lb). Cosgrove, J.A. 1987. Aspects of the Natural History of Octopus dofleini, the Giant Pacific Octopus. M.Sc. Thesis. Department of Biology, University of Victoria (Canada), 101 pp. The alternative contender is the Seven-arm Octopus, Haliphron atlanticus, based on a 61 kg (134 lb) carcass estimated to have a live mass of 75 kg (165 lb). O'Shea, S. 2004. The giant octopus Haliphron atlanticus (Mollusca : Octopoda) in New Zealand waters. New Zealand Journal of Zoology 31(1): 7-13. O'Shea, S. 2002. Haliphron atlanticus â a giant gelatinous octopus. Biodiversity Update 5: 1. However, there are a number of questionable size records that would suggest E. dofleini is the largest of all octopus species by a considerable margin; Norman, M. 2000. Cephalopods: A World Guide. ConchBooks, Hackenheim. p. 214. one such record is of a specimen weighing 272 kg (600 lb) and having an arm span of 9 m (30 ft). High, W.L. 1976. The giant Pacific octopus. U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service, Marine Fisheries Review 38(9): 17-22.
The term octopus, , is from Greek (oktapous), "eight-footed", Oktapous, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, at Perseus Scientific Latin from Greek (also ) "eight-footed" > or [combination form of "eight"] and "foot". Cf. Modern Greek with plural forms: octopuses , octopi , or octopodes . Currently, octopuses is the most common form in the US as well as the UK; octopodes is rare, and octopi is often objectionable. Peters, Pam (2004). The Cambridge Guide to English Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-62181-X, p. 388.
The Oxford English Dictionary (2004 update OED.com (subscription required). Retrieved October 22, 2007. ) lists octopuses, octopi and octopodes (in that order); it labels octopodes "rare", and notes that octopi derives from the mistaken assumption that is a second declension Latin noun, which it is not. Rather, it is a Latinization of Greek third-declension masculine ( , 'eight-foot'), plural ( ). If the word were native to Latin, it would be , plural , after the pattern of ('foot'), plural , analogous to "Centipede" . The actual Latin word for octopus and other similar species is , from Greek ( , 'many-foot'); usually the inaccurate plural is used instead of .
In modern Greek, the word is ( ), plural ( ), from Medieval ( ), equivalent to Classical ( ), variant of .
Chambers 21st Century Dictionary Chambersharrap.co.uk, Retrieved October 19, 2007. and the Compact Oxford Dictionary Askoxford.com, Retrieved October 19, 2007. list only octopuses, although the latter notes that octopodes is "still occasionally used"; the British National Corpus has 29 instances of octopuses, 11 of octopi and 4 of octopodes. Merriam-Webster 11th Collegiate Dictionary lists octopuses and octopi, in that order; Webster's New World College Dictionary lists octopuses, octopi and octopodes (in that order).
Fowler's Modern English Usage states that "the only acceptable plural in English is octopuses," and that octopi is misconceived and octopodes pedantic.
The term octopod (plural octopods or octopodes) is taken from the taxonomic order Octopoda but has no classical equivalent. The collective form octopus is usually reserved for animals consumed for food.
Moche Octopus. 200 A.D. Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru
Ancient peoples of the Mediterranean were aware of the octopus, as evidenced by certain artworks and designs of prehistory. For example, a stone carving found in the archaeological recovery from Bronze Age Minoan Crete at Knossos has a depiction of a fisherman carrying an octopus. C. Michael Hogan. 2007 Knossos fieldnotes, The Modern Antiquarian
The Moche people of ancient Peru worshipped the sea and its animals; moreover, octopuses were often depicted in their art. Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 199 7.
The Hawaiian creation myth relates that the present cosmos is only the last of a series, having arisen in stages from the wreck of the previous universe. In this account, the octopus is the lone survivor of the previous, alien universe.
The octopus has a significant role in Victor Hugo's book Travailleurs de la mer (Toilers of the Sea).
alt=Photo of dozens of octopus in metal bins
Humans eat octopus in many cultures. The arms and sometimes other body parts are prepared in various ways, often varying by species.
Octopus is a common ingredient in Japanese cuisine, including sushi, takoyaki, and Akashiyaki. Some small species are sometimes eaten alive as a novelty and health food. Similarly, a live octopus may be sliced up and the legs eaten while still squirming, which continues for some minutes.
alt=Photo of captured octopus and polespear
Octopus is eaten regularly in Hawaii, since many popular dishes are Asian in origin. Locally known by their Hawaiian or Japanese names, ("he'e" and "tako" respectively) octopus is also a popular fish bait.
Octopus is a common food in Mediterranean cuisine and Portuguese cuisine. In Galicia, polbo á feira (market fair style octopus) is a local delicacy. Restaurants which specialize or serve this dish are known as pulperÃas. On the Tunisian island of Djerba, local people catch octopuses by taking advantage of the animals' habit of hiding in safe places during the night. In the evening they put grey ceramic pots on the sea bed. The morning of the following day they check them for octopuses that sheltered there.
According to the USDA Nutrient Database (2007), cooked octopus contains approximately 139 calories per three ounce portion, and is a source of vitamin B3, B12, potassium, phosphorus, and selenium. Octopus Calories And Nutrition
Care must be taken to boil the octopus properly, to rid it of slime, smell, and residual ink.
Though octopuses can be difficult to keep in captivity, some people keep them as pets. Octopuses often escape even from supposedly secure tanks, due to their problem solving skills, mobility and lack of rigid structure.
The variation in size and life span among octopus species makes it difficult to know how long a new specimen can naturally be expected to live. That is, a small octopus may be just born or may be an adult, depending on its species. By selecting a well-known species, such as the California Two-spot Octopus, one can choose a small octopus (around the size of a tennis ball) and be confident that it is young with a full life ahead of it.
Octopuses are also quite strong for their size. Octopuses kept as pets have been known to open the covers of their aquariums and survive for a time in the air in order to get to a nearby feeder tank and gorge themselves on the fish there. They have also been known to catch and kill some species of sharks. Archived Google video of an octopus catching a shark, from The Octopus Show by Mike deGruy
A fisherman's catch of octopus dries in the sun
* Class CEPHALOPODA
** Subclass Nautiloidea: nautilus
** Subclass Coleoidea
*** Superorder Decapodiformes: squid, cuttlefish
*** Superorder Octopodiformes
**** Order Vampyromorphida: Vampire Squid
**** Order Octopoda
***** Genus â Keuppia (incertae sedis)
***** Genus â Palaeoctopus (incertae sedis)
***** Genus â Paleocirroteuthis (incertae sedis)
***** Genus â Pohlsepia (incertae sedis)
***** Genus â Proteroctopus (incertae sedis)
***** Genus â Styletoctopus (incertae sedis)
***** Suborder Cirrina: finned deep-sea octopus
****** Family Opisthoteuthidae: umbrella octopus
****** Family Cirroteuthidae
****** Family Stauroteuthidae
***** Suborder Incirrina
****** Family Amphitretidae: telescope octopus
****** Family Bolitaenidae: gelatinous octopus
****** Family Octopodidae: benthic octopus
****** Family Vitreledonellidae: Glass Octopus
****** Superfamily Argonautoida
******* Family Alloposidae: Seven-arm Octopus
******* Family Argonautidae: argonauts
******* Family Ocythoidae: Tuberculate Pelagic Octopus
******* Family Tremoctopodidae: blanket octopus
* Octopus wrestling
* Legend of the Octopus
* Henry the Hexapus, a six-armed octopus
* CephBase: Octopoda
* TONMO.COM - The Octopus News Magazine Online
* Tree of Life website: information about cephalopods along with pictures and videos
* Discussion about the plural
* An octopus's shark encounter - footage of an octopus eating a shark ( also in Quicktime format)
* Camouflage in action
* Video showing an Octopus escaping through a 1 inch hole
* Bipedal Octopuses- Video, Information, Original paper
*
* Video of walking octopuses
|
Octopus | How can an octopus defend against predators? | They can hide, flee, expel ink, or use camouflage. | data/set1/a10 | Octopus
The octopus is a cephalopod of the order Octopoda. Octopuses have two eyes and four pairs of arms and like other cephalopods are bilaterally symmetric. An octopus has a hard beak, with its mouth at the center point of the arms. Most octopuses have no internal or external skeleton, allowing them to squeeze through tight places. Octopuses are highly intelligent, probably the most intelligent of all invertebrates.
The octopus inhabits many diverse regions of the ocean, especially coral reefs. For defense against predators, they hide, flee quickly, expel ink, or use color-changing camouflage. An octopus trails its eight arms behind it as it swims. All octopuses are venomous, but only the small blue-ringed octopuses are deadly to humans. Unimelb.edu.au, Tentacles of venom: new study reveals all octopuses are venomous, University of Melbourne, Media Release, Wednesday 15 April 2009
In the larger sense, there are around 300 recognized octopus species, which is over one-third of the total number of known cephalopod species. The term octopus may also be used to refer only to those creatures in the genus Octopus.
A Common Octopus (Octopus vulgaris)
Octopuses are characterized by their eight arms, usually bearing suction cups. The arms of octopuses are often distinguished from the pair of feeding tentacles found in squid and cuttlefish. Norman, M. 2000. Cephalopods: A World Guide. ConchBooks, Hackenheim. p. 15. "There is some confusion around the terms arms versus tentacles. The numerous limbs of nautiluses are called tentacles. The ring of eight limbs around the mouth in cuttlefish, squids and octopuses are called arms. Cuttlefish and squid also have a pair of specialised limbs attached between the bases of the third and fourth arm pairs [...]. These are known as feeding tentacles and are used to shoot out and grab prey." Both types of limbs are muscular hydrostats. Unlike most other cephalopods, the majority of octopuses those in the suborder most commonly known, Incirrina have almost entirely soft bodies with no internal skeleton. They have neither a protective outer shell like the nautilus, nor any vestige of an internal shell or bones, like cuttlefish or squid. A beak, similar in shape to a parrot's beak, is the only hard part of their body. This enables them to squeeze through very narrow slits between underwater rocks, which is very helpful when they are fleeing from morays or other predatory fish. The octopuses in the less familiar Cirrina suborder have two fins and an internal shell, generally reducing their ability to squeeze into small spaces.
An octopus moving between tide pools during low tide
Octopuses have a relatively short life expectancy, and some species live for as little as six months. Larger species, such as the North Pacific Giant Octopus, may live for up to five years under suitable circumstances. However, reproduction is a cause of death: males can only live for a few months after mating, and females die shortly after their eggs hatch. They neglect to eat during the (roughly) one month period spent taking care of their unhatched eggs, but they don't die of starvation. Endocrine secretions from the two optic glands are the cause of genetically-programmed death (and if these glands are surgically removed, the octopus may live many months beyond reproduction, until she finally starves).
Stauroteuthis syrtensis, a finned octopus of the suborder Cirrina
Octopuses have three hearts. Two pump blood through each of the two gills, while the third pumps blood through the body. Octopus blood contains the copper-rich protein hemocyanin for transporting oxygen. Although less efficient under normal conditions than the iron-rich hemoglobin of vertebrates, in cold conditions with low oxygen pressure, hemocyanin oxygen transportation is more efficient than hemoglobin oxygen transportation. The hemocyanin is dissolved in the plasma instead of being carried within red blood cells and gives the blood a blue color. Octopuses draw water into their mantle cavity where it passes through its gills. As mollusks, octopuses have gills that are finely divided and vascularized outgrowths of either the outer or the inner body surface.
Octopuses are highly intelligent, likely more so than any other order of invertebrates. The exact extent of their intelligence and learning capability is much debated among biologists, NFW.org?, Is the octopus really the invertebrate intellect of the sea, by Doug Stewart. In: National Wildlife. Feb/Mar 1997, vol.35 no.2.
Giant OctopusâMighty but Secretive Denizen of the Deep Slate.com, How Smart is the Octopus? but maze and problem-solving experiments have shown that they do have both short- and long-term memory. Their short lifespans limit the amount they can ultimately learn. There has been much speculation to the effect that almost all octopus behaviors are independently learned rather than instinct-based, although this remains largely unproven. They learn almost no behaviors from their parents, with whom young octopuses have very little contact.
An octopus opening a container with a screw cap
An octopus has a highly complex nervous system, only part of which is localized in its brain. Two-thirds of an octopus's neurons are found in the nerve cords of its arms, which have a remarkable amount of autonomy. Octopus arms show a wide variety of complex reflex actions arising on at least three different levels of the nervous system. Unlike vertebrates, the complex motor skills of octopuses in their higher brain are not organized using an internal somatotopic map of its body. Zullo L, Sumbre G, Agnisola C, Flash T, Hochner B. (2009). Nonsomatotopic organization of the higher motor centers in octopus.
Curr Biol. 19(19):1632-6. PMID 19765993 Some octopuses, such as the Mimic Octopus, will move their arms in ways that emulate the movements of other sea creatures.
In laboratory experiments, octopuses can be readily trained to distinguish between different shapes and patterns. They have been reported to practice observational learning, Octopus intelligence: jar opening although the validity of these findings is widely contested on a number of grounds. What is this octopus thinking?. By Garry Hamilton. Octopuses have also been observed in what some have described as play: repeatedly releasing bottles or toys into a circular current in their aquariums and then catching them. What behavior can we expect of octopuses?. By Dr. Jennifer Mather, Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Lethbridge and Roland C. Anderson, The Seattle Aquarium. Octopuses often break out of their aquariums and sometimes into others in search of food. They have even boarded fishing boats and opened holds to eat crabs.
In some countries, octopuses are on the list of experimental animals on which surgery may not be performed without anesthesia. In the UK, cephalopods such as octopuses are regarded as honorary vertebrates under the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 and other cruelty to animals legislation, extending to them protections not normally afforded to invertebrates. United Kingdom Animals (Scientific Procedures) act of 1986
The octopus is the only invertebrate which has been conclusively shown to use tools. At least four specimens of the Veined Octopus (Amphioctopus marginatus) have been witnessed retrieving discarded coconut shells, manipulating them, and then reassembling them to use as shelter. This discovery was documented in the journal Current Biology and has also been caught on video. /ref> /ref>
Greater Blue-ringed Octopus (Hapalochlaena lunulata)
An octopus's main (primary) defense is to hide, either not to be seen at all, or not to be detected as an octopus. Hanlon, R.T. & J.B. Messenger 1996. Cephalopod Behaviour. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Octopuses have several secondary defenses (defenses they use once they have been seen by a predator). The most common secondary defense is fast escape. Other defenses include the use of ink sacs, camouflage, and autotomising limbs.
Most octopuses can eject a thick blackish ink in a large cloud to aid in escaping from predators. The main colouring agent of the ink is melanin, which is the same chemical that gives humans their hair and skin colour. This ink cloud is thought to reduce the efficiency of olfactory organs, which would aid an octopus's evasion from predators that employ smell for hunting, such as sharks. Ink clouds of some species might serve as pseudomorphs, or decoys that the predator attacks instead. Caldwell, R. L. (2005). "An Observation of Inking Behavior Protecting Adult Octopus bocki from Predation by Green Turtle (Chelonia mydas) Hatchlings." Pacific Science 59(1): 69â72.
This small octopus species travels with shells it has collected for protection.
An octopus's camouflage is aided by certain specialized skin cells which can change the apparent color, opacity, and reflectiveness of the epidermis. Chromatophores contain yellow, orange, red, brown, or black pigments; most species have three of these colors, while some have two or four. Other color-changing cells are reflective iridophores, and leucophores (white). This color-changing ability can also be used to communicate with or warn other octopuses. The very venomous blue-ringed octopus becomes bright yellow with blue rings when it is provoked. Octopuses can use muscles in the skin to change the texture of their mantle in order to achieve a greater camouflage. In some species the mantle can take on the spiky appearance of seaweed, or the scraggly, bumpy texture of a rock, among other disguises. However in some species skin anatomy is limited to relatively patternless shades of one color, and limited skin texture. It is thought that octopuses that are day-active and/or live in complex habitats such as coral reefs have evolved more complex skin than their nocturnal and/or sand-dwelling relatives.
When under attack, some octopuses can perform arm autotomy, in a similar manner to the way skinks and other lizards detach their tails. The crawling arm serves as a distraction to would-be predators.
A few species, such as the Mimic Octopus, have a fourth defense mechanism. They can combine their highly flexible bodies with their color changing ability to accurately mimic other, more dangerous animals such as lionfish, sea snakes, and eels. Norman, M.D., J. Finn & T. Tregenza (2001). Proceedings of the Royal Society 268: 1755â1758. Norman, M.D. & F.G.Hochberg (2005). The "Mimic Octopus" (Thaumoctopus mimicus n. gen. et sp.), a new octopus from the tropical Indo-West Pacific (Cephalopoda: Octopodidae). Molluscan Research 25: 57â70. Abstract
/ref>-->
When octopuses reproduce, males use a specialized arm called a hectocotylus to insert spermatophores (packets of sperm) into the female's mantle cavity. The hectocotylus in benthic octopuses is usually the third right arm. Males die within a few months of mating. In some species, the female octopus can keep the sperm alive inside her for weeks until her eggs are mature. After they have been fertilized, the female lays about 200,000 eggs (this figure dramatically varies between families, genera, species and also individuals). The female hangs these eggs in strings from the ceiling of her lair, or individually attaches them to the substrate depending on the species. The female cares for the eggs, guarding them against predators, and gently blowing currents of water over them so that they get enough oxygen. The female does not hunt during the roughly one-month period spent taking care of the unhatched eggs and may ingest some of her own arms for sustenance. At around the time the eggs hatch, the mother leaves the lair and is too weak to defend herself from predators like cod, often succumbing to their attacks. The young larval octopuses spend a period of time drifting in clouds of plankton, where they feed on copepods, larval crabs and larval starfish until they are ready to descend to the ocean bottom, where the cycle repeats. This is a dangerous time for the larval octopuses; in the plankton cloud they are vulnerable to plankton eaters. In some deeper dwelling species, the young do not go through this period.
Eye of Octopus vulgaris
Octopuses have keen eyesight. Octopuses, like other cephalopods, can distinguish the polarization of light. Color vision appears to vary from species to species, being present in Octopus aegina but absent in Octopus vulgaris Kawamura, G., et al. (2001). . Nippon Suisan Gakkashi 67(1): 35â39. . Attached to the brain are two special organs, called statocysts, that allow the octopus to sense the orientation of its body relative to horizontal. An autonomic response keeps the octopus's eyes oriented so that the pupil slit is always horizontal.
Octopuses also have an excellent sense of touch. An octopus's suction cups are equipped with chemoreceptors so that the octopus can taste what it is touching. The arms contain tension sensors so that the octopus knows whether its arms are stretched out. However, the octopus has a very poor proprioceptive sense. The tension receptors are not sufficient for the octopus brain to determine the position of the octopus's body or arms. (It is not clear that the octopus brain would be capable of processing the large amount of information that this would require; the flexibility of an octopus's arms is much greater than that of the limbs of vertebrates, which devote large areas of cerebral cortex to the processing of proprioceptive inputs.) As a result, the octopus does not possess stereognosis; that is, it does not form a mental image of the overall shape of the object it is handling. It can detect local texture variations, but cannot integrate the information into a larger picture. Wells. Martin John. Octopus: physiology and behaviour of an advanced invertebrate. London : Chapman and Hall ; New York : distributed in the U.S.A. by Halsted Press, 1978.
The neurological autonomy of the arms means that the octopus has great difficulty learning about the detailed effects of its motions. The brain may issue a high-level command to the arms, but the nerve cords in the arms execute the details. There is no neurological path for the brain to receive feedback about just how its command was executed by the arms; the only way it knows just what motions were made is by observing the arms visually.
Octopuses swim headfirst, with arms trailing behind
Octopuses move about by crawling or swimming. Their main means of slow travel is crawling, with some swimming. Jet propulsion is their fastest means of locomotion, followed by swimming and walking. Locomotion by Abdopus aculeatus, C.L. Huffard 2006
They crawl by walking on their arms, usually on many at once, on both solid and soft surfaces, while supported in water. In 2005 it was reported that some octopuses (Adopus aculeatus and Amphioctopus marginatus under current taxonomy) can walk on two arms, while at the same time resembling plant matter. Science, vol. 307, p. 1927 This form of locomotion allows these octopuses to move quickly away from a potential predator while possibly not triggering that predator's search image for octopus (food). Octopuses lack bones and are extremely vulnerable to predators.
Octopuses swim by expelling a jet of water from a contractile mantle, and aiming it via a muscular siphon.
An adult North Pacific Giant Octopus, Enteroctopus dofleini
The North Pacific Giant Octopus, Enteroctopus dofleini, is often cited as the largest octopus species. Adults usually weigh around 15 kg (33 lb), with an arm span of up to 4.3 m (14 ft). Smithsonian National Zoological Park: Giant Pacific Octopus The largest specimen of this species to be scientifically documented was an animal with a live mass of 71 kg (156.5 lb). Cosgrove, J.A. 1987. Aspects of the Natural History of Octopus dofleini, the Giant Pacific Octopus. M.Sc. Thesis. Department of Biology, University of Victoria (Canada), 101 pp. The alternative contender is the Seven-arm Octopus, Haliphron atlanticus, based on a 61 kg (134 lb) carcass estimated to have a live mass of 75 kg (165 lb). O'Shea, S. 2004. The giant octopus Haliphron atlanticus (Mollusca : Octopoda) in New Zealand waters. New Zealand Journal of Zoology 31(1): 7-13. O'Shea, S. 2002. Haliphron atlanticus â a giant gelatinous octopus. Biodiversity Update 5: 1. However, there are a number of questionable size records that would suggest E. dofleini is the largest of all octopus species by a considerable margin; Norman, M. 2000. Cephalopods: A World Guide. ConchBooks, Hackenheim. p. 214. one such record is of a specimen weighing 272 kg (600 lb) and having an arm span of 9 m (30 ft). High, W.L. 1976. The giant Pacific octopus. U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service, Marine Fisheries Review 38(9): 17-22.
The term octopus, , is from Greek (oktapous), "eight-footed", Oktapous, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, at Perseus Scientific Latin from Greek (also ) "eight-footed" > or [combination form of "eight"] and "foot". Cf. Modern Greek with plural forms: octopuses , octopi , or octopodes . Currently, octopuses is the most common form in the US as well as the UK; octopodes is rare, and octopi is often objectionable. Peters, Pam (2004). The Cambridge Guide to English Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-62181-X, p. 388.
The Oxford English Dictionary (2004 update OED.com (subscription required). Retrieved October 22, 2007. ) lists octopuses, octopi and octopodes (in that order); it labels octopodes "rare", and notes that octopi derives from the mistaken assumption that is a second declension Latin noun, which it is not. Rather, it is a Latinization of Greek third-declension masculine ( , 'eight-foot'), plural ( ). If the word were native to Latin, it would be , plural , after the pattern of ('foot'), plural , analogous to "Centipede" . The actual Latin word for octopus and other similar species is , from Greek ( , 'many-foot'); usually the inaccurate plural is used instead of .
In modern Greek, the word is ( ), plural ( ), from Medieval ( ), equivalent to Classical ( ), variant of .
Chambers 21st Century Dictionary Chambersharrap.co.uk, Retrieved October 19, 2007. and the Compact Oxford Dictionary Askoxford.com, Retrieved October 19, 2007. list only octopuses, although the latter notes that octopodes is "still occasionally used"; the British National Corpus has 29 instances of octopuses, 11 of octopi and 4 of octopodes. Merriam-Webster 11th Collegiate Dictionary lists octopuses and octopi, in that order; Webster's New World College Dictionary lists octopuses, octopi and octopodes (in that order).
Fowler's Modern English Usage states that "the only acceptable plural in English is octopuses," and that octopi is misconceived and octopodes pedantic.
The term octopod (plural octopods or octopodes) is taken from the taxonomic order Octopoda but has no classical equivalent. The collective form octopus is usually reserved for animals consumed for food.
Moche Octopus. 200 A.D. Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru
Ancient peoples of the Mediterranean were aware of the octopus, as evidenced by certain artworks and designs of prehistory. For example, a stone carving found in the archaeological recovery from Bronze Age Minoan Crete at Knossos has a depiction of a fisherman carrying an octopus. C. Michael Hogan. 2007 Knossos fieldnotes, The Modern Antiquarian
The Moche people of ancient Peru worshipped the sea and its animals; moreover, octopuses were often depicted in their art. Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 199 7.
The Hawaiian creation myth relates that the present cosmos is only the last of a series, having arisen in stages from the wreck of the previous universe. In this account, the octopus is the lone survivor of the previous, alien universe.
The octopus has a significant role in Victor Hugo's book Travailleurs de la mer (Toilers of the Sea).
alt=Photo of dozens of octopus in metal bins
Humans eat octopus in many cultures. The arms and sometimes other body parts are prepared in various ways, often varying by species.
Octopus is a common ingredient in Japanese cuisine, including sushi, takoyaki, and Akashiyaki. Some small species are sometimes eaten alive as a novelty and health food. Similarly, a live octopus may be sliced up and the legs eaten while still squirming, which continues for some minutes.
alt=Photo of captured octopus and polespear
Octopus is eaten regularly in Hawaii, since many popular dishes are Asian in origin. Locally known by their Hawaiian or Japanese names, ("he'e" and "tako" respectively) octopus is also a popular fish bait.
Octopus is a common food in Mediterranean cuisine and Portuguese cuisine. In Galicia, polbo á feira (market fair style octopus) is a local delicacy. Restaurants which specialize or serve this dish are known as pulperÃas. On the Tunisian island of Djerba, local people catch octopuses by taking advantage of the animals' habit of hiding in safe places during the night. In the evening they put grey ceramic pots on the sea bed. The morning of the following day they check them for octopuses that sheltered there.
According to the USDA Nutrient Database (2007), cooked octopus contains approximately 139 calories per three ounce portion, and is a source of vitamin B3, B12, potassium, phosphorus, and selenium. Octopus Calories And Nutrition
Care must be taken to boil the octopus properly, to rid it of slime, smell, and residual ink.
Though octopuses can be difficult to keep in captivity, some people keep them as pets. Octopuses often escape even from supposedly secure tanks, due to their problem solving skills, mobility and lack of rigid structure.
The variation in size and life span among octopus species makes it difficult to know how long a new specimen can naturally be expected to live. That is, a small octopus may be just born or may be an adult, depending on its species. By selecting a well-known species, such as the California Two-spot Octopus, one can choose a small octopus (around the size of a tennis ball) and be confident that it is young with a full life ahead of it.
Octopuses are also quite strong for their size. Octopuses kept as pets have been known to open the covers of their aquariums and survive for a time in the air in order to get to a nearby feeder tank and gorge themselves on the fish there. They have also been known to catch and kill some species of sharks. Archived Google video of an octopus catching a shark, from The Octopus Show by Mike deGruy
A fisherman's catch of octopus dries in the sun
* Class CEPHALOPODA
** Subclass Nautiloidea: nautilus
** Subclass Coleoidea
*** Superorder Decapodiformes: squid, cuttlefish
*** Superorder Octopodiformes
**** Order Vampyromorphida: Vampire Squid
**** Order Octopoda
***** Genus â Keuppia (incertae sedis)
***** Genus â Palaeoctopus (incertae sedis)
***** Genus â Paleocirroteuthis (incertae sedis)
***** Genus â Pohlsepia (incertae sedis)
***** Genus â Proteroctopus (incertae sedis)
***** Genus â Styletoctopus (incertae sedis)
***** Suborder Cirrina: finned deep-sea octopus
****** Family Opisthoteuthidae: umbrella octopus
****** Family Cirroteuthidae
****** Family Stauroteuthidae
***** Suborder Incirrina
****** Family Amphitretidae: telescope octopus
****** Family Bolitaenidae: gelatinous octopus
****** Family Octopodidae: benthic octopus
****** Family Vitreledonellidae: Glass Octopus
****** Superfamily Argonautoida
******* Family Alloposidae: Seven-arm Octopus
******* Family Argonautidae: argonauts
******* Family Ocythoidae: Tuberculate Pelagic Octopus
******* Family Tremoctopodidae: blanket octopus
* Octopus wrestling
* Legend of the Octopus
* Henry the Hexapus, a six-armed octopus
* CephBase: Octopoda
* TONMO.COM - The Octopus News Magazine Online
* Tree of Life website: information about cephalopods along with pictures and videos
* Discussion about the plural
* An octopus's shark encounter - footage of an octopus eating a shark ( also in Quicktime format)
* Camouflage in action
* Video showing an Octopus escaping through a 1 inch hole
* Bipedal Octopuses- Video, Information, Original paper
*
* Video of walking octopuses
|
Octopus | Are Octopus highly intelligent? | yes | data/set1/a10 | Octopus
The octopus is a cephalopod of the order Octopoda. Octopuses have two eyes and four pairs of arms and like other cephalopods are bilaterally symmetric. An octopus has a hard beak, with its mouth at the center point of the arms. Most octopuses have no internal or external skeleton, allowing them to squeeze through tight places. Octopuses are highly intelligent, probably the most intelligent of all invertebrates.
The octopus inhabits many diverse regions of the ocean, especially coral reefs. For defense against predators, they hide, flee quickly, expel ink, or use color-changing camouflage. An octopus trails its eight arms behind it as it swims. All octopuses are venomous, but only the small blue-ringed octopuses are deadly to humans. Unimelb.edu.au, Tentacles of venom: new study reveals all octopuses are venomous, University of Melbourne, Media Release, Wednesday 15 April 2009
In the larger sense, there are around 300 recognized octopus species, which is over one-third of the total number of known cephalopod species. The term octopus may also be used to refer only to those creatures in the genus Octopus.
A Common Octopus (Octopus vulgaris)
Octopuses are characterized by their eight arms, usually bearing suction cups. The arms of octopuses are often distinguished from the pair of feeding tentacles found in squid and cuttlefish. Norman, M. 2000. Cephalopods: A World Guide. ConchBooks, Hackenheim. p. 15. "There is some confusion around the terms arms versus tentacles. The numerous limbs of nautiluses are called tentacles. The ring of eight limbs around the mouth in cuttlefish, squids and octopuses are called arms. Cuttlefish and squid also have a pair of specialised limbs attached between the bases of the third and fourth arm pairs [...]. These are known as feeding tentacles and are used to shoot out and grab prey." Both types of limbs are muscular hydrostats. Unlike most other cephalopods, the majority of octopuses those in the suborder most commonly known, Incirrina have almost entirely soft bodies with no internal skeleton. They have neither a protective outer shell like the nautilus, nor any vestige of an internal shell or bones, like cuttlefish or squid. A beak, similar in shape to a parrot's beak, is the only hard part of their body. This enables them to squeeze through very narrow slits between underwater rocks, which is very helpful when they are fleeing from morays or other predatory fish. The octopuses in the less familiar Cirrina suborder have two fins and an internal shell, generally reducing their ability to squeeze into small spaces.
An octopus moving between tide pools during low tide
Octopuses have a relatively short life expectancy, and some species live for as little as six months. Larger species, such as the North Pacific Giant Octopus, may live for up to five years under suitable circumstances. However, reproduction is a cause of death: males can only live for a few months after mating, and females die shortly after their eggs hatch. They neglect to eat during the (roughly) one month period spent taking care of their unhatched eggs, but they don't die of starvation. Endocrine secretions from the two optic glands are the cause of genetically-programmed death (and if these glands are surgically removed, the octopus may live many months beyond reproduction, until she finally starves).
Stauroteuthis syrtensis, a finned octopus of the suborder Cirrina
Octopuses have three hearts. Two pump blood through each of the two gills, while the third pumps blood through the body. Octopus blood contains the copper-rich protein hemocyanin for transporting oxygen. Although less efficient under normal conditions than the iron-rich hemoglobin of vertebrates, in cold conditions with low oxygen pressure, hemocyanin oxygen transportation is more efficient than hemoglobin oxygen transportation. The hemocyanin is dissolved in the plasma instead of being carried within red blood cells and gives the blood a blue color. Octopuses draw water into their mantle cavity where it passes through its gills. As mollusks, octopuses have gills that are finely divided and vascularized outgrowths of either the outer or the inner body surface.
Octopuses are highly intelligent, likely more so than any other order of invertebrates. The exact extent of their intelligence and learning capability is much debated among biologists, NFW.org?, Is the octopus really the invertebrate intellect of the sea, by Doug Stewart. In: National Wildlife. Feb/Mar 1997, vol.35 no.2.
Giant OctopusâMighty but Secretive Denizen of the Deep Slate.com, How Smart is the Octopus? but maze and problem-solving experiments have shown that they do have both short- and long-term memory. Their short lifespans limit the amount they can ultimately learn. There has been much speculation to the effect that almost all octopus behaviors are independently learned rather than instinct-based, although this remains largely unproven. They learn almost no behaviors from their parents, with whom young octopuses have very little contact.
An octopus opening a container with a screw cap
An octopus has a highly complex nervous system, only part of which is localized in its brain. Two-thirds of an octopus's neurons are found in the nerve cords of its arms, which have a remarkable amount of autonomy. Octopus arms show a wide variety of complex reflex actions arising on at least three different levels of the nervous system. Unlike vertebrates, the complex motor skills of octopuses in their higher brain are not organized using an internal somatotopic map of its body. Zullo L, Sumbre G, Agnisola C, Flash T, Hochner B. (2009). Nonsomatotopic organization of the higher motor centers in octopus.
Curr Biol. 19(19):1632-6. PMID 19765993 Some octopuses, such as the Mimic Octopus, will move their arms in ways that emulate the movements of other sea creatures.
In laboratory experiments, octopuses can be readily trained to distinguish between different shapes and patterns. They have been reported to practice observational learning, Octopus intelligence: jar opening although the validity of these findings is widely contested on a number of grounds. What is this octopus thinking?. By Garry Hamilton. Octopuses have also been observed in what some have described as play: repeatedly releasing bottles or toys into a circular current in their aquariums and then catching them. What behavior can we expect of octopuses?. By Dr. Jennifer Mather, Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Lethbridge and Roland C. Anderson, The Seattle Aquarium. Octopuses often break out of their aquariums and sometimes into others in search of food. They have even boarded fishing boats and opened holds to eat crabs.
In some countries, octopuses are on the list of experimental animals on which surgery may not be performed without anesthesia. In the UK, cephalopods such as octopuses are regarded as honorary vertebrates under the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 and other cruelty to animals legislation, extending to them protections not normally afforded to invertebrates. United Kingdom Animals (Scientific Procedures) act of 1986
The octopus is the only invertebrate which has been conclusively shown to use tools. At least four specimens of the Veined Octopus (Amphioctopus marginatus) have been witnessed retrieving discarded coconut shells, manipulating them, and then reassembling them to use as shelter. This discovery was documented in the journal Current Biology and has also been caught on video. /ref> /ref>
Greater Blue-ringed Octopus (Hapalochlaena lunulata)
An octopus's main (primary) defense is to hide, either not to be seen at all, or not to be detected as an octopus. Hanlon, R.T. & J.B. Messenger 1996. Cephalopod Behaviour. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Octopuses have several secondary defenses (defenses they use once they have been seen by a predator). The most common secondary defense is fast escape. Other defenses include the use of ink sacs, camouflage, and autotomising limbs.
Most octopuses can eject a thick blackish ink in a large cloud to aid in escaping from predators. The main colouring agent of the ink is melanin, which is the same chemical that gives humans their hair and skin colour. This ink cloud is thought to reduce the efficiency of olfactory organs, which would aid an octopus's evasion from predators that employ smell for hunting, such as sharks. Ink clouds of some species might serve as pseudomorphs, or decoys that the predator attacks instead. Caldwell, R. L. (2005). "An Observation of Inking Behavior Protecting Adult Octopus bocki from Predation by Green Turtle (Chelonia mydas) Hatchlings." Pacific Science 59(1): 69â72.
This small octopus species travels with shells it has collected for protection.
An octopus's camouflage is aided by certain specialized skin cells which can change the apparent color, opacity, and reflectiveness of the epidermis. Chromatophores contain yellow, orange, red, brown, or black pigments; most species have three of these colors, while some have two or four. Other color-changing cells are reflective iridophores, and leucophores (white). This color-changing ability can also be used to communicate with or warn other octopuses. The very venomous blue-ringed octopus becomes bright yellow with blue rings when it is provoked. Octopuses can use muscles in the skin to change the texture of their mantle in order to achieve a greater camouflage. In some species the mantle can take on the spiky appearance of seaweed, or the scraggly, bumpy texture of a rock, among other disguises. However in some species skin anatomy is limited to relatively patternless shades of one color, and limited skin texture. It is thought that octopuses that are day-active and/or live in complex habitats such as coral reefs have evolved more complex skin than their nocturnal and/or sand-dwelling relatives.
When under attack, some octopuses can perform arm autotomy, in a similar manner to the way skinks and other lizards detach their tails. The crawling arm serves as a distraction to would-be predators.
A few species, such as the Mimic Octopus, have a fourth defense mechanism. They can combine their highly flexible bodies with their color changing ability to accurately mimic other, more dangerous animals such as lionfish, sea snakes, and eels. Norman, M.D., J. Finn & T. Tregenza (2001). Proceedings of the Royal Society 268: 1755â1758. Norman, M.D. & F.G.Hochberg (2005). The "Mimic Octopus" (Thaumoctopus mimicus n. gen. et sp.), a new octopus from the tropical Indo-West Pacific (Cephalopoda: Octopodidae). Molluscan Research 25: 57â70. Abstract
/ref>-->
When octopuses reproduce, males use a specialized arm called a hectocotylus to insert spermatophores (packets of sperm) into the female's mantle cavity. The hectocotylus in benthic octopuses is usually the third right arm. Males die within a few months of mating. In some species, the female octopus can keep the sperm alive inside her for weeks until her eggs are mature. After they have been fertilized, the female lays about 200,000 eggs (this figure dramatically varies between families, genera, species and also individuals). The female hangs these eggs in strings from the ceiling of her lair, or individually attaches them to the substrate depending on the species. The female cares for the eggs, guarding them against predators, and gently blowing currents of water over them so that they get enough oxygen. The female does not hunt during the roughly one-month period spent taking care of the unhatched eggs and may ingest some of her own arms for sustenance. At around the time the eggs hatch, the mother leaves the lair and is too weak to defend herself from predators like cod, often succumbing to their attacks. The young larval octopuses spend a period of time drifting in clouds of plankton, where they feed on copepods, larval crabs and larval starfish until they are ready to descend to the ocean bottom, where the cycle repeats. This is a dangerous time for the larval octopuses; in the plankton cloud they are vulnerable to plankton eaters. In some deeper dwelling species, the young do not go through this period.
Eye of Octopus vulgaris
Octopuses have keen eyesight. Octopuses, like other cephalopods, can distinguish the polarization of light. Color vision appears to vary from species to species, being present in Octopus aegina but absent in Octopus vulgaris Kawamura, G., et al. (2001). . Nippon Suisan Gakkashi 67(1): 35â39. . Attached to the brain are two special organs, called statocysts, that allow the octopus to sense the orientation of its body relative to horizontal. An autonomic response keeps the octopus's eyes oriented so that the pupil slit is always horizontal.
Octopuses also have an excellent sense of touch. An octopus's suction cups are equipped with chemoreceptors so that the octopus can taste what it is touching. The arms contain tension sensors so that the octopus knows whether its arms are stretched out. However, the octopus has a very poor proprioceptive sense. The tension receptors are not sufficient for the octopus brain to determine the position of the octopus's body or arms. (It is not clear that the octopus brain would be capable of processing the large amount of information that this would require; the flexibility of an octopus's arms is much greater than that of the limbs of vertebrates, which devote large areas of cerebral cortex to the processing of proprioceptive inputs.) As a result, the octopus does not possess stereognosis; that is, it does not form a mental image of the overall shape of the object it is handling. It can detect local texture variations, but cannot integrate the information into a larger picture. Wells. Martin John. Octopus: physiology and behaviour of an advanced invertebrate. London : Chapman and Hall ; New York : distributed in the U.S.A. by Halsted Press, 1978.
The neurological autonomy of the arms means that the octopus has great difficulty learning about the detailed effects of its motions. The brain may issue a high-level command to the arms, but the nerve cords in the arms execute the details. There is no neurological path for the brain to receive feedback about just how its command was executed by the arms; the only way it knows just what motions were made is by observing the arms visually.
Octopuses swim headfirst, with arms trailing behind
Octopuses move about by crawling or swimming. Their main means of slow travel is crawling, with some swimming. Jet propulsion is their fastest means of locomotion, followed by swimming and walking. Locomotion by Abdopus aculeatus, C.L. Huffard 2006
They crawl by walking on their arms, usually on many at once, on both solid and soft surfaces, while supported in water. In 2005 it was reported that some octopuses (Adopus aculeatus and Amphioctopus marginatus under current taxonomy) can walk on two arms, while at the same time resembling plant matter. Science, vol. 307, p. 1927 This form of locomotion allows these octopuses to move quickly away from a potential predator while possibly not triggering that predator's search image for octopus (food). Octopuses lack bones and are extremely vulnerable to predators.
Octopuses swim by expelling a jet of water from a contractile mantle, and aiming it via a muscular siphon.
An adult North Pacific Giant Octopus, Enteroctopus dofleini
The North Pacific Giant Octopus, Enteroctopus dofleini, is often cited as the largest octopus species. Adults usually weigh around 15 kg (33 lb), with an arm span of up to 4.3 m (14 ft). Smithsonian National Zoological Park: Giant Pacific Octopus The largest specimen of this species to be scientifically documented was an animal with a live mass of 71 kg (156.5 lb). Cosgrove, J.A. 1987. Aspects of the Natural History of Octopus dofleini, the Giant Pacific Octopus. M.Sc. Thesis. Department of Biology, University of Victoria (Canada), 101 pp. The alternative contender is the Seven-arm Octopus, Haliphron atlanticus, based on a 61 kg (134 lb) carcass estimated to have a live mass of 75 kg (165 lb). O'Shea, S. 2004. The giant octopus Haliphron atlanticus (Mollusca : Octopoda) in New Zealand waters. New Zealand Journal of Zoology 31(1): 7-13. O'Shea, S. 2002. Haliphron atlanticus â a giant gelatinous octopus. Biodiversity Update 5: 1. However, there are a number of questionable size records that would suggest E. dofleini is the largest of all octopus species by a considerable margin; Norman, M. 2000. Cephalopods: A World Guide. ConchBooks, Hackenheim. p. 214. one such record is of a specimen weighing 272 kg (600 lb) and having an arm span of 9 m (30 ft). High, W.L. 1976. The giant Pacific octopus. U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service, Marine Fisheries Review 38(9): 17-22.
The term octopus, , is from Greek (oktapous), "eight-footed", Oktapous, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, at Perseus Scientific Latin from Greek (also ) "eight-footed" > or [combination form of "eight"] and "foot". Cf. Modern Greek with plural forms: octopuses , octopi , or octopodes . Currently, octopuses is the most common form in the US as well as the UK; octopodes is rare, and octopi is often objectionable. Peters, Pam (2004). The Cambridge Guide to English Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-62181-X, p. 388.
The Oxford English Dictionary (2004 update OED.com (subscription required). Retrieved October 22, 2007. ) lists octopuses, octopi and octopodes (in that order); it labels octopodes "rare", and notes that octopi derives from the mistaken assumption that is a second declension Latin noun, which it is not. Rather, it is a Latinization of Greek third-declension masculine ( , 'eight-foot'), plural ( ). If the word were native to Latin, it would be , plural , after the pattern of ('foot'), plural , analogous to "Centipede" . The actual Latin word for octopus and other similar species is , from Greek ( , 'many-foot'); usually the inaccurate plural is used instead of .
In modern Greek, the word is ( ), plural ( ), from Medieval ( ), equivalent to Classical ( ), variant of .
Chambers 21st Century Dictionary Chambersharrap.co.uk, Retrieved October 19, 2007. and the Compact Oxford Dictionary Askoxford.com, Retrieved October 19, 2007. list only octopuses, although the latter notes that octopodes is "still occasionally used"; the British National Corpus has 29 instances of octopuses, 11 of octopi and 4 of octopodes. Merriam-Webster 11th Collegiate Dictionary lists octopuses and octopi, in that order; Webster's New World College Dictionary lists octopuses, octopi and octopodes (in that order).
Fowler's Modern English Usage states that "the only acceptable plural in English is octopuses," and that octopi is misconceived and octopodes pedantic.
The term octopod (plural octopods or octopodes) is taken from the taxonomic order Octopoda but has no classical equivalent. The collective form octopus is usually reserved for animals consumed for food.
Moche Octopus. 200 A.D. Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru
Ancient peoples of the Mediterranean were aware of the octopus, as evidenced by certain artworks and designs of prehistory. For example, a stone carving found in the archaeological recovery from Bronze Age Minoan Crete at Knossos has a depiction of a fisherman carrying an octopus. C. Michael Hogan. 2007 Knossos fieldnotes, The Modern Antiquarian
The Moche people of ancient Peru worshipped the sea and its animals; moreover, octopuses were often depicted in their art. Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 199 7.
The Hawaiian creation myth relates that the present cosmos is only the last of a series, having arisen in stages from the wreck of the previous universe. In this account, the octopus is the lone survivor of the previous, alien universe.
The octopus has a significant role in Victor Hugo's book Travailleurs de la mer (Toilers of the Sea).
alt=Photo of dozens of octopus in metal bins
Humans eat octopus in many cultures. The arms and sometimes other body parts are prepared in various ways, often varying by species.
Octopus is a common ingredient in Japanese cuisine, including sushi, takoyaki, and Akashiyaki. Some small species are sometimes eaten alive as a novelty and health food. Similarly, a live octopus may be sliced up and the legs eaten while still squirming, which continues for some minutes.
alt=Photo of captured octopus and polespear
Octopus is eaten regularly in Hawaii, since many popular dishes are Asian in origin. Locally known by their Hawaiian or Japanese names, ("he'e" and "tako" respectively) octopus is also a popular fish bait.
Octopus is a common food in Mediterranean cuisine and Portuguese cuisine. In Galicia, polbo á feira (market fair style octopus) is a local delicacy. Restaurants which specialize or serve this dish are known as pulperÃas. On the Tunisian island of Djerba, local people catch octopuses by taking advantage of the animals' habit of hiding in safe places during the night. In the evening they put grey ceramic pots on the sea bed. The morning of the following day they check them for octopuses that sheltered there.
According to the USDA Nutrient Database (2007), cooked octopus contains approximately 139 calories per three ounce portion, and is a source of vitamin B3, B12, potassium, phosphorus, and selenium. Octopus Calories And Nutrition
Care must be taken to boil the octopus properly, to rid it of slime, smell, and residual ink.
Though octopuses can be difficult to keep in captivity, some people keep them as pets. Octopuses often escape even from supposedly secure tanks, due to their problem solving skills, mobility and lack of rigid structure.
The variation in size and life span among octopus species makes it difficult to know how long a new specimen can naturally be expected to live. That is, a small octopus may be just born or may be an adult, depending on its species. By selecting a well-known species, such as the California Two-spot Octopus, one can choose a small octopus (around the size of a tennis ball) and be confident that it is young with a full life ahead of it.
Octopuses are also quite strong for their size. Octopuses kept as pets have been known to open the covers of their aquariums and survive for a time in the air in order to get to a nearby feeder tank and gorge themselves on the fish there. They have also been known to catch and kill some species of sharks. Archived Google video of an octopus catching a shark, from The Octopus Show by Mike deGruy
A fisherman's catch of octopus dries in the sun
* Class CEPHALOPODA
** Subclass Nautiloidea: nautilus
** Subclass Coleoidea
*** Superorder Decapodiformes: squid, cuttlefish
*** Superorder Octopodiformes
**** Order Vampyromorphida: Vampire Squid
**** Order Octopoda
***** Genus â Keuppia (incertae sedis)
***** Genus â Palaeoctopus (incertae sedis)
***** Genus â Paleocirroteuthis (incertae sedis)
***** Genus â Pohlsepia (incertae sedis)
***** Genus â Proteroctopus (incertae sedis)
***** Genus â Styletoctopus (incertae sedis)
***** Suborder Cirrina: finned deep-sea octopus
****** Family Opisthoteuthidae: umbrella octopus
****** Family Cirroteuthidae
****** Family Stauroteuthidae
***** Suborder Incirrina
****** Family Amphitretidae: telescope octopus
****** Family Bolitaenidae: gelatinous octopus
****** Family Octopodidae: benthic octopus
****** Family Vitreledonellidae: Glass Octopus
****** Superfamily Argonautoida
******* Family Alloposidae: Seven-arm Octopus
******* Family Argonautidae: argonauts
******* Family Ocythoidae: Tuberculate Pelagic Octopus
******* Family Tremoctopodidae: blanket octopus
* Octopus wrestling
* Legend of the Octopus
* Henry the Hexapus, a six-armed octopus
* CephBase: Octopoda
* TONMO.COM - The Octopus News Magazine Online
* Tree of Life website: information about cephalopods along with pictures and videos
* Discussion about the plural
* An octopus's shark encounter - footage of an octopus eating a shark ( also in Quicktime format)
* Camouflage in action
* Video showing an Octopus escaping through a 1 inch hole
* Bipedal Octopuses- Video, Information, Original paper
*
* Video of walking octopuses
|
Octopus | Do males use a specialized arm called a hectocotylus to insert spermatophores? | Yes | data/set1/a10 | Octopus
The octopus is a cephalopod of the order Octopoda. Octopuses have two eyes and four pairs of arms and like other cephalopods are bilaterally symmetric. An octopus has a hard beak, with its mouth at the center point of the arms. Most octopuses have no internal or external skeleton, allowing them to squeeze through tight places. Octopuses are highly intelligent, probably the most intelligent of all invertebrates.
The octopus inhabits many diverse regions of the ocean, especially coral reefs. For defense against predators, they hide, flee quickly, expel ink, or use color-changing camouflage. An octopus trails its eight arms behind it as it swims. All octopuses are venomous, but only the small blue-ringed octopuses are deadly to humans. Unimelb.edu.au, Tentacles of venom: new study reveals all octopuses are venomous, University of Melbourne, Media Release, Wednesday 15 April 2009
In the larger sense, there are around 300 recognized octopus species, which is over one-third of the total number of known cephalopod species. The term octopus may also be used to refer only to those creatures in the genus Octopus.
A Common Octopus (Octopus vulgaris)
Octopuses are characterized by their eight arms, usually bearing suction cups. The arms of octopuses are often distinguished from the pair of feeding tentacles found in squid and cuttlefish. Norman, M. 2000. Cephalopods: A World Guide. ConchBooks, Hackenheim. p. 15. "There is some confusion around the terms arms versus tentacles. The numerous limbs of nautiluses are called tentacles. The ring of eight limbs around the mouth in cuttlefish, squids and octopuses are called arms. Cuttlefish and squid also have a pair of specialised limbs attached between the bases of the third and fourth arm pairs [...]. These are known as feeding tentacles and are used to shoot out and grab prey." Both types of limbs are muscular hydrostats. Unlike most other cephalopods, the majority of octopuses those in the suborder most commonly known, Incirrina have almost entirely soft bodies with no internal skeleton. They have neither a protective outer shell like the nautilus, nor any vestige of an internal shell or bones, like cuttlefish or squid. A beak, similar in shape to a parrot's beak, is the only hard part of their body. This enables them to squeeze through very narrow slits between underwater rocks, which is very helpful when they are fleeing from morays or other predatory fish. The octopuses in the less familiar Cirrina suborder have two fins and an internal shell, generally reducing their ability to squeeze into small spaces.
An octopus moving between tide pools during low tide
Octopuses have a relatively short life expectancy, and some species live for as little as six months. Larger species, such as the North Pacific Giant Octopus, may live for up to five years under suitable circumstances. However, reproduction is a cause of death: males can only live for a few months after mating, and females die shortly after their eggs hatch. They neglect to eat during the (roughly) one month period spent taking care of their unhatched eggs, but they don't die of starvation. Endocrine secretions from the two optic glands are the cause of genetically-programmed death (and if these glands are surgically removed, the octopus may live many months beyond reproduction, until she finally starves).
Stauroteuthis syrtensis, a finned octopus of the suborder Cirrina
Octopuses have three hearts. Two pump blood through each of the two gills, while the third pumps blood through the body. Octopus blood contains the copper-rich protein hemocyanin for transporting oxygen. Although less efficient under normal conditions than the iron-rich hemoglobin of vertebrates, in cold conditions with low oxygen pressure, hemocyanin oxygen transportation is more efficient than hemoglobin oxygen transportation. The hemocyanin is dissolved in the plasma instead of being carried within red blood cells and gives the blood a blue color. Octopuses draw water into their mantle cavity where it passes through its gills. As mollusks, octopuses have gills that are finely divided and vascularized outgrowths of either the outer or the inner body surface.
Octopuses are highly intelligent, likely more so than any other order of invertebrates. The exact extent of their intelligence and learning capability is much debated among biologists, NFW.org?, Is the octopus really the invertebrate intellect of the sea, by Doug Stewart. In: National Wildlife. Feb/Mar 1997, vol.35 no.2.
Giant OctopusâMighty but Secretive Denizen of the Deep Slate.com, How Smart is the Octopus? but maze and problem-solving experiments have shown that they do have both short- and long-term memory. Their short lifespans limit the amount they can ultimately learn. There has been much speculation to the effect that almost all octopus behaviors are independently learned rather than instinct-based, although this remains largely unproven. They learn almost no behaviors from their parents, with whom young octopuses have very little contact.
An octopus opening a container with a screw cap
An octopus has a highly complex nervous system, only part of which is localized in its brain. Two-thirds of an octopus's neurons are found in the nerve cords of its arms, which have a remarkable amount of autonomy. Octopus arms show a wide variety of complex reflex actions arising on at least three different levels of the nervous system. Unlike vertebrates, the complex motor skills of octopuses in their higher brain are not organized using an internal somatotopic map of its body. Zullo L, Sumbre G, Agnisola C, Flash T, Hochner B. (2009). Nonsomatotopic organization of the higher motor centers in octopus.
Curr Biol. 19(19):1632-6. PMID 19765993 Some octopuses, such as the Mimic Octopus, will move their arms in ways that emulate the movements of other sea creatures.
In laboratory experiments, octopuses can be readily trained to distinguish between different shapes and patterns. They have been reported to practice observational learning, Octopus intelligence: jar opening although the validity of these findings is widely contested on a number of grounds. What is this octopus thinking?. By Garry Hamilton. Octopuses have also been observed in what some have described as play: repeatedly releasing bottles or toys into a circular current in their aquariums and then catching them. What behavior can we expect of octopuses?. By Dr. Jennifer Mather, Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Lethbridge and Roland C. Anderson, The Seattle Aquarium. Octopuses often break out of their aquariums and sometimes into others in search of food. They have even boarded fishing boats and opened holds to eat crabs.
In some countries, octopuses are on the list of experimental animals on which surgery may not be performed without anesthesia. In the UK, cephalopods such as octopuses are regarded as honorary vertebrates under the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 and other cruelty to animals legislation, extending to them protections not normally afforded to invertebrates. United Kingdom Animals (Scientific Procedures) act of 1986
The octopus is the only invertebrate which has been conclusively shown to use tools. At least four specimens of the Veined Octopus (Amphioctopus marginatus) have been witnessed retrieving discarded coconut shells, manipulating them, and then reassembling them to use as shelter. This discovery was documented in the journal Current Biology and has also been caught on video. /ref> /ref>
Greater Blue-ringed Octopus (Hapalochlaena lunulata)
An octopus's main (primary) defense is to hide, either not to be seen at all, or not to be detected as an octopus. Hanlon, R.T. & J.B. Messenger 1996. Cephalopod Behaviour. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Octopuses have several secondary defenses (defenses they use once they have been seen by a predator). The most common secondary defense is fast escape. Other defenses include the use of ink sacs, camouflage, and autotomising limbs.
Most octopuses can eject a thick blackish ink in a large cloud to aid in escaping from predators. The main colouring agent of the ink is melanin, which is the same chemical that gives humans their hair and skin colour. This ink cloud is thought to reduce the efficiency of olfactory organs, which would aid an octopus's evasion from predators that employ smell for hunting, such as sharks. Ink clouds of some species might serve as pseudomorphs, or decoys that the predator attacks instead. Caldwell, R. L. (2005). "An Observation of Inking Behavior Protecting Adult Octopus bocki from Predation by Green Turtle (Chelonia mydas) Hatchlings." Pacific Science 59(1): 69â72.
This small octopus species travels with shells it has collected for protection.
An octopus's camouflage is aided by certain specialized skin cells which can change the apparent color, opacity, and reflectiveness of the epidermis. Chromatophores contain yellow, orange, red, brown, or black pigments; most species have three of these colors, while some have two or four. Other color-changing cells are reflective iridophores, and leucophores (white). This color-changing ability can also be used to communicate with or warn other octopuses. The very venomous blue-ringed octopus becomes bright yellow with blue rings when it is provoked. Octopuses can use muscles in the skin to change the texture of their mantle in order to achieve a greater camouflage. In some species the mantle can take on the spiky appearance of seaweed, or the scraggly, bumpy texture of a rock, among other disguises. However in some species skin anatomy is limited to relatively patternless shades of one color, and limited skin texture. It is thought that octopuses that are day-active and/or live in complex habitats such as coral reefs have evolved more complex skin than their nocturnal and/or sand-dwelling relatives.
When under attack, some octopuses can perform arm autotomy, in a similar manner to the way skinks and other lizards detach their tails. The crawling arm serves as a distraction to would-be predators.
A few species, such as the Mimic Octopus, have a fourth defense mechanism. They can combine their highly flexible bodies with their color changing ability to accurately mimic other, more dangerous animals such as lionfish, sea snakes, and eels. Norman, M.D., J. Finn & T. Tregenza (2001). Proceedings of the Royal Society 268: 1755â1758. Norman, M.D. & F.G.Hochberg (2005). The "Mimic Octopus" (Thaumoctopus mimicus n. gen. et sp.), a new octopus from the tropical Indo-West Pacific (Cephalopoda: Octopodidae). Molluscan Research 25: 57â70. Abstract
/ref>-->
When octopuses reproduce, males use a specialized arm called a hectocotylus to insert spermatophores (packets of sperm) into the female's mantle cavity. The hectocotylus in benthic octopuses is usually the third right arm. Males die within a few months of mating. In some species, the female octopus can keep the sperm alive inside her for weeks until her eggs are mature. After they have been fertilized, the female lays about 200,000 eggs (this figure dramatically varies between families, genera, species and also individuals). The female hangs these eggs in strings from the ceiling of her lair, or individually attaches them to the substrate depending on the species. The female cares for the eggs, guarding them against predators, and gently blowing currents of water over them so that they get enough oxygen. The female does not hunt during the roughly one-month period spent taking care of the unhatched eggs and may ingest some of her own arms for sustenance. At around the time the eggs hatch, the mother leaves the lair and is too weak to defend herself from predators like cod, often succumbing to their attacks. The young larval octopuses spend a period of time drifting in clouds of plankton, where they feed on copepods, larval crabs and larval starfish until they are ready to descend to the ocean bottom, where the cycle repeats. This is a dangerous time for the larval octopuses; in the plankton cloud they are vulnerable to plankton eaters. In some deeper dwelling species, the young do not go through this period.
Eye of Octopus vulgaris
Octopuses have keen eyesight. Octopuses, like other cephalopods, can distinguish the polarization of light. Color vision appears to vary from species to species, being present in Octopus aegina but absent in Octopus vulgaris Kawamura, G., et al. (2001). . Nippon Suisan Gakkashi 67(1): 35â39. . Attached to the brain are two special organs, called statocysts, that allow the octopus to sense the orientation of its body relative to horizontal. An autonomic response keeps the octopus's eyes oriented so that the pupil slit is always horizontal.
Octopuses also have an excellent sense of touch. An octopus's suction cups are equipped with chemoreceptors so that the octopus can taste what it is touching. The arms contain tension sensors so that the octopus knows whether its arms are stretched out. However, the octopus has a very poor proprioceptive sense. The tension receptors are not sufficient for the octopus brain to determine the position of the octopus's body or arms. (It is not clear that the octopus brain would be capable of processing the large amount of information that this would require; the flexibility of an octopus's arms is much greater than that of the limbs of vertebrates, which devote large areas of cerebral cortex to the processing of proprioceptive inputs.) As a result, the octopus does not possess stereognosis; that is, it does not form a mental image of the overall shape of the object it is handling. It can detect local texture variations, but cannot integrate the information into a larger picture. Wells. Martin John. Octopus: physiology and behaviour of an advanced invertebrate. London : Chapman and Hall ; New York : distributed in the U.S.A. by Halsted Press, 1978.
The neurological autonomy of the arms means that the octopus has great difficulty learning about the detailed effects of its motions. The brain may issue a high-level command to the arms, but the nerve cords in the arms execute the details. There is no neurological path for the brain to receive feedback about just how its command was executed by the arms; the only way it knows just what motions were made is by observing the arms visually.
Octopuses swim headfirst, with arms trailing behind
Octopuses move about by crawling or swimming. Their main means of slow travel is crawling, with some swimming. Jet propulsion is their fastest means of locomotion, followed by swimming and walking. Locomotion by Abdopus aculeatus, C.L. Huffard 2006
They crawl by walking on their arms, usually on many at once, on both solid and soft surfaces, while supported in water. In 2005 it was reported that some octopuses (Adopus aculeatus and Amphioctopus marginatus under current taxonomy) can walk on two arms, while at the same time resembling plant matter. Science, vol. 307, p. 1927 This form of locomotion allows these octopuses to move quickly away from a potential predator while possibly not triggering that predator's search image for octopus (food). Octopuses lack bones and are extremely vulnerable to predators.
Octopuses swim by expelling a jet of water from a contractile mantle, and aiming it via a muscular siphon.
An adult North Pacific Giant Octopus, Enteroctopus dofleini
The North Pacific Giant Octopus, Enteroctopus dofleini, is often cited as the largest octopus species. Adults usually weigh around 15 kg (33 lb), with an arm span of up to 4.3 m (14 ft). Smithsonian National Zoological Park: Giant Pacific Octopus The largest specimen of this species to be scientifically documented was an animal with a live mass of 71 kg (156.5 lb). Cosgrove, J.A. 1987. Aspects of the Natural History of Octopus dofleini, the Giant Pacific Octopus. M.Sc. Thesis. Department of Biology, University of Victoria (Canada), 101 pp. The alternative contender is the Seven-arm Octopus, Haliphron atlanticus, based on a 61 kg (134 lb) carcass estimated to have a live mass of 75 kg (165 lb). O'Shea, S. 2004. The giant octopus Haliphron atlanticus (Mollusca : Octopoda) in New Zealand waters. New Zealand Journal of Zoology 31(1): 7-13. O'Shea, S. 2002. Haliphron atlanticus â a giant gelatinous octopus. Biodiversity Update 5: 1. However, there are a number of questionable size records that would suggest E. dofleini is the largest of all octopus species by a considerable margin; Norman, M. 2000. Cephalopods: A World Guide. ConchBooks, Hackenheim. p. 214. one such record is of a specimen weighing 272 kg (600 lb) and having an arm span of 9 m (30 ft). High, W.L. 1976. The giant Pacific octopus. U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service, Marine Fisheries Review 38(9): 17-22.
The term octopus, , is from Greek (oktapous), "eight-footed", Oktapous, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, at Perseus Scientific Latin from Greek (also ) "eight-footed" > or [combination form of "eight"] and "foot". Cf. Modern Greek with plural forms: octopuses , octopi , or octopodes . Currently, octopuses is the most common form in the US as well as the UK; octopodes is rare, and octopi is often objectionable. Peters, Pam (2004). The Cambridge Guide to English Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-62181-X, p. 388.
The Oxford English Dictionary (2004 update OED.com (subscription required). Retrieved October 22, 2007. ) lists octopuses, octopi and octopodes (in that order); it labels octopodes "rare", and notes that octopi derives from the mistaken assumption that is a second declension Latin noun, which it is not. Rather, it is a Latinization of Greek third-declension masculine ( , 'eight-foot'), plural ( ). If the word were native to Latin, it would be , plural , after the pattern of ('foot'), plural , analogous to "Centipede" . The actual Latin word for octopus and other similar species is , from Greek ( , 'many-foot'); usually the inaccurate plural is used instead of .
In modern Greek, the word is ( ), plural ( ), from Medieval ( ), equivalent to Classical ( ), variant of .
Chambers 21st Century Dictionary Chambersharrap.co.uk, Retrieved October 19, 2007. and the Compact Oxford Dictionary Askoxford.com, Retrieved October 19, 2007. list only octopuses, although the latter notes that octopodes is "still occasionally used"; the British National Corpus has 29 instances of octopuses, 11 of octopi and 4 of octopodes. Merriam-Webster 11th Collegiate Dictionary lists octopuses and octopi, in that order; Webster's New World College Dictionary lists octopuses, octopi and octopodes (in that order).
Fowler's Modern English Usage states that "the only acceptable plural in English is octopuses," and that octopi is misconceived and octopodes pedantic.
The term octopod (plural octopods or octopodes) is taken from the taxonomic order Octopoda but has no classical equivalent. The collective form octopus is usually reserved for animals consumed for food.
Moche Octopus. 200 A.D. Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru
Ancient peoples of the Mediterranean were aware of the octopus, as evidenced by certain artworks and designs of prehistory. For example, a stone carving found in the archaeological recovery from Bronze Age Minoan Crete at Knossos has a depiction of a fisherman carrying an octopus. C. Michael Hogan. 2007 Knossos fieldnotes, The Modern Antiquarian
The Moche people of ancient Peru worshipped the sea and its animals; moreover, octopuses were often depicted in their art. Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 199 7.
The Hawaiian creation myth relates that the present cosmos is only the last of a series, having arisen in stages from the wreck of the previous universe. In this account, the octopus is the lone survivor of the previous, alien universe.
The octopus has a significant role in Victor Hugo's book Travailleurs de la mer (Toilers of the Sea).
alt=Photo of dozens of octopus in metal bins
Humans eat octopus in many cultures. The arms and sometimes other body parts are prepared in various ways, often varying by species.
Octopus is a common ingredient in Japanese cuisine, including sushi, takoyaki, and Akashiyaki. Some small species are sometimes eaten alive as a novelty and health food. Similarly, a live octopus may be sliced up and the legs eaten while still squirming, which continues for some minutes.
alt=Photo of captured octopus and polespear
Octopus is eaten regularly in Hawaii, since many popular dishes are Asian in origin. Locally known by their Hawaiian or Japanese names, ("he'e" and "tako" respectively) octopus is also a popular fish bait.
Octopus is a common food in Mediterranean cuisine and Portuguese cuisine. In Galicia, polbo á feira (market fair style octopus) is a local delicacy. Restaurants which specialize or serve this dish are known as pulperÃas. On the Tunisian island of Djerba, local people catch octopuses by taking advantage of the animals' habit of hiding in safe places during the night. In the evening they put grey ceramic pots on the sea bed. The morning of the following day they check them for octopuses that sheltered there.
According to the USDA Nutrient Database (2007), cooked octopus contains approximately 139 calories per three ounce portion, and is a source of vitamin B3, B12, potassium, phosphorus, and selenium. Octopus Calories And Nutrition
Care must be taken to boil the octopus properly, to rid it of slime, smell, and residual ink.
Though octopuses can be difficult to keep in captivity, some people keep them as pets. Octopuses often escape even from supposedly secure tanks, due to their problem solving skills, mobility and lack of rigid structure.
The variation in size and life span among octopus species makes it difficult to know how long a new specimen can naturally be expected to live. That is, a small octopus may be just born or may be an adult, depending on its species. By selecting a well-known species, such as the California Two-spot Octopus, one can choose a small octopus (around the size of a tennis ball) and be confident that it is young with a full life ahead of it.
Octopuses are also quite strong for their size. Octopuses kept as pets have been known to open the covers of their aquariums and survive for a time in the air in order to get to a nearby feeder tank and gorge themselves on the fish there. They have also been known to catch and kill some species of sharks. Archived Google video of an octopus catching a shark, from The Octopus Show by Mike deGruy
A fisherman's catch of octopus dries in the sun
* Class CEPHALOPODA
** Subclass Nautiloidea: nautilus
** Subclass Coleoidea
*** Superorder Decapodiformes: squid, cuttlefish
*** Superorder Octopodiformes
**** Order Vampyromorphida: Vampire Squid
**** Order Octopoda
***** Genus â Keuppia (incertae sedis)
***** Genus â Palaeoctopus (incertae sedis)
***** Genus â Paleocirroteuthis (incertae sedis)
***** Genus â Pohlsepia (incertae sedis)
***** Genus â Proteroctopus (incertae sedis)
***** Genus â Styletoctopus (incertae sedis)
***** Suborder Cirrina: finned deep-sea octopus
****** Family Opisthoteuthidae: umbrella octopus
****** Family Cirroteuthidae
****** Family Stauroteuthidae
***** Suborder Incirrina
****** Family Amphitretidae: telescope octopus
****** Family Bolitaenidae: gelatinous octopus
****** Family Octopodidae: benthic octopus
****** Family Vitreledonellidae: Glass Octopus
****** Superfamily Argonautoida
******* Family Alloposidae: Seven-arm Octopus
******* Family Argonautidae: argonauts
******* Family Ocythoidae: Tuberculate Pelagic Octopus
******* Family Tremoctopodidae: blanket octopus
* Octopus wrestling
* Legend of the Octopus
* Henry the Hexapus, a six-armed octopus
* CephBase: Octopoda
* TONMO.COM - The Octopus News Magazine Online
* Tree of Life website: information about cephalopods along with pictures and videos
* Discussion about the plural
* An octopus's shark encounter - footage of an octopus eating a shark ( also in Quicktime format)
* Camouflage in action
* Video showing an Octopus escaping through a 1 inch hole
* Bipedal Octopuses- Video, Information, Original paper
*
* Video of walking octopuses
|
Octopus | Do the octopuses in the less familiar Cirrina suborder have two fins and an internal shell? | Yes, the octopuses in the less familiar Cirrina suborder have two fins and an internal shell. | data/set1/a10 | Octopus
The octopus is a cephalopod of the order Octopoda. Octopuses have two eyes and four pairs of arms and like other cephalopods are bilaterally symmetric. An octopus has a hard beak, with its mouth at the center point of the arms. Most octopuses have no internal or external skeleton, allowing them to squeeze through tight places. Octopuses are highly intelligent, probably the most intelligent of all invertebrates.
The octopus inhabits many diverse regions of the ocean, especially coral reefs. For defense against predators, they hide, flee quickly, expel ink, or use color-changing camouflage. An octopus trails its eight arms behind it as it swims. All octopuses are venomous, but only the small blue-ringed octopuses are deadly to humans. Unimelb.edu.au, Tentacles of venom: new study reveals all octopuses are venomous, University of Melbourne, Media Release, Wednesday 15 April 2009
In the larger sense, there are around 300 recognized octopus species, which is over one-third of the total number of known cephalopod species. The term octopus may also be used to refer only to those creatures in the genus Octopus.
A Common Octopus (Octopus vulgaris)
Octopuses are characterized by their eight arms, usually bearing suction cups. The arms of octopuses are often distinguished from the pair of feeding tentacles found in squid and cuttlefish. Norman, M. 2000. Cephalopods: A World Guide. ConchBooks, Hackenheim. p. 15. "There is some confusion around the terms arms versus tentacles. The numerous limbs of nautiluses are called tentacles. The ring of eight limbs around the mouth in cuttlefish, squids and octopuses are called arms. Cuttlefish and squid also have a pair of specialised limbs attached between the bases of the third and fourth arm pairs [...]. These are known as feeding tentacles and are used to shoot out and grab prey." Both types of limbs are muscular hydrostats. Unlike most other cephalopods, the majority of octopuses those in the suborder most commonly known, Incirrina have almost entirely soft bodies with no internal skeleton. They have neither a protective outer shell like the nautilus, nor any vestige of an internal shell or bones, like cuttlefish or squid. A beak, similar in shape to a parrot's beak, is the only hard part of their body. This enables them to squeeze through very narrow slits between underwater rocks, which is very helpful when they are fleeing from morays or other predatory fish. The octopuses in the less familiar Cirrina suborder have two fins and an internal shell, generally reducing their ability to squeeze into small spaces.
An octopus moving between tide pools during low tide
Octopuses have a relatively short life expectancy, and some species live for as little as six months. Larger species, such as the North Pacific Giant Octopus, may live for up to five years under suitable circumstances. However, reproduction is a cause of death: males can only live for a few months after mating, and females die shortly after their eggs hatch. They neglect to eat during the (roughly) one month period spent taking care of their unhatched eggs, but they don't die of starvation. Endocrine secretions from the two optic glands are the cause of genetically-programmed death (and if these glands are surgically removed, the octopus may live many months beyond reproduction, until she finally starves).
Stauroteuthis syrtensis, a finned octopus of the suborder Cirrina
Octopuses have three hearts. Two pump blood through each of the two gills, while the third pumps blood through the body. Octopus blood contains the copper-rich protein hemocyanin for transporting oxygen. Although less efficient under normal conditions than the iron-rich hemoglobin of vertebrates, in cold conditions with low oxygen pressure, hemocyanin oxygen transportation is more efficient than hemoglobin oxygen transportation. The hemocyanin is dissolved in the plasma instead of being carried within red blood cells and gives the blood a blue color. Octopuses draw water into their mantle cavity where it passes through its gills. As mollusks, octopuses have gills that are finely divided and vascularized outgrowths of either the outer or the inner body surface.
Octopuses are highly intelligent, likely more so than any other order of invertebrates. The exact extent of their intelligence and learning capability is much debated among biologists, NFW.org?, Is the octopus really the invertebrate intellect of the sea, by Doug Stewart. In: National Wildlife. Feb/Mar 1997, vol.35 no.2.
Giant OctopusâMighty but Secretive Denizen of the Deep Slate.com, How Smart is the Octopus? but maze and problem-solving experiments have shown that they do have both short- and long-term memory. Their short lifespans limit the amount they can ultimately learn. There has been much speculation to the effect that almost all octopus behaviors are independently learned rather than instinct-based, although this remains largely unproven. They learn almost no behaviors from their parents, with whom young octopuses have very little contact.
An octopus opening a container with a screw cap
An octopus has a highly complex nervous system, only part of which is localized in its brain. Two-thirds of an octopus's neurons are found in the nerve cords of its arms, which have a remarkable amount of autonomy. Octopus arms show a wide variety of complex reflex actions arising on at least three different levels of the nervous system. Unlike vertebrates, the complex motor skills of octopuses in their higher brain are not organized using an internal somatotopic map of its body. Zullo L, Sumbre G, Agnisola C, Flash T, Hochner B. (2009). Nonsomatotopic organization of the higher motor centers in octopus.
Curr Biol. 19(19):1632-6. PMID 19765993 Some octopuses, such as the Mimic Octopus, will move their arms in ways that emulate the movements of other sea creatures.
In laboratory experiments, octopuses can be readily trained to distinguish between different shapes and patterns. They have been reported to practice observational learning, Octopus intelligence: jar opening although the validity of these findings is widely contested on a number of grounds. What is this octopus thinking?. By Garry Hamilton. Octopuses have also been observed in what some have described as play: repeatedly releasing bottles or toys into a circular current in their aquariums and then catching them. What behavior can we expect of octopuses?. By Dr. Jennifer Mather, Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Lethbridge and Roland C. Anderson, The Seattle Aquarium. Octopuses often break out of their aquariums and sometimes into others in search of food. They have even boarded fishing boats and opened holds to eat crabs.
In some countries, octopuses are on the list of experimental animals on which surgery may not be performed without anesthesia. In the UK, cephalopods such as octopuses are regarded as honorary vertebrates under the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 and other cruelty to animals legislation, extending to them protections not normally afforded to invertebrates. United Kingdom Animals (Scientific Procedures) act of 1986
The octopus is the only invertebrate which has been conclusively shown to use tools. At least four specimens of the Veined Octopus (Amphioctopus marginatus) have been witnessed retrieving discarded coconut shells, manipulating them, and then reassembling them to use as shelter. This discovery was documented in the journal Current Biology and has also been caught on video. /ref> /ref>
Greater Blue-ringed Octopus (Hapalochlaena lunulata)
An octopus's main (primary) defense is to hide, either not to be seen at all, or not to be detected as an octopus. Hanlon, R.T. & J.B. Messenger 1996. Cephalopod Behaviour. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Octopuses have several secondary defenses (defenses they use once they have been seen by a predator). The most common secondary defense is fast escape. Other defenses include the use of ink sacs, camouflage, and autotomising limbs.
Most octopuses can eject a thick blackish ink in a large cloud to aid in escaping from predators. The main colouring agent of the ink is melanin, which is the same chemical that gives humans their hair and skin colour. This ink cloud is thought to reduce the efficiency of olfactory organs, which would aid an octopus's evasion from predators that employ smell for hunting, such as sharks. Ink clouds of some species might serve as pseudomorphs, or decoys that the predator attacks instead. Caldwell, R. L. (2005). "An Observation of Inking Behavior Protecting Adult Octopus bocki from Predation by Green Turtle (Chelonia mydas) Hatchlings." Pacific Science 59(1): 69â72.
This small octopus species travels with shells it has collected for protection.
An octopus's camouflage is aided by certain specialized skin cells which can change the apparent color, opacity, and reflectiveness of the epidermis. Chromatophores contain yellow, orange, red, brown, or black pigments; most species have three of these colors, while some have two or four. Other color-changing cells are reflective iridophores, and leucophores (white). This color-changing ability can also be used to communicate with or warn other octopuses. The very venomous blue-ringed octopus becomes bright yellow with blue rings when it is provoked. Octopuses can use muscles in the skin to change the texture of their mantle in order to achieve a greater camouflage. In some species the mantle can take on the spiky appearance of seaweed, or the scraggly, bumpy texture of a rock, among other disguises. However in some species skin anatomy is limited to relatively patternless shades of one color, and limited skin texture. It is thought that octopuses that are day-active and/or live in complex habitats such as coral reefs have evolved more complex skin than their nocturnal and/or sand-dwelling relatives.
When under attack, some octopuses can perform arm autotomy, in a similar manner to the way skinks and other lizards detach their tails. The crawling arm serves as a distraction to would-be predators.
A few species, such as the Mimic Octopus, have a fourth defense mechanism. They can combine their highly flexible bodies with their color changing ability to accurately mimic other, more dangerous animals such as lionfish, sea snakes, and eels. Norman, M.D., J. Finn & T. Tregenza (2001). Proceedings of the Royal Society 268: 1755â1758. Norman, M.D. & F.G.Hochberg (2005). The "Mimic Octopus" (Thaumoctopus mimicus n. gen. et sp.), a new octopus from the tropical Indo-West Pacific (Cephalopoda: Octopodidae). Molluscan Research 25: 57â70. Abstract
/ref>-->
When octopuses reproduce, males use a specialized arm called a hectocotylus to insert spermatophores (packets of sperm) into the female's mantle cavity. The hectocotylus in benthic octopuses is usually the third right arm. Males die within a few months of mating. In some species, the female octopus can keep the sperm alive inside her for weeks until her eggs are mature. After they have been fertilized, the female lays about 200,000 eggs (this figure dramatically varies between families, genera, species and also individuals). The female hangs these eggs in strings from the ceiling of her lair, or individually attaches them to the substrate depending on the species. The female cares for the eggs, guarding them against predators, and gently blowing currents of water over them so that they get enough oxygen. The female does not hunt during the roughly one-month period spent taking care of the unhatched eggs and may ingest some of her own arms for sustenance. At around the time the eggs hatch, the mother leaves the lair and is too weak to defend herself from predators like cod, often succumbing to their attacks. The young larval octopuses spend a period of time drifting in clouds of plankton, where they feed on copepods, larval crabs and larval starfish until they are ready to descend to the ocean bottom, where the cycle repeats. This is a dangerous time for the larval octopuses; in the plankton cloud they are vulnerable to plankton eaters. In some deeper dwelling species, the young do not go through this period.
Eye of Octopus vulgaris
Octopuses have keen eyesight. Octopuses, like other cephalopods, can distinguish the polarization of light. Color vision appears to vary from species to species, being present in Octopus aegina but absent in Octopus vulgaris Kawamura, G., et al. (2001). . Nippon Suisan Gakkashi 67(1): 35â39. . Attached to the brain are two special organs, called statocysts, that allow the octopus to sense the orientation of its body relative to horizontal. An autonomic response keeps the octopus's eyes oriented so that the pupil slit is always horizontal.
Octopuses also have an excellent sense of touch. An octopus's suction cups are equipped with chemoreceptors so that the octopus can taste what it is touching. The arms contain tension sensors so that the octopus knows whether its arms are stretched out. However, the octopus has a very poor proprioceptive sense. The tension receptors are not sufficient for the octopus brain to determine the position of the octopus's body or arms. (It is not clear that the octopus brain would be capable of processing the large amount of information that this would require; the flexibility of an octopus's arms is much greater than that of the limbs of vertebrates, which devote large areas of cerebral cortex to the processing of proprioceptive inputs.) As a result, the octopus does not possess stereognosis; that is, it does not form a mental image of the overall shape of the object it is handling. It can detect local texture variations, but cannot integrate the information into a larger picture. Wells. Martin John. Octopus: physiology and behaviour of an advanced invertebrate. London : Chapman and Hall ; New York : distributed in the U.S.A. by Halsted Press, 1978.
The neurological autonomy of the arms means that the octopus has great difficulty learning about the detailed effects of its motions. The brain may issue a high-level command to the arms, but the nerve cords in the arms execute the details. There is no neurological path for the brain to receive feedback about just how its command was executed by the arms; the only way it knows just what motions were made is by observing the arms visually.
Octopuses swim headfirst, with arms trailing behind
Octopuses move about by crawling or swimming. Their main means of slow travel is crawling, with some swimming. Jet propulsion is their fastest means of locomotion, followed by swimming and walking. Locomotion by Abdopus aculeatus, C.L. Huffard 2006
They crawl by walking on their arms, usually on many at once, on both solid and soft surfaces, while supported in water. In 2005 it was reported that some octopuses (Adopus aculeatus and Amphioctopus marginatus under current taxonomy) can walk on two arms, while at the same time resembling plant matter. Science, vol. 307, p. 1927 This form of locomotion allows these octopuses to move quickly away from a potential predator while possibly not triggering that predator's search image for octopus (food). Octopuses lack bones and are extremely vulnerable to predators.
Octopuses swim by expelling a jet of water from a contractile mantle, and aiming it via a muscular siphon.
An adult North Pacific Giant Octopus, Enteroctopus dofleini
The North Pacific Giant Octopus, Enteroctopus dofleini, is often cited as the largest octopus species. Adults usually weigh around 15 kg (33 lb), with an arm span of up to 4.3 m (14 ft). Smithsonian National Zoological Park: Giant Pacific Octopus The largest specimen of this species to be scientifically documented was an animal with a live mass of 71 kg (156.5 lb). Cosgrove, J.A. 1987. Aspects of the Natural History of Octopus dofleini, the Giant Pacific Octopus. M.Sc. Thesis. Department of Biology, University of Victoria (Canada), 101 pp. The alternative contender is the Seven-arm Octopus, Haliphron atlanticus, based on a 61 kg (134 lb) carcass estimated to have a live mass of 75 kg (165 lb). O'Shea, S. 2004. The giant octopus Haliphron atlanticus (Mollusca : Octopoda) in New Zealand waters. New Zealand Journal of Zoology 31(1): 7-13. O'Shea, S. 2002. Haliphron atlanticus â a giant gelatinous octopus. Biodiversity Update 5: 1. However, there are a number of questionable size records that would suggest E. dofleini is the largest of all octopus species by a considerable margin; Norman, M. 2000. Cephalopods: A World Guide. ConchBooks, Hackenheim. p. 214. one such record is of a specimen weighing 272 kg (600 lb) and having an arm span of 9 m (30 ft). High, W.L. 1976. The giant Pacific octopus. U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service, Marine Fisheries Review 38(9): 17-22.
The term octopus, , is from Greek (oktapous), "eight-footed", Oktapous, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, at Perseus Scientific Latin from Greek (also ) "eight-footed" > or [combination form of "eight"] and "foot". Cf. Modern Greek with plural forms: octopuses , octopi , or octopodes . Currently, octopuses is the most common form in the US as well as the UK; octopodes is rare, and octopi is often objectionable. Peters, Pam (2004). The Cambridge Guide to English Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-62181-X, p. 388.
The Oxford English Dictionary (2004 update OED.com (subscription required). Retrieved October 22, 2007. ) lists octopuses, octopi and octopodes (in that order); it labels octopodes "rare", and notes that octopi derives from the mistaken assumption that is a second declension Latin noun, which it is not. Rather, it is a Latinization of Greek third-declension masculine ( , 'eight-foot'), plural ( ). If the word were native to Latin, it would be , plural , after the pattern of ('foot'), plural , analogous to "Centipede" . The actual Latin word for octopus and other similar species is , from Greek ( , 'many-foot'); usually the inaccurate plural is used instead of .
In modern Greek, the word is ( ), plural ( ), from Medieval ( ), equivalent to Classical ( ), variant of .
Chambers 21st Century Dictionary Chambersharrap.co.uk, Retrieved October 19, 2007. and the Compact Oxford Dictionary Askoxford.com, Retrieved October 19, 2007. list only octopuses, although the latter notes that octopodes is "still occasionally used"; the British National Corpus has 29 instances of octopuses, 11 of octopi and 4 of octopodes. Merriam-Webster 11th Collegiate Dictionary lists octopuses and octopi, in that order; Webster's New World College Dictionary lists octopuses, octopi and octopodes (in that order).
Fowler's Modern English Usage states that "the only acceptable plural in English is octopuses," and that octopi is misconceived and octopodes pedantic.
The term octopod (plural octopods or octopodes) is taken from the taxonomic order Octopoda but has no classical equivalent. The collective form octopus is usually reserved for animals consumed for food.
Moche Octopus. 200 A.D. Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru
Ancient peoples of the Mediterranean were aware of the octopus, as evidenced by certain artworks and designs of prehistory. For example, a stone carving found in the archaeological recovery from Bronze Age Minoan Crete at Knossos has a depiction of a fisherman carrying an octopus. C. Michael Hogan. 2007 Knossos fieldnotes, The Modern Antiquarian
The Moche people of ancient Peru worshipped the sea and its animals; moreover, octopuses were often depicted in their art. Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 199 7.
The Hawaiian creation myth relates that the present cosmos is only the last of a series, having arisen in stages from the wreck of the previous universe. In this account, the octopus is the lone survivor of the previous, alien universe.
The octopus has a significant role in Victor Hugo's book Travailleurs de la mer (Toilers of the Sea).
alt=Photo of dozens of octopus in metal bins
Humans eat octopus in many cultures. The arms and sometimes other body parts are prepared in various ways, often varying by species.
Octopus is a common ingredient in Japanese cuisine, including sushi, takoyaki, and Akashiyaki. Some small species are sometimes eaten alive as a novelty and health food. Similarly, a live octopus may be sliced up and the legs eaten while still squirming, which continues for some minutes.
alt=Photo of captured octopus and polespear
Octopus is eaten regularly in Hawaii, since many popular dishes are Asian in origin. Locally known by their Hawaiian or Japanese names, ("he'e" and "tako" respectively) octopus is also a popular fish bait.
Octopus is a common food in Mediterranean cuisine and Portuguese cuisine. In Galicia, polbo á feira (market fair style octopus) is a local delicacy. Restaurants which specialize or serve this dish are known as pulperÃas. On the Tunisian island of Djerba, local people catch octopuses by taking advantage of the animals' habit of hiding in safe places during the night. In the evening they put grey ceramic pots on the sea bed. The morning of the following day they check them for octopuses that sheltered there.
According to the USDA Nutrient Database (2007), cooked octopus contains approximately 139 calories per three ounce portion, and is a source of vitamin B3, B12, potassium, phosphorus, and selenium. Octopus Calories And Nutrition
Care must be taken to boil the octopus properly, to rid it of slime, smell, and residual ink.
Though octopuses can be difficult to keep in captivity, some people keep them as pets. Octopuses often escape even from supposedly secure tanks, due to their problem solving skills, mobility and lack of rigid structure.
The variation in size and life span among octopus species makes it difficult to know how long a new specimen can naturally be expected to live. That is, a small octopus may be just born or may be an adult, depending on its species. By selecting a well-known species, such as the California Two-spot Octopus, one can choose a small octopus (around the size of a tennis ball) and be confident that it is young with a full life ahead of it.
Octopuses are also quite strong for their size. Octopuses kept as pets have been known to open the covers of their aquariums and survive for a time in the air in order to get to a nearby feeder tank and gorge themselves on the fish there. They have also been known to catch and kill some species of sharks. Archived Google video of an octopus catching a shark, from The Octopus Show by Mike deGruy
A fisherman's catch of octopus dries in the sun
* Class CEPHALOPODA
** Subclass Nautiloidea: nautilus
** Subclass Coleoidea
*** Superorder Decapodiformes: squid, cuttlefish
*** Superorder Octopodiformes
**** Order Vampyromorphida: Vampire Squid
**** Order Octopoda
***** Genus â Keuppia (incertae sedis)
***** Genus â Palaeoctopus (incertae sedis)
***** Genus â Paleocirroteuthis (incertae sedis)
***** Genus â Pohlsepia (incertae sedis)
***** Genus â Proteroctopus (incertae sedis)
***** Genus â Styletoctopus (incertae sedis)
***** Suborder Cirrina: finned deep-sea octopus
****** Family Opisthoteuthidae: umbrella octopus
****** Family Cirroteuthidae
****** Family Stauroteuthidae
***** Suborder Incirrina
****** Family Amphitretidae: telescope octopus
****** Family Bolitaenidae: gelatinous octopus
****** Family Octopodidae: benthic octopus
****** Family Vitreledonellidae: Glass Octopus
****** Superfamily Argonautoida
******* Family Alloposidae: Seven-arm Octopus
******* Family Argonautidae: argonauts
******* Family Ocythoidae: Tuberculate Pelagic Octopus
******* Family Tremoctopodidae: blanket octopus
* Octopus wrestling
* Legend of the Octopus
* Henry the Hexapus, a six-armed octopus
* CephBase: Octopoda
* TONMO.COM - The Octopus News Magazine Online
* Tree of Life website: information about cephalopods along with pictures and videos
* Discussion about the plural
* An octopus's shark encounter - footage of an octopus eating a shark ( also in Quicktime format)
* Camouflage in action
* Video showing an Octopus escaping through a 1 inch hole
* Bipedal Octopuses- Video, Information, Original paper
*
* Video of walking octopuses
|
Octopus | Do octopuses have two eyes and four pairs of arms? | Yes, octopuses have two eyes and four pairs of arms. | data/set1/a10 | Octopus
The octopus is a cephalopod of the order Octopoda. Octopuses have two eyes and four pairs of arms and like other cephalopods are bilaterally symmetric. An octopus has a hard beak, with its mouth at the center point of the arms. Most octopuses have no internal or external skeleton, allowing them to squeeze through tight places. Octopuses are highly intelligent, probably the most intelligent of all invertebrates.
The octopus inhabits many diverse regions of the ocean, especially coral reefs. For defense against predators, they hide, flee quickly, expel ink, or use color-changing camouflage. An octopus trails its eight arms behind it as it swims. All octopuses are venomous, but only the small blue-ringed octopuses are deadly to humans. Unimelb.edu.au, Tentacles of venom: new study reveals all octopuses are venomous, University of Melbourne, Media Release, Wednesday 15 April 2009
In the larger sense, there are around 300 recognized octopus species, which is over one-third of the total number of known cephalopod species. The term octopus may also be used to refer only to those creatures in the genus Octopus.
A Common Octopus (Octopus vulgaris)
Octopuses are characterized by their eight arms, usually bearing suction cups. The arms of octopuses are often distinguished from the pair of feeding tentacles found in squid and cuttlefish. Norman, M. 2000. Cephalopods: A World Guide. ConchBooks, Hackenheim. p. 15. "There is some confusion around the terms arms versus tentacles. The numerous limbs of nautiluses are called tentacles. The ring of eight limbs around the mouth in cuttlefish, squids and octopuses are called arms. Cuttlefish and squid also have a pair of specialised limbs attached between the bases of the third and fourth arm pairs [...]. These are known as feeding tentacles and are used to shoot out and grab prey." Both types of limbs are muscular hydrostats. Unlike most other cephalopods, the majority of octopuses those in the suborder most commonly known, Incirrina have almost entirely soft bodies with no internal skeleton. They have neither a protective outer shell like the nautilus, nor any vestige of an internal shell or bones, like cuttlefish or squid. A beak, similar in shape to a parrot's beak, is the only hard part of their body. This enables them to squeeze through very narrow slits between underwater rocks, which is very helpful when they are fleeing from morays or other predatory fish. The octopuses in the less familiar Cirrina suborder have two fins and an internal shell, generally reducing their ability to squeeze into small spaces.
An octopus moving between tide pools during low tide
Octopuses have a relatively short life expectancy, and some species live for as little as six months. Larger species, such as the North Pacific Giant Octopus, may live for up to five years under suitable circumstances. However, reproduction is a cause of death: males can only live for a few months after mating, and females die shortly after their eggs hatch. They neglect to eat during the (roughly) one month period spent taking care of their unhatched eggs, but they don't die of starvation. Endocrine secretions from the two optic glands are the cause of genetically-programmed death (and if these glands are surgically removed, the octopus may live many months beyond reproduction, until she finally starves).
Stauroteuthis syrtensis, a finned octopus of the suborder Cirrina
Octopuses have three hearts. Two pump blood through each of the two gills, while the third pumps blood through the body. Octopus blood contains the copper-rich protein hemocyanin for transporting oxygen. Although less efficient under normal conditions than the iron-rich hemoglobin of vertebrates, in cold conditions with low oxygen pressure, hemocyanin oxygen transportation is more efficient than hemoglobin oxygen transportation. The hemocyanin is dissolved in the plasma instead of being carried within red blood cells and gives the blood a blue color. Octopuses draw water into their mantle cavity where it passes through its gills. As mollusks, octopuses have gills that are finely divided and vascularized outgrowths of either the outer or the inner body surface.
Octopuses are highly intelligent, likely more so than any other order of invertebrates. The exact extent of their intelligence and learning capability is much debated among biologists, NFW.org?, Is the octopus really the invertebrate intellect of the sea, by Doug Stewart. In: National Wildlife. Feb/Mar 1997, vol.35 no.2.
Giant OctopusâMighty but Secretive Denizen of the Deep Slate.com, How Smart is the Octopus? but maze and problem-solving experiments have shown that they do have both short- and long-term memory. Their short lifespans limit the amount they can ultimately learn. There has been much speculation to the effect that almost all octopus behaviors are independently learned rather than instinct-based, although this remains largely unproven. They learn almost no behaviors from their parents, with whom young octopuses have very little contact.
An octopus opening a container with a screw cap
An octopus has a highly complex nervous system, only part of which is localized in its brain. Two-thirds of an octopus's neurons are found in the nerve cords of its arms, which have a remarkable amount of autonomy. Octopus arms show a wide variety of complex reflex actions arising on at least three different levels of the nervous system. Unlike vertebrates, the complex motor skills of octopuses in their higher brain are not organized using an internal somatotopic map of its body. Zullo L, Sumbre G, Agnisola C, Flash T, Hochner B. (2009). Nonsomatotopic organization of the higher motor centers in octopus.
Curr Biol. 19(19):1632-6. PMID 19765993 Some octopuses, such as the Mimic Octopus, will move their arms in ways that emulate the movements of other sea creatures.
In laboratory experiments, octopuses can be readily trained to distinguish between different shapes and patterns. They have been reported to practice observational learning, Octopus intelligence: jar opening although the validity of these findings is widely contested on a number of grounds. What is this octopus thinking?. By Garry Hamilton. Octopuses have also been observed in what some have described as play: repeatedly releasing bottles or toys into a circular current in their aquariums and then catching them. What behavior can we expect of octopuses?. By Dr. Jennifer Mather, Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Lethbridge and Roland C. Anderson, The Seattle Aquarium. Octopuses often break out of their aquariums and sometimes into others in search of food. They have even boarded fishing boats and opened holds to eat crabs.
In some countries, octopuses are on the list of experimental animals on which surgery may not be performed without anesthesia. In the UK, cephalopods such as octopuses are regarded as honorary vertebrates under the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 and other cruelty to animals legislation, extending to them protections not normally afforded to invertebrates. United Kingdom Animals (Scientific Procedures) act of 1986
The octopus is the only invertebrate which has been conclusively shown to use tools. At least four specimens of the Veined Octopus (Amphioctopus marginatus) have been witnessed retrieving discarded coconut shells, manipulating them, and then reassembling them to use as shelter. This discovery was documented in the journal Current Biology and has also been caught on video. /ref> /ref>
Greater Blue-ringed Octopus (Hapalochlaena lunulata)
An octopus's main (primary) defense is to hide, either not to be seen at all, or not to be detected as an octopus. Hanlon, R.T. & J.B. Messenger 1996. Cephalopod Behaviour. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Octopuses have several secondary defenses (defenses they use once they have been seen by a predator). The most common secondary defense is fast escape. Other defenses include the use of ink sacs, camouflage, and autotomising limbs.
Most octopuses can eject a thick blackish ink in a large cloud to aid in escaping from predators. The main colouring agent of the ink is melanin, which is the same chemical that gives humans their hair and skin colour. This ink cloud is thought to reduce the efficiency of olfactory organs, which would aid an octopus's evasion from predators that employ smell for hunting, such as sharks. Ink clouds of some species might serve as pseudomorphs, or decoys that the predator attacks instead. Caldwell, R. L. (2005). "An Observation of Inking Behavior Protecting Adult Octopus bocki from Predation by Green Turtle (Chelonia mydas) Hatchlings." Pacific Science 59(1): 69â72.
This small octopus species travels with shells it has collected for protection.
An octopus's camouflage is aided by certain specialized skin cells which can change the apparent color, opacity, and reflectiveness of the epidermis. Chromatophores contain yellow, orange, red, brown, or black pigments; most species have three of these colors, while some have two or four. Other color-changing cells are reflective iridophores, and leucophores (white). This color-changing ability can also be used to communicate with or warn other octopuses. The very venomous blue-ringed octopus becomes bright yellow with blue rings when it is provoked. Octopuses can use muscles in the skin to change the texture of their mantle in order to achieve a greater camouflage. In some species the mantle can take on the spiky appearance of seaweed, or the scraggly, bumpy texture of a rock, among other disguises. However in some species skin anatomy is limited to relatively patternless shades of one color, and limited skin texture. It is thought that octopuses that are day-active and/or live in complex habitats such as coral reefs have evolved more complex skin than their nocturnal and/or sand-dwelling relatives.
When under attack, some octopuses can perform arm autotomy, in a similar manner to the way skinks and other lizards detach their tails. The crawling arm serves as a distraction to would-be predators.
A few species, such as the Mimic Octopus, have a fourth defense mechanism. They can combine their highly flexible bodies with their color changing ability to accurately mimic other, more dangerous animals such as lionfish, sea snakes, and eels. Norman, M.D., J. Finn & T. Tregenza (2001). Proceedings of the Royal Society 268: 1755â1758. Norman, M.D. & F.G.Hochberg (2005). The "Mimic Octopus" (Thaumoctopus mimicus n. gen. et sp.), a new octopus from the tropical Indo-West Pacific (Cephalopoda: Octopodidae). Molluscan Research 25: 57â70. Abstract
/ref>-->
When octopuses reproduce, males use a specialized arm called a hectocotylus to insert spermatophores (packets of sperm) into the female's mantle cavity. The hectocotylus in benthic octopuses is usually the third right arm. Males die within a few months of mating. In some species, the female octopus can keep the sperm alive inside her for weeks until her eggs are mature. After they have been fertilized, the female lays about 200,000 eggs (this figure dramatically varies between families, genera, species and also individuals). The female hangs these eggs in strings from the ceiling of her lair, or individually attaches them to the substrate depending on the species. The female cares for the eggs, guarding them against predators, and gently blowing currents of water over them so that they get enough oxygen. The female does not hunt during the roughly one-month period spent taking care of the unhatched eggs and may ingest some of her own arms for sustenance. At around the time the eggs hatch, the mother leaves the lair and is too weak to defend herself from predators like cod, often succumbing to their attacks. The young larval octopuses spend a period of time drifting in clouds of plankton, where they feed on copepods, larval crabs and larval starfish until they are ready to descend to the ocean bottom, where the cycle repeats. This is a dangerous time for the larval octopuses; in the plankton cloud they are vulnerable to plankton eaters. In some deeper dwelling species, the young do not go through this period.
Eye of Octopus vulgaris
Octopuses have keen eyesight. Octopuses, like other cephalopods, can distinguish the polarization of light. Color vision appears to vary from species to species, being present in Octopus aegina but absent in Octopus vulgaris Kawamura, G., et al. (2001). . Nippon Suisan Gakkashi 67(1): 35â39. . Attached to the brain are two special organs, called statocysts, that allow the octopus to sense the orientation of its body relative to horizontal. An autonomic response keeps the octopus's eyes oriented so that the pupil slit is always horizontal.
Octopuses also have an excellent sense of touch. An octopus's suction cups are equipped with chemoreceptors so that the octopus can taste what it is touching. The arms contain tension sensors so that the octopus knows whether its arms are stretched out. However, the octopus has a very poor proprioceptive sense. The tension receptors are not sufficient for the octopus brain to determine the position of the octopus's body or arms. (It is not clear that the octopus brain would be capable of processing the large amount of information that this would require; the flexibility of an octopus's arms is much greater than that of the limbs of vertebrates, which devote large areas of cerebral cortex to the processing of proprioceptive inputs.) As a result, the octopus does not possess stereognosis; that is, it does not form a mental image of the overall shape of the object it is handling. It can detect local texture variations, but cannot integrate the information into a larger picture. Wells. Martin John. Octopus: physiology and behaviour of an advanced invertebrate. London : Chapman and Hall ; New York : distributed in the U.S.A. by Halsted Press, 1978.
The neurological autonomy of the arms means that the octopus has great difficulty learning about the detailed effects of its motions. The brain may issue a high-level command to the arms, but the nerve cords in the arms execute the details. There is no neurological path for the brain to receive feedback about just how its command was executed by the arms; the only way it knows just what motions were made is by observing the arms visually.
Octopuses swim headfirst, with arms trailing behind
Octopuses move about by crawling or swimming. Their main means of slow travel is crawling, with some swimming. Jet propulsion is their fastest means of locomotion, followed by swimming and walking. Locomotion by Abdopus aculeatus, C.L. Huffard 2006
They crawl by walking on their arms, usually on many at once, on both solid and soft surfaces, while supported in water. In 2005 it was reported that some octopuses (Adopus aculeatus and Amphioctopus marginatus under current taxonomy) can walk on two arms, while at the same time resembling plant matter. Science, vol. 307, p. 1927 This form of locomotion allows these octopuses to move quickly away from a potential predator while possibly not triggering that predator's search image for octopus (food). Octopuses lack bones and are extremely vulnerable to predators.
Octopuses swim by expelling a jet of water from a contractile mantle, and aiming it via a muscular siphon.
An adult North Pacific Giant Octopus, Enteroctopus dofleini
The North Pacific Giant Octopus, Enteroctopus dofleini, is often cited as the largest octopus species. Adults usually weigh around 15 kg (33 lb), with an arm span of up to 4.3 m (14 ft). Smithsonian National Zoological Park: Giant Pacific Octopus The largest specimen of this species to be scientifically documented was an animal with a live mass of 71 kg (156.5 lb). Cosgrove, J.A. 1987. Aspects of the Natural History of Octopus dofleini, the Giant Pacific Octopus. M.Sc. Thesis. Department of Biology, University of Victoria (Canada), 101 pp. The alternative contender is the Seven-arm Octopus, Haliphron atlanticus, based on a 61 kg (134 lb) carcass estimated to have a live mass of 75 kg (165 lb). O'Shea, S. 2004. The giant octopus Haliphron atlanticus (Mollusca : Octopoda) in New Zealand waters. New Zealand Journal of Zoology 31(1): 7-13. O'Shea, S. 2002. Haliphron atlanticus â a giant gelatinous octopus. Biodiversity Update 5: 1. However, there are a number of questionable size records that would suggest E. dofleini is the largest of all octopus species by a considerable margin; Norman, M. 2000. Cephalopods: A World Guide. ConchBooks, Hackenheim. p. 214. one such record is of a specimen weighing 272 kg (600 lb) and having an arm span of 9 m (30 ft). High, W.L. 1976. The giant Pacific octopus. U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service, Marine Fisheries Review 38(9): 17-22.
The term octopus, , is from Greek (oktapous), "eight-footed", Oktapous, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, at Perseus Scientific Latin from Greek (also ) "eight-footed" > or [combination form of "eight"] and "foot". Cf. Modern Greek with plural forms: octopuses , octopi , or octopodes . Currently, octopuses is the most common form in the US as well as the UK; octopodes is rare, and octopi is often objectionable. Peters, Pam (2004). The Cambridge Guide to English Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-62181-X, p. 388.
The Oxford English Dictionary (2004 update OED.com (subscription required). Retrieved October 22, 2007. ) lists octopuses, octopi and octopodes (in that order); it labels octopodes "rare", and notes that octopi derives from the mistaken assumption that is a second declension Latin noun, which it is not. Rather, it is a Latinization of Greek third-declension masculine ( , 'eight-foot'), plural ( ). If the word were native to Latin, it would be , plural , after the pattern of ('foot'), plural , analogous to "Centipede" . The actual Latin word for octopus and other similar species is , from Greek ( , 'many-foot'); usually the inaccurate plural is used instead of .
In modern Greek, the word is ( ), plural ( ), from Medieval ( ), equivalent to Classical ( ), variant of .
Chambers 21st Century Dictionary Chambersharrap.co.uk, Retrieved October 19, 2007. and the Compact Oxford Dictionary Askoxford.com, Retrieved October 19, 2007. list only octopuses, although the latter notes that octopodes is "still occasionally used"; the British National Corpus has 29 instances of octopuses, 11 of octopi and 4 of octopodes. Merriam-Webster 11th Collegiate Dictionary lists octopuses and octopi, in that order; Webster's New World College Dictionary lists octopuses, octopi and octopodes (in that order).
Fowler's Modern English Usage states that "the only acceptable plural in English is octopuses," and that octopi is misconceived and octopodes pedantic.
The term octopod (plural octopods or octopodes) is taken from the taxonomic order Octopoda but has no classical equivalent. The collective form octopus is usually reserved for animals consumed for food.
Moche Octopus. 200 A.D. Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru
Ancient peoples of the Mediterranean were aware of the octopus, as evidenced by certain artworks and designs of prehistory. For example, a stone carving found in the archaeological recovery from Bronze Age Minoan Crete at Knossos has a depiction of a fisherman carrying an octopus. C. Michael Hogan. 2007 Knossos fieldnotes, The Modern Antiquarian
The Moche people of ancient Peru worshipped the sea and its animals; moreover, octopuses were often depicted in their art. Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 199 7.
The Hawaiian creation myth relates that the present cosmos is only the last of a series, having arisen in stages from the wreck of the previous universe. In this account, the octopus is the lone survivor of the previous, alien universe.
The octopus has a significant role in Victor Hugo's book Travailleurs de la mer (Toilers of the Sea).
alt=Photo of dozens of octopus in metal bins
Humans eat octopus in many cultures. The arms and sometimes other body parts are prepared in various ways, often varying by species.
Octopus is a common ingredient in Japanese cuisine, including sushi, takoyaki, and Akashiyaki. Some small species are sometimes eaten alive as a novelty and health food. Similarly, a live octopus may be sliced up and the legs eaten while still squirming, which continues for some minutes.
alt=Photo of captured octopus and polespear
Octopus is eaten regularly in Hawaii, since many popular dishes are Asian in origin. Locally known by their Hawaiian or Japanese names, ("he'e" and "tako" respectively) octopus is also a popular fish bait.
Octopus is a common food in Mediterranean cuisine and Portuguese cuisine. In Galicia, polbo á feira (market fair style octopus) is a local delicacy. Restaurants which specialize or serve this dish are known as pulperÃas. On the Tunisian island of Djerba, local people catch octopuses by taking advantage of the animals' habit of hiding in safe places during the night. In the evening they put grey ceramic pots on the sea bed. The morning of the following day they check them for octopuses that sheltered there.
According to the USDA Nutrient Database (2007), cooked octopus contains approximately 139 calories per three ounce portion, and is a source of vitamin B3, B12, potassium, phosphorus, and selenium. Octopus Calories And Nutrition
Care must be taken to boil the octopus properly, to rid it of slime, smell, and residual ink.
Though octopuses can be difficult to keep in captivity, some people keep them as pets. Octopuses often escape even from supposedly secure tanks, due to their problem solving skills, mobility and lack of rigid structure.
The variation in size and life span among octopus species makes it difficult to know how long a new specimen can naturally be expected to live. That is, a small octopus may be just born or may be an adult, depending on its species. By selecting a well-known species, such as the California Two-spot Octopus, one can choose a small octopus (around the size of a tennis ball) and be confident that it is young with a full life ahead of it.
Octopuses are also quite strong for their size. Octopuses kept as pets have been known to open the covers of their aquariums and survive for a time in the air in order to get to a nearby feeder tank and gorge themselves on the fish there. They have also been known to catch and kill some species of sharks. Archived Google video of an octopus catching a shark, from The Octopus Show by Mike deGruy
A fisherman's catch of octopus dries in the sun
* Class CEPHALOPODA
** Subclass Nautiloidea: nautilus
** Subclass Coleoidea
*** Superorder Decapodiformes: squid, cuttlefish
*** Superorder Octopodiformes
**** Order Vampyromorphida: Vampire Squid
**** Order Octopoda
***** Genus â Keuppia (incertae sedis)
***** Genus â Palaeoctopus (incertae sedis)
***** Genus â Paleocirroteuthis (incertae sedis)
***** Genus â Pohlsepia (incertae sedis)
***** Genus â Proteroctopus (incertae sedis)
***** Genus â Styletoctopus (incertae sedis)
***** Suborder Cirrina: finned deep-sea octopus
****** Family Opisthoteuthidae: umbrella octopus
****** Family Cirroteuthidae
****** Family Stauroteuthidae
***** Suborder Incirrina
****** Family Amphitretidae: telescope octopus
****** Family Bolitaenidae: gelatinous octopus
****** Family Octopodidae: benthic octopus
****** Family Vitreledonellidae: Glass Octopus
****** Superfamily Argonautoida
******* Family Alloposidae: Seven-arm Octopus
******* Family Argonautidae: argonauts
******* Family Ocythoidae: Tuberculate Pelagic Octopus
******* Family Tremoctopodidae: blanket octopus
* Octopus wrestling
* Legend of the Octopus
* Henry the Hexapus, a six-armed octopus
* CephBase: Octopoda
* TONMO.COM - The Octopus News Magazine Online
* Tree of Life website: information about cephalopods along with pictures and videos
* Discussion about the plural
* An octopus's shark encounter - footage of an octopus eating a shark ( also in Quicktime format)
* Camouflage in action
* Video showing an Octopus escaping through a 1 inch hole
* Bipedal Octopuses- Video, Information, Original paper
*
* Video of walking octopuses
|
Octopus | Is octopus a common food in Mediterranean cuisine as well as Portuguese cuisine? | Yes | data/set1/a10 | Octopus
The octopus is a cephalopod of the order Octopoda. Octopuses have two eyes and four pairs of arms and like other cephalopods are bilaterally symmetric. An octopus has a hard beak, with its mouth at the center point of the arms. Most octopuses have no internal or external skeleton, allowing them to squeeze through tight places. Octopuses are highly intelligent, probably the most intelligent of all invertebrates.
The octopus inhabits many diverse regions of the ocean, especially coral reefs. For defense against predators, they hide, flee quickly, expel ink, or use color-changing camouflage. An octopus trails its eight arms behind it as it swims. All octopuses are venomous, but only the small blue-ringed octopuses are deadly to humans. Unimelb.edu.au, Tentacles of venom: new study reveals all octopuses are venomous, University of Melbourne, Media Release, Wednesday 15 April 2009
In the larger sense, there are around 300 recognized octopus species, which is over one-third of the total number of known cephalopod species. The term octopus may also be used to refer only to those creatures in the genus Octopus.
A Common Octopus (Octopus vulgaris)
Octopuses are characterized by their eight arms, usually bearing suction cups. The arms of octopuses are often distinguished from the pair of feeding tentacles found in squid and cuttlefish. Norman, M. 2000. Cephalopods: A World Guide. ConchBooks, Hackenheim. p. 15. "There is some confusion around the terms arms versus tentacles. The numerous limbs of nautiluses are called tentacles. The ring of eight limbs around the mouth in cuttlefish, squids and octopuses are called arms. Cuttlefish and squid also have a pair of specialised limbs attached between the bases of the third and fourth arm pairs [...]. These are known as feeding tentacles and are used to shoot out and grab prey." Both types of limbs are muscular hydrostats. Unlike most other cephalopods, the majority of octopuses those in the suborder most commonly known, Incirrina have almost entirely soft bodies with no internal skeleton. They have neither a protective outer shell like the nautilus, nor any vestige of an internal shell or bones, like cuttlefish or squid. A beak, similar in shape to a parrot's beak, is the only hard part of their body. This enables them to squeeze through very narrow slits between underwater rocks, which is very helpful when they are fleeing from morays or other predatory fish. The octopuses in the less familiar Cirrina suborder have two fins and an internal shell, generally reducing their ability to squeeze into small spaces.
An octopus moving between tide pools during low tide
Octopuses have a relatively short life expectancy, and some species live for as little as six months. Larger species, such as the North Pacific Giant Octopus, may live for up to five years under suitable circumstances. However, reproduction is a cause of death: males can only live for a few months after mating, and females die shortly after their eggs hatch. They neglect to eat during the (roughly) one month period spent taking care of their unhatched eggs, but they don't die of starvation. Endocrine secretions from the two optic glands are the cause of genetically-programmed death (and if these glands are surgically removed, the octopus may live many months beyond reproduction, until she finally starves).
Stauroteuthis syrtensis, a finned octopus of the suborder Cirrina
Octopuses have three hearts. Two pump blood through each of the two gills, while the third pumps blood through the body. Octopus blood contains the copper-rich protein hemocyanin for transporting oxygen. Although less efficient under normal conditions than the iron-rich hemoglobin of vertebrates, in cold conditions with low oxygen pressure, hemocyanin oxygen transportation is more efficient than hemoglobin oxygen transportation. The hemocyanin is dissolved in the plasma instead of being carried within red blood cells and gives the blood a blue color. Octopuses draw water into their mantle cavity where it passes through its gills. As mollusks, octopuses have gills that are finely divided and vascularized outgrowths of either the outer or the inner body surface.
Octopuses are highly intelligent, likely more so than any other order of invertebrates. The exact extent of their intelligence and learning capability is much debated among biologists, NFW.org?, Is the octopus really the invertebrate intellect of the sea, by Doug Stewart. In: National Wildlife. Feb/Mar 1997, vol.35 no.2.
Giant OctopusâMighty but Secretive Denizen of the Deep Slate.com, How Smart is the Octopus? but maze and problem-solving experiments have shown that they do have both short- and long-term memory. Their short lifespans limit the amount they can ultimately learn. There has been much speculation to the effect that almost all octopus behaviors are independently learned rather than instinct-based, although this remains largely unproven. They learn almost no behaviors from their parents, with whom young octopuses have very little contact.
An octopus opening a container with a screw cap
An octopus has a highly complex nervous system, only part of which is localized in its brain. Two-thirds of an octopus's neurons are found in the nerve cords of its arms, which have a remarkable amount of autonomy. Octopus arms show a wide variety of complex reflex actions arising on at least three different levels of the nervous system. Unlike vertebrates, the complex motor skills of octopuses in their higher brain are not organized using an internal somatotopic map of its body. Zullo L, Sumbre G, Agnisola C, Flash T, Hochner B. (2009). Nonsomatotopic organization of the higher motor centers in octopus.
Curr Biol. 19(19):1632-6. PMID 19765993 Some octopuses, such as the Mimic Octopus, will move their arms in ways that emulate the movements of other sea creatures.
In laboratory experiments, octopuses can be readily trained to distinguish between different shapes and patterns. They have been reported to practice observational learning, Octopus intelligence: jar opening although the validity of these findings is widely contested on a number of grounds. What is this octopus thinking?. By Garry Hamilton. Octopuses have also been observed in what some have described as play: repeatedly releasing bottles or toys into a circular current in their aquariums and then catching them. What behavior can we expect of octopuses?. By Dr. Jennifer Mather, Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Lethbridge and Roland C. Anderson, The Seattle Aquarium. Octopuses often break out of their aquariums and sometimes into others in search of food. They have even boarded fishing boats and opened holds to eat crabs.
In some countries, octopuses are on the list of experimental animals on which surgery may not be performed without anesthesia. In the UK, cephalopods such as octopuses are regarded as honorary vertebrates under the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 and other cruelty to animals legislation, extending to them protections not normally afforded to invertebrates. United Kingdom Animals (Scientific Procedures) act of 1986
The octopus is the only invertebrate which has been conclusively shown to use tools. At least four specimens of the Veined Octopus (Amphioctopus marginatus) have been witnessed retrieving discarded coconut shells, manipulating them, and then reassembling them to use as shelter. This discovery was documented in the journal Current Biology and has also been caught on video. /ref> /ref>
Greater Blue-ringed Octopus (Hapalochlaena lunulata)
An octopus's main (primary) defense is to hide, either not to be seen at all, or not to be detected as an octopus. Hanlon, R.T. & J.B. Messenger 1996. Cephalopod Behaviour. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Octopuses have several secondary defenses (defenses they use once they have been seen by a predator). The most common secondary defense is fast escape. Other defenses include the use of ink sacs, camouflage, and autotomising limbs.
Most octopuses can eject a thick blackish ink in a large cloud to aid in escaping from predators. The main colouring agent of the ink is melanin, which is the same chemical that gives humans their hair and skin colour. This ink cloud is thought to reduce the efficiency of olfactory organs, which would aid an octopus's evasion from predators that employ smell for hunting, such as sharks. Ink clouds of some species might serve as pseudomorphs, or decoys that the predator attacks instead. Caldwell, R. L. (2005). "An Observation of Inking Behavior Protecting Adult Octopus bocki from Predation by Green Turtle (Chelonia mydas) Hatchlings." Pacific Science 59(1): 69â72.
This small octopus species travels with shells it has collected for protection.
An octopus's camouflage is aided by certain specialized skin cells which can change the apparent color, opacity, and reflectiveness of the epidermis. Chromatophores contain yellow, orange, red, brown, or black pigments; most species have three of these colors, while some have two or four. Other color-changing cells are reflective iridophores, and leucophores (white). This color-changing ability can also be used to communicate with or warn other octopuses. The very venomous blue-ringed octopus becomes bright yellow with blue rings when it is provoked. Octopuses can use muscles in the skin to change the texture of their mantle in order to achieve a greater camouflage. In some species the mantle can take on the spiky appearance of seaweed, or the scraggly, bumpy texture of a rock, among other disguises. However in some species skin anatomy is limited to relatively patternless shades of one color, and limited skin texture. It is thought that octopuses that are day-active and/or live in complex habitats such as coral reefs have evolved more complex skin than their nocturnal and/or sand-dwelling relatives.
When under attack, some octopuses can perform arm autotomy, in a similar manner to the way skinks and other lizards detach their tails. The crawling arm serves as a distraction to would-be predators.
A few species, such as the Mimic Octopus, have a fourth defense mechanism. They can combine their highly flexible bodies with their color changing ability to accurately mimic other, more dangerous animals such as lionfish, sea snakes, and eels. Norman, M.D., J. Finn & T. Tregenza (2001). Proceedings of the Royal Society 268: 1755â1758. Norman, M.D. & F.G.Hochberg (2005). The "Mimic Octopus" (Thaumoctopus mimicus n. gen. et sp.), a new octopus from the tropical Indo-West Pacific (Cephalopoda: Octopodidae). Molluscan Research 25: 57â70. Abstract
/ref>-->
When octopuses reproduce, males use a specialized arm called a hectocotylus to insert spermatophores (packets of sperm) into the female's mantle cavity. The hectocotylus in benthic octopuses is usually the third right arm. Males die within a few months of mating. In some species, the female octopus can keep the sperm alive inside her for weeks until her eggs are mature. After they have been fertilized, the female lays about 200,000 eggs (this figure dramatically varies between families, genera, species and also individuals). The female hangs these eggs in strings from the ceiling of her lair, or individually attaches them to the substrate depending on the species. The female cares for the eggs, guarding them against predators, and gently blowing currents of water over them so that they get enough oxygen. The female does not hunt during the roughly one-month period spent taking care of the unhatched eggs and may ingest some of her own arms for sustenance. At around the time the eggs hatch, the mother leaves the lair and is too weak to defend herself from predators like cod, often succumbing to their attacks. The young larval octopuses spend a period of time drifting in clouds of plankton, where they feed on copepods, larval crabs and larval starfish until they are ready to descend to the ocean bottom, where the cycle repeats. This is a dangerous time for the larval octopuses; in the plankton cloud they are vulnerable to plankton eaters. In some deeper dwelling species, the young do not go through this period.
Eye of Octopus vulgaris
Octopuses have keen eyesight. Octopuses, like other cephalopods, can distinguish the polarization of light. Color vision appears to vary from species to species, being present in Octopus aegina but absent in Octopus vulgaris Kawamura, G., et al. (2001). . Nippon Suisan Gakkashi 67(1): 35â39. . Attached to the brain are two special organs, called statocysts, that allow the octopus to sense the orientation of its body relative to horizontal. An autonomic response keeps the octopus's eyes oriented so that the pupil slit is always horizontal.
Octopuses also have an excellent sense of touch. An octopus's suction cups are equipped with chemoreceptors so that the octopus can taste what it is touching. The arms contain tension sensors so that the octopus knows whether its arms are stretched out. However, the octopus has a very poor proprioceptive sense. The tension receptors are not sufficient for the octopus brain to determine the position of the octopus's body or arms. (It is not clear that the octopus brain would be capable of processing the large amount of information that this would require; the flexibility of an octopus's arms is much greater than that of the limbs of vertebrates, which devote large areas of cerebral cortex to the processing of proprioceptive inputs.) As a result, the octopus does not possess stereognosis; that is, it does not form a mental image of the overall shape of the object it is handling. It can detect local texture variations, but cannot integrate the information into a larger picture. Wells. Martin John. Octopus: physiology and behaviour of an advanced invertebrate. London : Chapman and Hall ; New York : distributed in the U.S.A. by Halsted Press, 1978.
The neurological autonomy of the arms means that the octopus has great difficulty learning about the detailed effects of its motions. The brain may issue a high-level command to the arms, but the nerve cords in the arms execute the details. There is no neurological path for the brain to receive feedback about just how its command was executed by the arms; the only way it knows just what motions were made is by observing the arms visually.
Octopuses swim headfirst, with arms trailing behind
Octopuses move about by crawling or swimming. Their main means of slow travel is crawling, with some swimming. Jet propulsion is their fastest means of locomotion, followed by swimming and walking. Locomotion by Abdopus aculeatus, C.L. Huffard 2006
They crawl by walking on their arms, usually on many at once, on both solid and soft surfaces, while supported in water. In 2005 it was reported that some octopuses (Adopus aculeatus and Amphioctopus marginatus under current taxonomy) can walk on two arms, while at the same time resembling plant matter. Science, vol. 307, p. 1927 This form of locomotion allows these octopuses to move quickly away from a potential predator while possibly not triggering that predator's search image for octopus (food). Octopuses lack bones and are extremely vulnerable to predators.
Octopuses swim by expelling a jet of water from a contractile mantle, and aiming it via a muscular siphon.
An adult North Pacific Giant Octopus, Enteroctopus dofleini
The North Pacific Giant Octopus, Enteroctopus dofleini, is often cited as the largest octopus species. Adults usually weigh around 15 kg (33 lb), with an arm span of up to 4.3 m (14 ft). Smithsonian National Zoological Park: Giant Pacific Octopus The largest specimen of this species to be scientifically documented was an animal with a live mass of 71 kg (156.5 lb). Cosgrove, J.A. 1987. Aspects of the Natural History of Octopus dofleini, the Giant Pacific Octopus. M.Sc. Thesis. Department of Biology, University of Victoria (Canada), 101 pp. The alternative contender is the Seven-arm Octopus, Haliphron atlanticus, based on a 61 kg (134 lb) carcass estimated to have a live mass of 75 kg (165 lb). O'Shea, S. 2004. The giant octopus Haliphron atlanticus (Mollusca : Octopoda) in New Zealand waters. New Zealand Journal of Zoology 31(1): 7-13. O'Shea, S. 2002. Haliphron atlanticus â a giant gelatinous octopus. Biodiversity Update 5: 1. However, there are a number of questionable size records that would suggest E. dofleini is the largest of all octopus species by a considerable margin; Norman, M. 2000. Cephalopods: A World Guide. ConchBooks, Hackenheim. p. 214. one such record is of a specimen weighing 272 kg (600 lb) and having an arm span of 9 m (30 ft). High, W.L. 1976. The giant Pacific octopus. U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service, Marine Fisheries Review 38(9): 17-22.
The term octopus, , is from Greek (oktapous), "eight-footed", Oktapous, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, at Perseus Scientific Latin from Greek (also ) "eight-footed" > or [combination form of "eight"] and "foot". Cf. Modern Greek with plural forms: octopuses , octopi , or octopodes . Currently, octopuses is the most common form in the US as well as the UK; octopodes is rare, and octopi is often objectionable. Peters, Pam (2004). The Cambridge Guide to English Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-62181-X, p. 388.
The Oxford English Dictionary (2004 update OED.com (subscription required). Retrieved October 22, 2007. ) lists octopuses, octopi and octopodes (in that order); it labels octopodes "rare", and notes that octopi derives from the mistaken assumption that is a second declension Latin noun, which it is not. Rather, it is a Latinization of Greek third-declension masculine ( , 'eight-foot'), plural ( ). If the word were native to Latin, it would be , plural , after the pattern of ('foot'), plural , analogous to "Centipede" . The actual Latin word for octopus and other similar species is , from Greek ( , 'many-foot'); usually the inaccurate plural is used instead of .
In modern Greek, the word is ( ), plural ( ), from Medieval ( ), equivalent to Classical ( ), variant of .
Chambers 21st Century Dictionary Chambersharrap.co.uk, Retrieved October 19, 2007. and the Compact Oxford Dictionary Askoxford.com, Retrieved October 19, 2007. list only octopuses, although the latter notes that octopodes is "still occasionally used"; the British National Corpus has 29 instances of octopuses, 11 of octopi and 4 of octopodes. Merriam-Webster 11th Collegiate Dictionary lists octopuses and octopi, in that order; Webster's New World College Dictionary lists octopuses, octopi and octopodes (in that order).
Fowler's Modern English Usage states that "the only acceptable plural in English is octopuses," and that octopi is misconceived and octopodes pedantic.
The term octopod (plural octopods or octopodes) is taken from the taxonomic order Octopoda but has no classical equivalent. The collective form octopus is usually reserved for animals consumed for food.
Moche Octopus. 200 A.D. Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru
Ancient peoples of the Mediterranean were aware of the octopus, as evidenced by certain artworks and designs of prehistory. For example, a stone carving found in the archaeological recovery from Bronze Age Minoan Crete at Knossos has a depiction of a fisherman carrying an octopus. C. Michael Hogan. 2007 Knossos fieldnotes, The Modern Antiquarian
The Moche people of ancient Peru worshipped the sea and its animals; moreover, octopuses were often depicted in their art. Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 199 7.
The Hawaiian creation myth relates that the present cosmos is only the last of a series, having arisen in stages from the wreck of the previous universe. In this account, the octopus is the lone survivor of the previous, alien universe.
The octopus has a significant role in Victor Hugo's book Travailleurs de la mer (Toilers of the Sea).
alt=Photo of dozens of octopus in metal bins
Humans eat octopus in many cultures. The arms and sometimes other body parts are prepared in various ways, often varying by species.
Octopus is a common ingredient in Japanese cuisine, including sushi, takoyaki, and Akashiyaki. Some small species are sometimes eaten alive as a novelty and health food. Similarly, a live octopus may be sliced up and the legs eaten while still squirming, which continues for some minutes.
alt=Photo of captured octopus and polespear
Octopus is eaten regularly in Hawaii, since many popular dishes are Asian in origin. Locally known by their Hawaiian or Japanese names, ("he'e" and "tako" respectively) octopus is also a popular fish bait.
Octopus is a common food in Mediterranean cuisine and Portuguese cuisine. In Galicia, polbo á feira (market fair style octopus) is a local delicacy. Restaurants which specialize or serve this dish are known as pulperÃas. On the Tunisian island of Djerba, local people catch octopuses by taking advantage of the animals' habit of hiding in safe places during the night. In the evening they put grey ceramic pots on the sea bed. The morning of the following day they check them for octopuses that sheltered there.
According to the USDA Nutrient Database (2007), cooked octopus contains approximately 139 calories per three ounce portion, and is a source of vitamin B3, B12, potassium, phosphorus, and selenium. Octopus Calories And Nutrition
Care must be taken to boil the octopus properly, to rid it of slime, smell, and residual ink.
Though octopuses can be difficult to keep in captivity, some people keep them as pets. Octopuses often escape even from supposedly secure tanks, due to their problem solving skills, mobility and lack of rigid structure.
The variation in size and life span among octopus species makes it difficult to know how long a new specimen can naturally be expected to live. That is, a small octopus may be just born or may be an adult, depending on its species. By selecting a well-known species, such as the California Two-spot Octopus, one can choose a small octopus (around the size of a tennis ball) and be confident that it is young with a full life ahead of it.
Octopuses are also quite strong for their size. Octopuses kept as pets have been known to open the covers of their aquariums and survive for a time in the air in order to get to a nearby feeder tank and gorge themselves on the fish there. They have also been known to catch and kill some species of sharks. Archived Google video of an octopus catching a shark, from The Octopus Show by Mike deGruy
A fisherman's catch of octopus dries in the sun
* Class CEPHALOPODA
** Subclass Nautiloidea: nautilus
** Subclass Coleoidea
*** Superorder Decapodiformes: squid, cuttlefish
*** Superorder Octopodiformes
**** Order Vampyromorphida: Vampire Squid
**** Order Octopoda
***** Genus â Keuppia (incertae sedis)
***** Genus â Palaeoctopus (incertae sedis)
***** Genus â Paleocirroteuthis (incertae sedis)
***** Genus â Pohlsepia (incertae sedis)
***** Genus â Proteroctopus (incertae sedis)
***** Genus â Styletoctopus (incertae sedis)
***** Suborder Cirrina: finned deep-sea octopus
****** Family Opisthoteuthidae: umbrella octopus
****** Family Cirroteuthidae
****** Family Stauroteuthidae
***** Suborder Incirrina
****** Family Amphitretidae: telescope octopus
****** Family Bolitaenidae: gelatinous octopus
****** Family Octopodidae: benthic octopus
****** Family Vitreledonellidae: Glass Octopus
****** Superfamily Argonautoida
******* Family Alloposidae: Seven-arm Octopus
******* Family Argonautidae: argonauts
******* Family Ocythoidae: Tuberculate Pelagic Octopus
******* Family Tremoctopodidae: blanket octopus
* Octopus wrestling
* Legend of the Octopus
* Henry the Hexapus, a six-armed octopus
* CephBase: Octopoda
* TONMO.COM - The Octopus News Magazine Online
* Tree of Life website: information about cephalopods along with pictures and videos
* Discussion about the plural
* An octopus's shark encounter - footage of an octopus eating a shark ( also in Quicktime format)
* Camouflage in action
* Video showing an Octopus escaping through a 1 inch hole
* Bipedal Octopuses- Video, Information, Original paper
*
* Video of walking octopuses
|
Octopus | Is the collective form octopus usually reserved for animals consumed for food? | Yes | data/set1/a10 | Octopus
The octopus is a cephalopod of the order Octopoda. Octopuses have two eyes and four pairs of arms and like other cephalopods are bilaterally symmetric. An octopus has a hard beak, with its mouth at the center point of the arms. Most octopuses have no internal or external skeleton, allowing them to squeeze through tight places. Octopuses are highly intelligent, probably the most intelligent of all invertebrates.
The octopus inhabits many diverse regions of the ocean, especially coral reefs. For defense against predators, they hide, flee quickly, expel ink, or use color-changing camouflage. An octopus trails its eight arms behind it as it swims. All octopuses are venomous, but only the small blue-ringed octopuses are deadly to humans. Unimelb.edu.au, Tentacles of venom: new study reveals all octopuses are venomous, University of Melbourne, Media Release, Wednesday 15 April 2009
In the larger sense, there are around 300 recognized octopus species, which is over one-third of the total number of known cephalopod species. The term octopus may also be used to refer only to those creatures in the genus Octopus.
A Common Octopus (Octopus vulgaris)
Octopuses are characterized by their eight arms, usually bearing suction cups. The arms of octopuses are often distinguished from the pair of feeding tentacles found in squid and cuttlefish. Norman, M. 2000. Cephalopods: A World Guide. ConchBooks, Hackenheim. p. 15. "There is some confusion around the terms arms versus tentacles. The numerous limbs of nautiluses are called tentacles. The ring of eight limbs around the mouth in cuttlefish, squids and octopuses are called arms. Cuttlefish and squid also have a pair of specialised limbs attached between the bases of the third and fourth arm pairs [...]. These are known as feeding tentacles and are used to shoot out and grab prey." Both types of limbs are muscular hydrostats. Unlike most other cephalopods, the majority of octopuses those in the suborder most commonly known, Incirrina have almost entirely soft bodies with no internal skeleton. They have neither a protective outer shell like the nautilus, nor any vestige of an internal shell or bones, like cuttlefish or squid. A beak, similar in shape to a parrot's beak, is the only hard part of their body. This enables them to squeeze through very narrow slits between underwater rocks, which is very helpful when they are fleeing from morays or other predatory fish. The octopuses in the less familiar Cirrina suborder have two fins and an internal shell, generally reducing their ability to squeeze into small spaces.
An octopus moving between tide pools during low tide
Octopuses have a relatively short life expectancy, and some species live for as little as six months. Larger species, such as the North Pacific Giant Octopus, may live for up to five years under suitable circumstances. However, reproduction is a cause of death: males can only live for a few months after mating, and females die shortly after their eggs hatch. They neglect to eat during the (roughly) one month period spent taking care of their unhatched eggs, but they don't die of starvation. Endocrine secretions from the two optic glands are the cause of genetically-programmed death (and if these glands are surgically removed, the octopus may live many months beyond reproduction, until she finally starves).
Stauroteuthis syrtensis, a finned octopus of the suborder Cirrina
Octopuses have three hearts. Two pump blood through each of the two gills, while the third pumps blood through the body. Octopus blood contains the copper-rich protein hemocyanin for transporting oxygen. Although less efficient under normal conditions than the iron-rich hemoglobin of vertebrates, in cold conditions with low oxygen pressure, hemocyanin oxygen transportation is more efficient than hemoglobin oxygen transportation. The hemocyanin is dissolved in the plasma instead of being carried within red blood cells and gives the blood a blue color. Octopuses draw water into their mantle cavity where it passes through its gills. As mollusks, octopuses have gills that are finely divided and vascularized outgrowths of either the outer or the inner body surface.
Octopuses are highly intelligent, likely more so than any other order of invertebrates. The exact extent of their intelligence and learning capability is much debated among biologists, NFW.org?, Is the octopus really the invertebrate intellect of the sea, by Doug Stewart. In: National Wildlife. Feb/Mar 1997, vol.35 no.2.
Giant OctopusâMighty but Secretive Denizen of the Deep Slate.com, How Smart is the Octopus? but maze and problem-solving experiments have shown that they do have both short- and long-term memory. Their short lifespans limit the amount they can ultimately learn. There has been much speculation to the effect that almost all octopus behaviors are independently learned rather than instinct-based, although this remains largely unproven. They learn almost no behaviors from their parents, with whom young octopuses have very little contact.
An octopus opening a container with a screw cap
An octopus has a highly complex nervous system, only part of which is localized in its brain. Two-thirds of an octopus's neurons are found in the nerve cords of its arms, which have a remarkable amount of autonomy. Octopus arms show a wide variety of complex reflex actions arising on at least three different levels of the nervous system. Unlike vertebrates, the complex motor skills of octopuses in their higher brain are not organized using an internal somatotopic map of its body. Zullo L, Sumbre G, Agnisola C, Flash T, Hochner B. (2009). Nonsomatotopic organization of the higher motor centers in octopus.
Curr Biol. 19(19):1632-6. PMID 19765993 Some octopuses, such as the Mimic Octopus, will move their arms in ways that emulate the movements of other sea creatures.
In laboratory experiments, octopuses can be readily trained to distinguish between different shapes and patterns. They have been reported to practice observational learning, Octopus intelligence: jar opening although the validity of these findings is widely contested on a number of grounds. What is this octopus thinking?. By Garry Hamilton. Octopuses have also been observed in what some have described as play: repeatedly releasing bottles or toys into a circular current in their aquariums and then catching them. What behavior can we expect of octopuses?. By Dr. Jennifer Mather, Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Lethbridge and Roland C. Anderson, The Seattle Aquarium. Octopuses often break out of their aquariums and sometimes into others in search of food. They have even boarded fishing boats and opened holds to eat crabs.
In some countries, octopuses are on the list of experimental animals on which surgery may not be performed without anesthesia. In the UK, cephalopods such as octopuses are regarded as honorary vertebrates under the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 and other cruelty to animals legislation, extending to them protections not normally afforded to invertebrates. United Kingdom Animals (Scientific Procedures) act of 1986
The octopus is the only invertebrate which has been conclusively shown to use tools. At least four specimens of the Veined Octopus (Amphioctopus marginatus) have been witnessed retrieving discarded coconut shells, manipulating them, and then reassembling them to use as shelter. This discovery was documented in the journal Current Biology and has also been caught on video. /ref> /ref>
Greater Blue-ringed Octopus (Hapalochlaena lunulata)
An octopus's main (primary) defense is to hide, either not to be seen at all, or not to be detected as an octopus. Hanlon, R.T. & J.B. Messenger 1996. Cephalopod Behaviour. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Octopuses have several secondary defenses (defenses they use once they have been seen by a predator). The most common secondary defense is fast escape. Other defenses include the use of ink sacs, camouflage, and autotomising limbs.
Most octopuses can eject a thick blackish ink in a large cloud to aid in escaping from predators. The main colouring agent of the ink is melanin, which is the same chemical that gives humans their hair and skin colour. This ink cloud is thought to reduce the efficiency of olfactory organs, which would aid an octopus's evasion from predators that employ smell for hunting, such as sharks. Ink clouds of some species might serve as pseudomorphs, or decoys that the predator attacks instead. Caldwell, R. L. (2005). "An Observation of Inking Behavior Protecting Adult Octopus bocki from Predation by Green Turtle (Chelonia mydas) Hatchlings." Pacific Science 59(1): 69â72.
This small octopus species travels with shells it has collected for protection.
An octopus's camouflage is aided by certain specialized skin cells which can change the apparent color, opacity, and reflectiveness of the epidermis. Chromatophores contain yellow, orange, red, brown, or black pigments; most species have three of these colors, while some have two or four. Other color-changing cells are reflective iridophores, and leucophores (white). This color-changing ability can also be used to communicate with or warn other octopuses. The very venomous blue-ringed octopus becomes bright yellow with blue rings when it is provoked. Octopuses can use muscles in the skin to change the texture of their mantle in order to achieve a greater camouflage. In some species the mantle can take on the spiky appearance of seaweed, or the scraggly, bumpy texture of a rock, among other disguises. However in some species skin anatomy is limited to relatively patternless shades of one color, and limited skin texture. It is thought that octopuses that are day-active and/or live in complex habitats such as coral reefs have evolved more complex skin than their nocturnal and/or sand-dwelling relatives.
When under attack, some octopuses can perform arm autotomy, in a similar manner to the way skinks and other lizards detach their tails. The crawling arm serves as a distraction to would-be predators.
A few species, such as the Mimic Octopus, have a fourth defense mechanism. They can combine their highly flexible bodies with their color changing ability to accurately mimic other, more dangerous animals such as lionfish, sea snakes, and eels. Norman, M.D., J. Finn & T. Tregenza (2001). Proceedings of the Royal Society 268: 1755â1758. Norman, M.D. & F.G.Hochberg (2005). The "Mimic Octopus" (Thaumoctopus mimicus n. gen. et sp.), a new octopus from the tropical Indo-West Pacific (Cephalopoda: Octopodidae). Molluscan Research 25: 57â70. Abstract
/ref>-->
When octopuses reproduce, males use a specialized arm called a hectocotylus to insert spermatophores (packets of sperm) into the female's mantle cavity. The hectocotylus in benthic octopuses is usually the third right arm. Males die within a few months of mating. In some species, the female octopus can keep the sperm alive inside her for weeks until her eggs are mature. After they have been fertilized, the female lays about 200,000 eggs (this figure dramatically varies between families, genera, species and also individuals). The female hangs these eggs in strings from the ceiling of her lair, or individually attaches them to the substrate depending on the species. The female cares for the eggs, guarding them against predators, and gently blowing currents of water over them so that they get enough oxygen. The female does not hunt during the roughly one-month period spent taking care of the unhatched eggs and may ingest some of her own arms for sustenance. At around the time the eggs hatch, the mother leaves the lair and is too weak to defend herself from predators like cod, often succumbing to their attacks. The young larval octopuses spend a period of time drifting in clouds of plankton, where they feed on copepods, larval crabs and larval starfish until they are ready to descend to the ocean bottom, where the cycle repeats. This is a dangerous time for the larval octopuses; in the plankton cloud they are vulnerable to plankton eaters. In some deeper dwelling species, the young do not go through this period.
Eye of Octopus vulgaris
Octopuses have keen eyesight. Octopuses, like other cephalopods, can distinguish the polarization of light. Color vision appears to vary from species to species, being present in Octopus aegina but absent in Octopus vulgaris Kawamura, G., et al. (2001). . Nippon Suisan Gakkashi 67(1): 35â39. . Attached to the brain are two special organs, called statocysts, that allow the octopus to sense the orientation of its body relative to horizontal. An autonomic response keeps the octopus's eyes oriented so that the pupil slit is always horizontal.
Octopuses also have an excellent sense of touch. An octopus's suction cups are equipped with chemoreceptors so that the octopus can taste what it is touching. The arms contain tension sensors so that the octopus knows whether its arms are stretched out. However, the octopus has a very poor proprioceptive sense. The tension receptors are not sufficient for the octopus brain to determine the position of the octopus's body or arms. (It is not clear that the octopus brain would be capable of processing the large amount of information that this would require; the flexibility of an octopus's arms is much greater than that of the limbs of vertebrates, which devote large areas of cerebral cortex to the processing of proprioceptive inputs.) As a result, the octopus does not possess stereognosis; that is, it does not form a mental image of the overall shape of the object it is handling. It can detect local texture variations, but cannot integrate the information into a larger picture. Wells. Martin John. Octopus: physiology and behaviour of an advanced invertebrate. London : Chapman and Hall ; New York : distributed in the U.S.A. by Halsted Press, 1978.
The neurological autonomy of the arms means that the octopus has great difficulty learning about the detailed effects of its motions. The brain may issue a high-level command to the arms, but the nerve cords in the arms execute the details. There is no neurological path for the brain to receive feedback about just how its command was executed by the arms; the only way it knows just what motions were made is by observing the arms visually.
Octopuses swim headfirst, with arms trailing behind
Octopuses move about by crawling or swimming. Their main means of slow travel is crawling, with some swimming. Jet propulsion is their fastest means of locomotion, followed by swimming and walking. Locomotion by Abdopus aculeatus, C.L. Huffard 2006
They crawl by walking on their arms, usually on many at once, on both solid and soft surfaces, while supported in water. In 2005 it was reported that some octopuses (Adopus aculeatus and Amphioctopus marginatus under current taxonomy) can walk on two arms, while at the same time resembling plant matter. Science, vol. 307, p. 1927 This form of locomotion allows these octopuses to move quickly away from a potential predator while possibly not triggering that predator's search image for octopus (food). Octopuses lack bones and are extremely vulnerable to predators.
Octopuses swim by expelling a jet of water from a contractile mantle, and aiming it via a muscular siphon.
An adult North Pacific Giant Octopus, Enteroctopus dofleini
The North Pacific Giant Octopus, Enteroctopus dofleini, is often cited as the largest octopus species. Adults usually weigh around 15 kg (33 lb), with an arm span of up to 4.3 m (14 ft). Smithsonian National Zoological Park: Giant Pacific Octopus The largest specimen of this species to be scientifically documented was an animal with a live mass of 71 kg (156.5 lb). Cosgrove, J.A. 1987. Aspects of the Natural History of Octopus dofleini, the Giant Pacific Octopus. M.Sc. Thesis. Department of Biology, University of Victoria (Canada), 101 pp. The alternative contender is the Seven-arm Octopus, Haliphron atlanticus, based on a 61 kg (134 lb) carcass estimated to have a live mass of 75 kg (165 lb). O'Shea, S. 2004. The giant octopus Haliphron atlanticus (Mollusca : Octopoda) in New Zealand waters. New Zealand Journal of Zoology 31(1): 7-13. O'Shea, S. 2002. Haliphron atlanticus â a giant gelatinous octopus. Biodiversity Update 5: 1. However, there are a number of questionable size records that would suggest E. dofleini is the largest of all octopus species by a considerable margin; Norman, M. 2000. Cephalopods: A World Guide. ConchBooks, Hackenheim. p. 214. one such record is of a specimen weighing 272 kg (600 lb) and having an arm span of 9 m (30 ft). High, W.L. 1976. The giant Pacific octopus. U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service, Marine Fisheries Review 38(9): 17-22.
The term octopus, , is from Greek (oktapous), "eight-footed", Oktapous, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, at Perseus Scientific Latin from Greek (also ) "eight-footed" > or [combination form of "eight"] and "foot". Cf. Modern Greek with plural forms: octopuses , octopi , or octopodes . Currently, octopuses is the most common form in the US as well as the UK; octopodes is rare, and octopi is often objectionable. Peters, Pam (2004). The Cambridge Guide to English Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-62181-X, p. 388.
The Oxford English Dictionary (2004 update OED.com (subscription required). Retrieved October 22, 2007. ) lists octopuses, octopi and octopodes (in that order); it labels octopodes "rare", and notes that octopi derives from the mistaken assumption that is a second declension Latin noun, which it is not. Rather, it is a Latinization of Greek third-declension masculine ( , 'eight-foot'), plural ( ). If the word were native to Latin, it would be , plural , after the pattern of ('foot'), plural , analogous to "Centipede" . The actual Latin word for octopus and other similar species is , from Greek ( , 'many-foot'); usually the inaccurate plural is used instead of .
In modern Greek, the word is ( ), plural ( ), from Medieval ( ), equivalent to Classical ( ), variant of .
Chambers 21st Century Dictionary Chambersharrap.co.uk, Retrieved October 19, 2007. and the Compact Oxford Dictionary Askoxford.com, Retrieved October 19, 2007. list only octopuses, although the latter notes that octopodes is "still occasionally used"; the British National Corpus has 29 instances of octopuses, 11 of octopi and 4 of octopodes. Merriam-Webster 11th Collegiate Dictionary lists octopuses and octopi, in that order; Webster's New World College Dictionary lists octopuses, octopi and octopodes (in that order).
Fowler's Modern English Usage states that "the only acceptable plural in English is octopuses," and that octopi is misconceived and octopodes pedantic.
The term octopod (plural octopods or octopodes) is taken from the taxonomic order Octopoda but has no classical equivalent. The collective form octopus is usually reserved for animals consumed for food.
Moche Octopus. 200 A.D. Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru
Ancient peoples of the Mediterranean were aware of the octopus, as evidenced by certain artworks and designs of prehistory. For example, a stone carving found in the archaeological recovery from Bronze Age Minoan Crete at Knossos has a depiction of a fisherman carrying an octopus. C. Michael Hogan. 2007 Knossos fieldnotes, The Modern Antiquarian
The Moche people of ancient Peru worshipped the sea and its animals; moreover, octopuses were often depicted in their art. Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 199 7.
The Hawaiian creation myth relates that the present cosmos is only the last of a series, having arisen in stages from the wreck of the previous universe. In this account, the octopus is the lone survivor of the previous, alien universe.
The octopus has a significant role in Victor Hugo's book Travailleurs de la mer (Toilers of the Sea).
alt=Photo of dozens of octopus in metal bins
Humans eat octopus in many cultures. The arms and sometimes other body parts are prepared in various ways, often varying by species.
Octopus is a common ingredient in Japanese cuisine, including sushi, takoyaki, and Akashiyaki. Some small species are sometimes eaten alive as a novelty and health food. Similarly, a live octopus may be sliced up and the legs eaten while still squirming, which continues for some minutes.
alt=Photo of captured octopus and polespear
Octopus is eaten regularly in Hawaii, since many popular dishes are Asian in origin. Locally known by their Hawaiian or Japanese names, ("he'e" and "tako" respectively) octopus is also a popular fish bait.
Octopus is a common food in Mediterranean cuisine and Portuguese cuisine. In Galicia, polbo á feira (market fair style octopus) is a local delicacy. Restaurants which specialize or serve this dish are known as pulperÃas. On the Tunisian island of Djerba, local people catch octopuses by taking advantage of the animals' habit of hiding in safe places during the night. In the evening they put grey ceramic pots on the sea bed. The morning of the following day they check them for octopuses that sheltered there.
According to the USDA Nutrient Database (2007), cooked octopus contains approximately 139 calories per three ounce portion, and is a source of vitamin B3, B12, potassium, phosphorus, and selenium. Octopus Calories And Nutrition
Care must be taken to boil the octopus properly, to rid it of slime, smell, and residual ink.
Though octopuses can be difficult to keep in captivity, some people keep them as pets. Octopuses often escape even from supposedly secure tanks, due to their problem solving skills, mobility and lack of rigid structure.
The variation in size and life span among octopus species makes it difficult to know how long a new specimen can naturally be expected to live. That is, a small octopus may be just born or may be an adult, depending on its species. By selecting a well-known species, such as the California Two-spot Octopus, one can choose a small octopus (around the size of a tennis ball) and be confident that it is young with a full life ahead of it.
Octopuses are also quite strong for their size. Octopuses kept as pets have been known to open the covers of their aquariums and survive for a time in the air in order to get to a nearby feeder tank and gorge themselves on the fish there. They have also been known to catch and kill some species of sharks. Archived Google video of an octopus catching a shark, from The Octopus Show by Mike deGruy
A fisherman's catch of octopus dries in the sun
* Class CEPHALOPODA
** Subclass Nautiloidea: nautilus
** Subclass Coleoidea
*** Superorder Decapodiformes: squid, cuttlefish
*** Superorder Octopodiformes
**** Order Vampyromorphida: Vampire Squid
**** Order Octopoda
***** Genus â Keuppia (incertae sedis)
***** Genus â Palaeoctopus (incertae sedis)
***** Genus â Paleocirroteuthis (incertae sedis)
***** Genus â Pohlsepia (incertae sedis)
***** Genus â Proteroctopus (incertae sedis)
***** Genus â Styletoctopus (incertae sedis)
***** Suborder Cirrina: finned deep-sea octopus
****** Family Opisthoteuthidae: umbrella octopus
****** Family Cirroteuthidae
****** Family Stauroteuthidae
***** Suborder Incirrina
****** Family Amphitretidae: telescope octopus
****** Family Bolitaenidae: gelatinous octopus
****** Family Octopodidae: benthic octopus
****** Family Vitreledonellidae: Glass Octopus
****** Superfamily Argonautoida
******* Family Alloposidae: Seven-arm Octopus
******* Family Argonautidae: argonauts
******* Family Ocythoidae: Tuberculate Pelagic Octopus
******* Family Tremoctopodidae: blanket octopus
* Octopus wrestling
* Legend of the Octopus
* Henry the Hexapus, a six-armed octopus
* CephBase: Octopoda
* TONMO.COM - The Octopus News Magazine Online
* Tree of Life website: information about cephalopods along with pictures and videos
* Discussion about the plural
* An octopus's shark encounter - footage of an octopus eating a shark ( also in Quicktime format)
* Camouflage in action
* Video showing an Octopus escaping through a 1 inch hole
* Bipedal Octopuses- Video, Information, Original paper
*
* Video of walking octopuses
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Octopus | Has an octopus a hard beak, with its mouth at the center point of the arms? | Yes | data/set1/a10 | Octopus
The octopus is a cephalopod of the order Octopoda. Octopuses have two eyes and four pairs of arms and like other cephalopods are bilaterally symmetric. An octopus has a hard beak, with its mouth at the center point of the arms. Most octopuses have no internal or external skeleton, allowing them to squeeze through tight places. Octopuses are highly intelligent, probably the most intelligent of all invertebrates.
The octopus inhabits many diverse regions of the ocean, especially coral reefs. For defense against predators, they hide, flee quickly, expel ink, or use color-changing camouflage. An octopus trails its eight arms behind it as it swims. All octopuses are venomous, but only the small blue-ringed octopuses are deadly to humans. Unimelb.edu.au, Tentacles of venom: new study reveals all octopuses are venomous, University of Melbourne, Media Release, Wednesday 15 April 2009
In the larger sense, there are around 300 recognized octopus species, which is over one-third of the total number of known cephalopod species. The term octopus may also be used to refer only to those creatures in the genus Octopus.
A Common Octopus (Octopus vulgaris)
Octopuses are characterized by their eight arms, usually bearing suction cups. The arms of octopuses are often distinguished from the pair of feeding tentacles found in squid and cuttlefish. Norman, M. 2000. Cephalopods: A World Guide. ConchBooks, Hackenheim. p. 15. "There is some confusion around the terms arms versus tentacles. The numerous limbs of nautiluses are called tentacles. The ring of eight limbs around the mouth in cuttlefish, squids and octopuses are called arms. Cuttlefish and squid also have a pair of specialised limbs attached between the bases of the third and fourth arm pairs [...]. These are known as feeding tentacles and are used to shoot out and grab prey." Both types of limbs are muscular hydrostats. Unlike most other cephalopods, the majority of octopuses those in the suborder most commonly known, Incirrina have almost entirely soft bodies with no internal skeleton. They have neither a protective outer shell like the nautilus, nor any vestige of an internal shell or bones, like cuttlefish or squid. A beak, similar in shape to a parrot's beak, is the only hard part of their body. This enables them to squeeze through very narrow slits between underwater rocks, which is very helpful when they are fleeing from morays or other predatory fish. The octopuses in the less familiar Cirrina suborder have two fins and an internal shell, generally reducing their ability to squeeze into small spaces.
An octopus moving between tide pools during low tide
Octopuses have a relatively short life expectancy, and some species live for as little as six months. Larger species, such as the North Pacific Giant Octopus, may live for up to five years under suitable circumstances. However, reproduction is a cause of death: males can only live for a few months after mating, and females die shortly after their eggs hatch. They neglect to eat during the (roughly) one month period spent taking care of their unhatched eggs, but they don't die of starvation. Endocrine secretions from the two optic glands are the cause of genetically-programmed death (and if these glands are surgically removed, the octopus may live many months beyond reproduction, until she finally starves).
Stauroteuthis syrtensis, a finned octopus of the suborder Cirrina
Octopuses have three hearts. Two pump blood through each of the two gills, while the third pumps blood through the body. Octopus blood contains the copper-rich protein hemocyanin for transporting oxygen. Although less efficient under normal conditions than the iron-rich hemoglobin of vertebrates, in cold conditions with low oxygen pressure, hemocyanin oxygen transportation is more efficient than hemoglobin oxygen transportation. The hemocyanin is dissolved in the plasma instead of being carried within red blood cells and gives the blood a blue color. Octopuses draw water into their mantle cavity where it passes through its gills. As mollusks, octopuses have gills that are finely divided and vascularized outgrowths of either the outer or the inner body surface.
Octopuses are highly intelligent, likely more so than any other order of invertebrates. The exact extent of their intelligence and learning capability is much debated among biologists, NFW.org?, Is the octopus really the invertebrate intellect of the sea, by Doug Stewart. In: National Wildlife. Feb/Mar 1997, vol.35 no.2.
Giant OctopusâMighty but Secretive Denizen of the Deep Slate.com, How Smart is the Octopus? but maze and problem-solving experiments have shown that they do have both short- and long-term memory. Their short lifespans limit the amount they can ultimately learn. There has been much speculation to the effect that almost all octopus behaviors are independently learned rather than instinct-based, although this remains largely unproven. They learn almost no behaviors from their parents, with whom young octopuses have very little contact.
An octopus opening a container with a screw cap
An octopus has a highly complex nervous system, only part of which is localized in its brain. Two-thirds of an octopus's neurons are found in the nerve cords of its arms, which have a remarkable amount of autonomy. Octopus arms show a wide variety of complex reflex actions arising on at least three different levels of the nervous system. Unlike vertebrates, the complex motor skills of octopuses in their higher brain are not organized using an internal somatotopic map of its body. Zullo L, Sumbre G, Agnisola C, Flash T, Hochner B. (2009). Nonsomatotopic organization of the higher motor centers in octopus.
Curr Biol. 19(19):1632-6. PMID 19765993 Some octopuses, such as the Mimic Octopus, will move their arms in ways that emulate the movements of other sea creatures.
In laboratory experiments, octopuses can be readily trained to distinguish between different shapes and patterns. They have been reported to practice observational learning, Octopus intelligence: jar opening although the validity of these findings is widely contested on a number of grounds. What is this octopus thinking?. By Garry Hamilton. Octopuses have also been observed in what some have described as play: repeatedly releasing bottles or toys into a circular current in their aquariums and then catching them. What behavior can we expect of octopuses?. By Dr. Jennifer Mather, Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Lethbridge and Roland C. Anderson, The Seattle Aquarium. Octopuses often break out of their aquariums and sometimes into others in search of food. They have even boarded fishing boats and opened holds to eat crabs.
In some countries, octopuses are on the list of experimental animals on which surgery may not be performed without anesthesia. In the UK, cephalopods such as octopuses are regarded as honorary vertebrates under the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 and other cruelty to animals legislation, extending to them protections not normally afforded to invertebrates. United Kingdom Animals (Scientific Procedures) act of 1986
The octopus is the only invertebrate which has been conclusively shown to use tools. At least four specimens of the Veined Octopus (Amphioctopus marginatus) have been witnessed retrieving discarded coconut shells, manipulating them, and then reassembling them to use as shelter. This discovery was documented in the journal Current Biology and has also been caught on video. /ref> /ref>
Greater Blue-ringed Octopus (Hapalochlaena lunulata)
An octopus's main (primary) defense is to hide, either not to be seen at all, or not to be detected as an octopus. Hanlon, R.T. & J.B. Messenger 1996. Cephalopod Behaviour. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Octopuses have several secondary defenses (defenses they use once they have been seen by a predator). The most common secondary defense is fast escape. Other defenses include the use of ink sacs, camouflage, and autotomising limbs.
Most octopuses can eject a thick blackish ink in a large cloud to aid in escaping from predators. The main colouring agent of the ink is melanin, which is the same chemical that gives humans their hair and skin colour. This ink cloud is thought to reduce the efficiency of olfactory organs, which would aid an octopus's evasion from predators that employ smell for hunting, such as sharks. Ink clouds of some species might serve as pseudomorphs, or decoys that the predator attacks instead. Caldwell, R. L. (2005). "An Observation of Inking Behavior Protecting Adult Octopus bocki from Predation by Green Turtle (Chelonia mydas) Hatchlings." Pacific Science 59(1): 69â72.
This small octopus species travels with shells it has collected for protection.
An octopus's camouflage is aided by certain specialized skin cells which can change the apparent color, opacity, and reflectiveness of the epidermis. Chromatophores contain yellow, orange, red, brown, or black pigments; most species have three of these colors, while some have two or four. Other color-changing cells are reflective iridophores, and leucophores (white). This color-changing ability can also be used to communicate with or warn other octopuses. The very venomous blue-ringed octopus becomes bright yellow with blue rings when it is provoked. Octopuses can use muscles in the skin to change the texture of their mantle in order to achieve a greater camouflage. In some species the mantle can take on the spiky appearance of seaweed, or the scraggly, bumpy texture of a rock, among other disguises. However in some species skin anatomy is limited to relatively patternless shades of one color, and limited skin texture. It is thought that octopuses that are day-active and/or live in complex habitats such as coral reefs have evolved more complex skin than their nocturnal and/or sand-dwelling relatives.
When under attack, some octopuses can perform arm autotomy, in a similar manner to the way skinks and other lizards detach their tails. The crawling arm serves as a distraction to would-be predators.
A few species, such as the Mimic Octopus, have a fourth defense mechanism. They can combine their highly flexible bodies with their color changing ability to accurately mimic other, more dangerous animals such as lionfish, sea snakes, and eels. Norman, M.D., J. Finn & T. Tregenza (2001). Proceedings of the Royal Society 268: 1755â1758. Norman, M.D. & F.G.Hochberg (2005). The "Mimic Octopus" (Thaumoctopus mimicus n. gen. et sp.), a new octopus from the tropical Indo-West Pacific (Cephalopoda: Octopodidae). Molluscan Research 25: 57â70. Abstract
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When octopuses reproduce, males use a specialized arm called a hectocotylus to insert spermatophores (packets of sperm) into the female's mantle cavity. The hectocotylus in benthic octopuses is usually the third right arm. Males die within a few months of mating. In some species, the female octopus can keep the sperm alive inside her for weeks until her eggs are mature. After they have been fertilized, the female lays about 200,000 eggs (this figure dramatically varies between families, genera, species and also individuals). The female hangs these eggs in strings from the ceiling of her lair, or individually attaches them to the substrate depending on the species. The female cares for the eggs, guarding them against predators, and gently blowing currents of water over them so that they get enough oxygen. The female does not hunt during the roughly one-month period spent taking care of the unhatched eggs and may ingest some of her own arms for sustenance. At around the time the eggs hatch, the mother leaves the lair and is too weak to defend herself from predators like cod, often succumbing to their attacks. The young larval octopuses spend a period of time drifting in clouds of plankton, where they feed on copepods, larval crabs and larval starfish until they are ready to descend to the ocean bottom, where the cycle repeats. This is a dangerous time for the larval octopuses; in the plankton cloud they are vulnerable to plankton eaters. In some deeper dwelling species, the young do not go through this period.
Eye of Octopus vulgaris
Octopuses have keen eyesight. Octopuses, like other cephalopods, can distinguish the polarization of light. Color vision appears to vary from species to species, being present in Octopus aegina but absent in Octopus vulgaris Kawamura, G., et al. (2001). . Nippon Suisan Gakkashi 67(1): 35â39. . Attached to the brain are two special organs, called statocysts, that allow the octopus to sense the orientation of its body relative to horizontal. An autonomic response keeps the octopus's eyes oriented so that the pupil slit is always horizontal.
Octopuses also have an excellent sense of touch. An octopus's suction cups are equipped with chemoreceptors so that the octopus can taste what it is touching. The arms contain tension sensors so that the octopus knows whether its arms are stretched out. However, the octopus has a very poor proprioceptive sense. The tension receptors are not sufficient for the octopus brain to determine the position of the octopus's body or arms. (It is not clear that the octopus brain would be capable of processing the large amount of information that this would require; the flexibility of an octopus's arms is much greater than that of the limbs of vertebrates, which devote large areas of cerebral cortex to the processing of proprioceptive inputs.) As a result, the octopus does not possess stereognosis; that is, it does not form a mental image of the overall shape of the object it is handling. It can detect local texture variations, but cannot integrate the information into a larger picture. Wells. Martin John. Octopus: physiology and behaviour of an advanced invertebrate. London : Chapman and Hall ; New York : distributed in the U.S.A. by Halsted Press, 1978.
The neurological autonomy of the arms means that the octopus has great difficulty learning about the detailed effects of its motions. The brain may issue a high-level command to the arms, but the nerve cords in the arms execute the details. There is no neurological path for the brain to receive feedback about just how its command was executed by the arms; the only way it knows just what motions were made is by observing the arms visually.
Octopuses swim headfirst, with arms trailing behind
Octopuses move about by crawling or swimming. Their main means of slow travel is crawling, with some swimming. Jet propulsion is their fastest means of locomotion, followed by swimming and walking. Locomotion by Abdopus aculeatus, C.L. Huffard 2006
They crawl by walking on their arms, usually on many at once, on both solid and soft surfaces, while supported in water. In 2005 it was reported that some octopuses (Adopus aculeatus and Amphioctopus marginatus under current taxonomy) can walk on two arms, while at the same time resembling plant matter. Science, vol. 307, p. 1927 This form of locomotion allows these octopuses to move quickly away from a potential predator while possibly not triggering that predator's search image for octopus (food). Octopuses lack bones and are extremely vulnerable to predators.
Octopuses swim by expelling a jet of water from a contractile mantle, and aiming it via a muscular siphon.
An adult North Pacific Giant Octopus, Enteroctopus dofleini
The North Pacific Giant Octopus, Enteroctopus dofleini, is often cited as the largest octopus species. Adults usually weigh around 15 kg (33 lb), with an arm span of up to 4.3 m (14 ft). Smithsonian National Zoological Park: Giant Pacific Octopus The largest specimen of this species to be scientifically documented was an animal with a live mass of 71 kg (156.5 lb). Cosgrove, J.A. 1987. Aspects of the Natural History of Octopus dofleini, the Giant Pacific Octopus. M.Sc. Thesis. Department of Biology, University of Victoria (Canada), 101 pp. The alternative contender is the Seven-arm Octopus, Haliphron atlanticus, based on a 61 kg (134 lb) carcass estimated to have a live mass of 75 kg (165 lb). O'Shea, S. 2004. The giant octopus Haliphron atlanticus (Mollusca : Octopoda) in New Zealand waters. New Zealand Journal of Zoology 31(1): 7-13. O'Shea, S. 2002. Haliphron atlanticus â a giant gelatinous octopus. Biodiversity Update 5: 1. However, there are a number of questionable size records that would suggest E. dofleini is the largest of all octopus species by a considerable margin; Norman, M. 2000. Cephalopods: A World Guide. ConchBooks, Hackenheim. p. 214. one such record is of a specimen weighing 272 kg (600 lb) and having an arm span of 9 m (30 ft). High, W.L. 1976. The giant Pacific octopus. U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service, Marine Fisheries Review 38(9): 17-22.
The term octopus, , is from Greek (oktapous), "eight-footed", Oktapous, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, at Perseus Scientific Latin from Greek (also ) "eight-footed" > or [combination form of "eight"] and "foot". Cf. Modern Greek with plural forms: octopuses , octopi , or octopodes . Currently, octopuses is the most common form in the US as well as the UK; octopodes is rare, and octopi is often objectionable. Peters, Pam (2004). The Cambridge Guide to English Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-62181-X, p. 388.
The Oxford English Dictionary (2004 update OED.com (subscription required). Retrieved October 22, 2007. ) lists octopuses, octopi and octopodes (in that order); it labels octopodes "rare", and notes that octopi derives from the mistaken assumption that is a second declension Latin noun, which it is not. Rather, it is a Latinization of Greek third-declension masculine ( , 'eight-foot'), plural ( ). If the word were native to Latin, it would be , plural , after the pattern of ('foot'), plural , analogous to "Centipede" . The actual Latin word for octopus and other similar species is , from Greek ( , 'many-foot'); usually the inaccurate plural is used instead of .
In modern Greek, the word is ( ), plural ( ), from Medieval ( ), equivalent to Classical ( ), variant of .
Chambers 21st Century Dictionary Chambersharrap.co.uk, Retrieved October 19, 2007. and the Compact Oxford Dictionary Askoxford.com, Retrieved October 19, 2007. list only octopuses, although the latter notes that octopodes is "still occasionally used"; the British National Corpus has 29 instances of octopuses, 11 of octopi and 4 of octopodes. Merriam-Webster 11th Collegiate Dictionary lists octopuses and octopi, in that order; Webster's New World College Dictionary lists octopuses, octopi and octopodes (in that order).
Fowler's Modern English Usage states that "the only acceptable plural in English is octopuses," and that octopi is misconceived and octopodes pedantic.
The term octopod (plural octopods or octopodes) is taken from the taxonomic order Octopoda but has no classical equivalent. The collective form octopus is usually reserved for animals consumed for food.
Moche Octopus. 200 A.D. Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru
Ancient peoples of the Mediterranean were aware of the octopus, as evidenced by certain artworks and designs of prehistory. For example, a stone carving found in the archaeological recovery from Bronze Age Minoan Crete at Knossos has a depiction of a fisherman carrying an octopus. C. Michael Hogan. 2007 Knossos fieldnotes, The Modern Antiquarian
The Moche people of ancient Peru worshipped the sea and its animals; moreover, octopuses were often depicted in their art. Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 199 7.
The Hawaiian creation myth relates that the present cosmos is only the last of a series, having arisen in stages from the wreck of the previous universe. In this account, the octopus is the lone survivor of the previous, alien universe.
The octopus has a significant role in Victor Hugo's book Travailleurs de la mer (Toilers of the Sea).
alt=Photo of dozens of octopus in metal bins
Humans eat octopus in many cultures. The arms and sometimes other body parts are prepared in various ways, often varying by species.
Octopus is a common ingredient in Japanese cuisine, including sushi, takoyaki, and Akashiyaki. Some small species are sometimes eaten alive as a novelty and health food. Similarly, a live octopus may be sliced up and the legs eaten while still squirming, which continues for some minutes.
alt=Photo of captured octopus and polespear
Octopus is eaten regularly in Hawaii, since many popular dishes are Asian in origin. Locally known by their Hawaiian or Japanese names, ("he'e" and "tako" respectively) octopus is also a popular fish bait.
Octopus is a common food in Mediterranean cuisine and Portuguese cuisine. In Galicia, polbo á feira (market fair style octopus) is a local delicacy. Restaurants which specialize or serve this dish are known as pulperÃas. On the Tunisian island of Djerba, local people catch octopuses by taking advantage of the animals' habit of hiding in safe places during the night. In the evening they put grey ceramic pots on the sea bed. The morning of the following day they check them for octopuses that sheltered there.
According to the USDA Nutrient Database (2007), cooked octopus contains approximately 139 calories per three ounce portion, and is a source of vitamin B3, B12, potassium, phosphorus, and selenium. Octopus Calories And Nutrition
Care must be taken to boil the octopus properly, to rid it of slime, smell, and residual ink.
Though octopuses can be difficult to keep in captivity, some people keep them as pets. Octopuses often escape even from supposedly secure tanks, due to their problem solving skills, mobility and lack of rigid structure.
The variation in size and life span among octopus species makes it difficult to know how long a new specimen can naturally be expected to live. That is, a small octopus may be just born or may be an adult, depending on its species. By selecting a well-known species, such as the California Two-spot Octopus, one can choose a small octopus (around the size of a tennis ball) and be confident that it is young with a full life ahead of it.
Octopuses are also quite strong for their size. Octopuses kept as pets have been known to open the covers of their aquariums and survive for a time in the air in order to get to a nearby feeder tank and gorge themselves on the fish there. They have also been known to catch and kill some species of sharks. Archived Google video of an octopus catching a shark, from The Octopus Show by Mike deGruy
A fisherman's catch of octopus dries in the sun
* Class CEPHALOPODA
** Subclass Nautiloidea: nautilus
** Subclass Coleoidea
*** Superorder Decapodiformes: squid, cuttlefish
*** Superorder Octopodiformes
**** Order Vampyromorphida: Vampire Squid
**** Order Octopoda
***** Genus â Keuppia (incertae sedis)
***** Genus â Palaeoctopus (incertae sedis)
***** Genus â Paleocirroteuthis (incertae sedis)
***** Genus â Pohlsepia (incertae sedis)
***** Genus â Proteroctopus (incertae sedis)
***** Genus â Styletoctopus (incertae sedis)
***** Suborder Cirrina: finned deep-sea octopus
****** Family Opisthoteuthidae: umbrella octopus
****** Family Cirroteuthidae
****** Family Stauroteuthidae
***** Suborder Incirrina
****** Family Amphitretidae: telescope octopus
****** Family Bolitaenidae: gelatinous octopus
****** Family Octopodidae: benthic octopus
****** Family Vitreledonellidae: Glass Octopus
****** Superfamily Argonautoida
******* Family Alloposidae: Seven-arm Octopus
******* Family Argonautidae: argonauts
******* Family Ocythoidae: Tuberculate Pelagic Octopus
******* Family Tremoctopodidae: blanket octopus
* Octopus wrestling
* Legend of the Octopus
* Henry the Hexapus, a six-armed octopus
* CephBase: Octopoda
* TONMO.COM - The Octopus News Magazine Online
* Tree of Life website: information about cephalopods along with pictures and videos
* Discussion about the plural
* An octopus's shark encounter - footage of an octopus eating a shark ( also in Quicktime format)
* Camouflage in action
* Video showing an Octopus escaping through a 1 inch hole
* Bipedal Octopuses- Video, Information, Original paper
*
* Video of walking octopuses
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Pablo_Picasso | What happened in 1968 through 1971? | Devoting his full energies to his work, Picasso became more daring, his works more colorful and expressive, and from 1968 through 1971 | data/set6/a1 | Pablo_Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno MarÃa de los Remedios Cipriano de la SantÃsima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso (25 October 1881 â 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, draughtsman, and sculptor. He is one of the most recognized figures in 20th-century art. He is best known for co-founding the Cubist movement and for the wide variety of styles embodied in his work. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907) and Guernica (1937), his portrayal of the German bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War.
Picasso demonstrated uncanny artistic talent in his early years, painting in a realistic manner through his childhood and adolescence; during the first decade of the twentieth century his style changed as he experimented with different theories, techniques, and ideas. Picassoâs creativity manifested itself in numerous mediums, including painting, sculpture, drawing, and architecture. His revolutionary artistic accomplishments brought him universal renown and immense fortunes throughout his life, making him the best-known figure in twentieth century art.
Picasso was baptized Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno MarÃa de los Remedios Crispiniano de la SantÃsima Trinidad, a series of names honouring various saints and relatives. The name on his baptismal certificate differs slightly from the name on his birth record. On-line Picasso Project Added to these were Ruiz and Picasso, for his father and mother, respectively, as per Spanish custom. Born in the city of Málaga in the Andalusian region of Spain, he was the first child of Don José Ruiz y Blasco (1838â1913) and MarÃa Picasso y López. Picassoâs family was middle-class; his father was also a painter who specialized in naturalistic depictions of birds and other game. For most of his life Ruiz was a professor of art at the School of Crafts and a curator of a local museum. Ruizâs ancestors were minor aristocrats.
The house where Picasso was born, in Málaga
Picasso showed a passion and a skill for drawing from an early age; according to his mother, --> his first words were âpiz, pizâ, a shortening of lápiz, the Spanish word for âpencilâ. Wertenbaker, 9. --> From the age of seven, Picasso received formal artistic training from his father in figure drawing and oil painting. Ruiz was a traditional, academic artist and instructor who believed that proper training required disciplined copying of the masters, and drawing the human body from plaster casts and live models. His son became preoccupied with art to the detriment of his classwork.
The family moved to La Coruña in 1891 where his father became a professor at the School of Fine Arts. They stayed almost four years. On one occasion the father found his son painting over his unfinished sketch of a pigeon. Observing the precision of his sonâs technique, Ruiz felt that the thirteen-year-old Picasso had surpassed him, and vowed to give up painting. Wertenbaker, 11.
In 1895, Picasso's seven-year old sister, Conchita, died of diphtheriaâa traumatic event in his life. After her death, the family moved to Barcelona, with Ruiz transferring to its School of Fine Arts. Picasso thrived in the city, regarding it in times of sadness or nostalgia as his true home. Wertenbaker, 13. Ruiz persuaded the officials at the academy to allow his son to take an entrance exam for the advanced class. This process often took students a month, but Picasso completed it in a week, and the impressed jury admitted Picasso, who was 13. The student lacked discipline but made friendships that would affect him in later life. His father rented him a small room close to home so Picasso could work alone, yet Ruiz checked up on him numerous times a day, judging his sonâs drawings. The two argued frequently.
Picassoâs father and uncle decided to send the young artist to Madridâs Royal Academy of San Fernando, the country's foremost art school. In 1897, Picasso, age 16, set off for the first time on his own, but he disliked formal instruction and quit attending classes soon after enrollment. Madrid, however, held many other attractions: the Prado housed paintings by the venerable Diego Velázquez, Francisco Goya, and Francisco Zurbarán. Picasso especially admired the works of El Greco; their elements, the elongated limbs, arresting colors, and mystical visages, are echoed in Picassoâs Åuvre.
[[Image:GertrudeStein.JPG|thumb|left|upright|Portrait of Gertrude Stein, 1906, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. When someone commented that Stein did not look like her portrait, Picasso replied, "She will". Portrait of Gertrude Stein Metropolitan Museum, Retrieved November 26, 2008 ]]
After studying art in Madrid, Picasso made his first trip to Paris in 1900, then the art capital of Europe. There, he met his first Parisian friend, the journalist and poet Max Jacob, who helped Picasso learn the language and its literature. Soon they shared an apartment; Max slept at night while Picasso slept during the day and worked at night. These were times of severe poverty, cold, and desperation. Much of his work was burned to keep the small room warm. During the first five months of 1901, Picasso lived in Madrid, where he and his anarchist friend Francisco de AsÃs Soler founded the magazine Arte Joven (Young Art), which published five issues. Soler solicited articles and Picasso illustrated the journal, mostly contributing grim cartoons depicting and sympathizing with the state of the poor. The first issue was published on 31 March 1901, by which time the artist had started to sign his work simply Picasso, while before he had signed Pablo Ruiz y Picasso. Cirlot, 1972, p. 125.
By 1905 Picasso became a favorite of the American art collectors Leo and Gertrude Stein. Their older brother Michael Stein and his wife Sarah also became collectors of his work. Picasso painted portraits of both Gertrude Stein and her nephew Allan Stein. Pablo Picasso, Portrait of Allan Stein, 1906, retrieved November 27, 2008 Gertrude Stein became Picasso's principal patron, acquiring his drawings and paintings and exhibiting them in her informal Salon at her home in Paris. Special Exhibit Examines Dynamic Relationship Between the Art of Pablo Picasso and Writing Yale University Art Gallery, Retrieved October 8, 2009 At one of her gatherings in 1905, he met Henri Matisse, who was to become a lifelong friend and rival. The Steins introduced him to Claribel Cone and her sister Etta who were American art collectors; they also began to acquire Picasso and Matisse's paintings. Eventually Leo Stein moved to Italy, and Michael and Sarah Stein became patrons of Matisse; while Gertrude Stein continued to collect Picasso. James R. Mellow, Charmed Circle: Gertrude Stein and Company, Retrieved November 27, 2008
Portrait of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, 1910, The Art Institute of Chicago. Picasso wrote of Kahnweiler What would have become of us if Kahnweiler hadn't had a business sense?
In 1907 Picasso joined the art gallery that had recently been opened in Paris by Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler. Kahnweiler was a German art historian, art collector who became one of the premier French Art dealers of the 20th century. He became prominent in Paris beginning in 1907 for being among the first champions of Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and Cubism. Kahnweiler championed burgeoning artists such as André Derain, Kees Van Dongen, Fernand Léger, Juan Gris, Maurice de Vlaminck and several others who had come from all over the globe to live and work in Montparnasse at the time. Cubism and its Legacy, Tate Liverpool, retrieved November 27, 2008
In Paris, Picasso entertained a distinguished coterie of friends in the Montmartre and Montparnasse quarters, including André Breton, poet Guillaume Apollinaire, writer Alfred Jarry, and Gertrude Stein. Apollinaire was arrested on suspicion of stealing the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in 1911. Apollonaire pointed to his friend Picasso, who was also brought in for questioning, but both were later exonerated. Time Magazine, Stealing the Mona Lisa, 1911. Consulted on 15 August 2007.
Portrait of Igor Stravinsky, c. 1920
In the early 20th century, Picasso divided his time between Barcelona and Paris. In 1904, in the middle of a storm, he met Fernande Olivier, a Bohemian artist who became his mistress. Olivier appears in many of his Rose period paintings. After acquiring fame and some fortune, Picasso left Olivier for Marcelle Humbert, whom he called Eva Gouel. Picasso included declarations of his love for Eva in many Cubist works. Picasso was devastated by her premature death from illness at the age of 30 in 1915. Charles Harrison, Francis Frascina, Gillian Perry, Primitivism, Cubism, Abstraction, retrieved November 27, 2008
After World War I, Picasso made a number of important associations and relationships with figures associated with Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. Among his friends during this period were Jean Cocteau, Jean Hugo, Juan Gris and others. In the summer of 1918, Picasso married Olga Khokhlova, a ballerina with Sergei Diaghilevâs troupe, for whom Picasso was designing a ballet, Parade, in Rome; and they spent their honeymoon in the villa near Biarritz of the glamorous Chilean art patron Eugenia Errázuriz. Khokhlova introduced Picasso to high society, formal dinner parties, and all the social niceties attendant on the life of the rich in 1920s Paris. The two had a son, Paulo, who would grow up to be a dissolute motorcycle racer and chauffeur to his father. Khokhlovaâs insistence on social propriety clashed with Picassoâs bohemian tendencies and the two lived in a state of constant conflict. During the same period that Picasso collaborated with Diaghilevâs troup, he and Igor Stravinsky collaborated on Pulcinella in 1920. Picasso took the opportunity to make several sketches of the composer.
In 1927 Picasso met 17-year-old Marie-Thérèse Walter and began a secret affair with her. Picassoâs marriage to Khokhlova soon ended in separation rather than divorce, as French law required an even division of property in the case of divorce, and Picasso did not want Khokhlova to have half his wealth. The two remained legally married until Khokhlovaâs death in 1955. Picasso carried on a long-standing affair with Marie-Thérèse Walter and fathered a daughter, Maia, with her. Marie-Thérèse lived in the vain hope that Picasso would one day marry her, and hanged herself four years after Picassoâs death. Throughout his life Picasso maintained a number of mistresses in addition to his wife or primary partner. Picasso was married twice and had four children by three women.
Dora Maar au Chat, 1941
The photographer and painter Dora Maar was also a constant companion and lover of Picasso. The two were closest in the late 1930s and early 1940s and it was Maar who documented the painting of Guernica.
During the Second World War, Picasso remained in Paris while the Germans occupied the city. Picassoâs artistic style did not fit the Nazi views of art, so he was not able to show his works during this time. Retreating to his studio, he continued to paint all the while. Although the Germans outlawed bronze casting in Paris, Picasso continued regardless, using bronze smuggled to him by the French resistance.
After the liberation of Paris in 1944, Picasso began to keep company with a young art student, Françoise Gilot. The two eventually became lovers, and had two children together, Claude and Paloma. Unique among Picassoâs women, Gilot left Picasso in 1953, allegedly because of abusive treatment and infidelities. This was a severe blow to Picasso.
He went through a difficult period after Gilotâs departure, coming to terms with his advancing age and his perception that, now in his 70s, he was no longer attractive, but rather grotesque to young women. A number of ink drawings from this period explore this theme of the hideous old dwarf as buffoonish counterpoint to the beautiful young girl, including several from a six-week affair with Geneviève Laporte, who in June 2005 auctioned off the drawings Picasso made of her.
Picasso was not long in finding another lover, Jacqueline Roque. She worked at the Madoura Pottery in Vallauris on the French Riviera, where Picasso made and painted ceramics. The two remained together for the rest of Picassoâs life, marrying in 1961. Their marriage was also the means of one last act of revenge against Gilot. Gilot had been seeking a legal means to legitimize her children with Picasso, Claude and Paloma. With Picassoâs encouragement, she had arranged to divorce her then husband, Luc Simon, and marry Picasso to secure her childrenâs rights. Picasso then secretly married Roque after Gilot had filed for divorce in order to exact his revenge for her leaving him.
Picasso had constructed a huge gothic structure and could afford large villas in the south of France, at Notre-dame-de-vie on the outskirts of Mougins, in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur. By this time he was a celebrity, and there was often as much interest in his personal life as his art.
In addition to his manifold artistic accomplishments, Picasso had a film career, including a cameo appearance in Jean Cocteauâs Testament of Orpheus. Picasso always played himself in his film appearances. In 1955 he helped make the film Le Mystère Picasso (The Mystery of Picasso) directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot.
Pablo Picasso died on 8 April 1973 in Mougins, France, while he and his wife Jacqueline entertained friends for dinner. His final words were âDrink to me, drink to my health, you know I canât drink any more.â accessed online 15 August 2007 He was interred at the Chateau of Vauvenargues near Aix-en-Provence, a property he had acquired in 1958 and occupied with Jacqueline between 1959 and 1962. Jacqueline Roque prevented his children Claude and Paloma from attending the funeral. The Rich Die Richer and You Can too, by William D. Zabel, Published 1996 John Wiley and Sons, p.11. ISBN 0471155322 Accessed online 15 August 2007 Devastated and lonely after the death of Picasso, Jacqueline Roque took her own life by gunshot in 1986 when she was 60 years old. Picasso's Family Album, Michael Kimmelman, New York Times, retrieved November 28, 2008
* Paulo (4 February 1921 â 5 June 1975) (Born Paul Joseph Picasso) â with Olga Khokhlova
* Maya (5 September 1935 â ) (Born Maria de la Concepcion Picasso) â with Marie-Thérèse Walter
* Claude (15 May 1947 â) (Born Claude Pierre Pablo Picasso) â with Françoise Gilot
* Paloma (19 April 1949 â ) (Born Anne Paloma Picasso) â with Françoise Gilot
Pablo Picasso, Massacre in Korea, 1951
Picasso remained neutral during World War I, the Spanish Civil War, and World War II, refusing to fight for any side or country. Some of his contemporaries felt that his pacifism had more to do with cowardice than principle. An article in The New Yorker called him âa coward, who sat out two world wars while his friends were suffering and dyingâ. As a Spanish citizen living in France, Picasso was under no compulsion to fight against the invading Germans in either World War. In the Spanish Civil War, service for Spaniards living abroad was optional and would have involved a voluntary return to the country to join either side. While Picasso expressed anger and condemnation of Francisco Franco and fascists through his art, he did not take up arms against them.
He also remained aloof from the Catalan independence movement during his youth despite expressing general support and being friendly with activists within it.
In 1944 Picasso joined the French Communist Party, attended an international peace conference in Poland, and in 1950 received the Lenin Peace Prize from the Soviet government. Picassoâs Party Line, ARTnews Retrieved 31 May 2007. But party criticism of a portrait of Stalin as insufficiently realistic cooled Picassoâs interest in communist politics, though he remained a loyal member of the Communist Party until his death. In a 1945 interview with Jerome Seckler, Picasso stated: âI am a Communist and my painting is Communist painting. ... But if I were a shoemaker, Royalist or Communist or anything else, I would not necessarily hammer my shoes in a special way to show my politics.â His Communist militancy, not uncommon among intellectuals and artists at the time although it was officially banned in Francoist Spain, has long been the subject of some controversy; a notable source or demonstration thereof was a sarcastic quote commonly attributed to Salvador Dalà (with whom Picasso had a rather strained relationship Failed attempts at correspondence between Dalà and Picasso ), ostensibly casting doubt on the true honesty of his political allegiances:
: Picasso es pintor, yo también; [...] Picasso es español, yo también; Picasso es comunista, yo tampoco.
:(Picasso is a painter, so am I; [...] Picasso is a Spaniard, so am I; Picasso is a communist, neither am I.) Picasso by Dalà Study on Salvador Dalà Salvador Dalà quotes Dalà "sympathetic"? De El Greco a Salvador DalÃ, Pasando por Picasso Article on Dalà in El Mundo
He was against the intervention of the United Nations and the United States Picasso A Retrospective, Museum of Modern Art, edited by William Rubin, copyright MoMA 1980, p.383 in the Korean War and he depicted it in Massacre in Korea. In 1962, he received the International Lenin Peace Prize.
Picassoâs work is often categorized into periods. While the names of many of his later periods are debated, the most commonly accepted periods in his work are the Blue Period (1901â1904), the Rose Period (1905â1907), the African-influenced Period (1908â1909), Analytic Cubism (1909â1912), and Synthetic Cubism (1912â1919).
In 1939â40 the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, under its director Alfred Barr, a Picasso enthusiast, held a major and highly successful retrospective of his principal works up until that time. This exhibition lionized the artist, brought into full public view in America the scope of his artistry, and resulted in a reinterpretation of his work by contemporary art historians and scholars. The MoMA retrospective of 1939â40 â see Michael C. FitzGerald, Making Modernism: Picasso and the Creation of the Market for Twentieth-Century Art (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), pp. 243â262.
Picassoâs training under his father began before 1890. His progress can be traced in the collection of early works now held by the Museu Picasso in Barcelona, which provides one of the most comprehensive records extant of any major artistâs beginnings. Cirlot,1972, p.6. During 1893 the juvenile quality of his earliest work falls away, and by 1894 his career as a painter can be said to have begun. Cirlot, 1972, p. 14. The academic realism apparent in the works of the mid-1890s is well displayed in The First Communion (1896), a large composition that depicts his sister, Lola. In the same year, at the age of 14, he painted Portrait of Aunt Pepa, a vigorous and dramatic portrait that Juan-Eduardo Cirlot has called âwithout a doubt one of the greatest in the whole history of Spanish painting.â Cirlot, 1972, p.37.
In 1897 his realism became tinged with Symbolist influence, in a series of landscape paintings rendered in non naturalistic violet and green tones. What some call his Modernist period (1899â1900) followed. His exposure to the work of Rossetti, Steinlen, Toulouse-Lautrec and Edvard Munch, combined with his admiration for favorite old masters such as El Greco, led Picasso to a personal version of modernism in his works of this period. Cirlot, 1972, p. 87â108.
Femme aux Bras Croisés, 1902
Picassoâs Blue Period (1901â1904) consists of somber paintings rendered in shades of blue and blue-green, only occasionally warmed by other colors. This periodâs starting point is uncertain; it may have begun in Spain in the spring of 1901, or in Paris in the second half of the year. Cirlot, 1972, p.127. Many paintings of gaunt mothers with children date from this period. In his austere use of color and sometimes doleful subject matterâprostitutes and beggars are frequent subjectsâPicasso was influenced by a trip through Spain and by the suicide of his friend Carlos Casagemas. Starting in autumn of 1901 he painted several posthumous portraits of Casagemas, culminating in the gloomy allegorical painting La Vie (1903), now in the Cleveland Museum of Art. Wattenmaker, Distel, et al.,1993, p. 304.
The same mood pervades the well-known etching The Frugal Repast (1904), which depicts a blind man and a sighted woman, both emaciated, seated at a nearly bare table. Blindness is a recurrent theme in Picassoâs works of this period, also represented in The Blindmanâs Meal (1903, the Metropolitan Museum of Art) and in the portrait of Celestina (1903). Other works include Portrait of Soler and Portrait of Suzanne Blochâ.
Pablo Picasso, Garçon à la pipe, (Boy with a Pipe), 1905, Rose Period
The Rose Period (1904â1906) Wattenmaker, Distel, et al.,1993, p. 194. is characterized by a more cheery style with orange and pink colors, and featuring many circus people, acrobats and harlequins known in France as saltimbanques. The harlequin, a comedic character usually depicted in checkered patterned clothing, became a personal symbol for Picasso. Picasso met Fernande Olivier, a model for sculptors and artists, in Paris in 1904, and many of these paintings are influenced by his warm relationship with her, in addition to his increased exposure to French painting. The generally upbeat and optimistic mood of paintings in this period is reminiscent of the 1899â1901 period (i.e. just prior to the Blue Period) and 1904 can be considered a transition year between the two periods.
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), Museum of Modern Art, New York
Picassoâs African-influenced Period (1907â1909) begins with the two figures on the right in his painting, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, which were inspired by African artifacts. Formal ideas developed during this period lead directly into the Cubist period that follows.
Three Musicians (1921), Museum of Modern Art
Analytic cubism (1909â1912) is a style of painting Picasso developed along with Georges Braque using monochrome brownish and neutral colors. Both artists took apart objects and âanalyzedâ them in terms of their shapes. Picasso and Braqueâs paintings at this time have many similarities. Synthetic cubism (1912â1919) was a further development of the genre, in which cut paper fragmentsâoften wallpaper or portions of newspaper pagesâwere pasted into compositions, marking the first use of collage in fine art.
In the period following the upheaval of World War I, Picasso produced work in a neoclassical style. This âreturn to orderâ is evident in the work of many European artists in the 1920s, including André Derain, Giorgio de Chirico, and the artists of the New Objectivity movement. Picassoâs paintings and drawings from this period frequently recall the work of Ingres.
During the 1930s, the minotaur replaced the harlequin as a common motif in his work. His use of the minotaur came partly from his contact with the surrealists, who often used it as their symbol, and it appears in Picassoâs Guernica.
Guernica, 1937, Museo Reina Sofia
Arguably Picassoâs most famous work is his depiction of the German bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil WarâGuernica. This large canvas embodies for many the inhumanity, brutality and hopelessness of war. Asked to explain its symbolism, Picasso said, âIt isnât up to the painter to define the symbols. Otherwise it would be better if he wrote them out in so many words! The public who look at the picture must interpret the symbols as they understand them.â
Guernica hung in New Yorkâs Museum of Modern Art for many years. In 1981 Guernica was returned to Spain and exhibited at the Casón del Buen Retiro. In 1992 the painting hung in Madridâs Reina SofÃa Museum when it opened.
Picasso sculpture in Chicago
Picasso was one of 250 sculptors who exhibited in the 3rd Sculpture International held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the summer of 1949. In the 1950s, Picassoâs style changed once again, as he took to producing reinterpretations of the art of the great masters. He made a series of works based on Velazquezâs painting of Las Meninas. He also based paintings on works by Goya, Poussin, Manet, Courbet and Delacroix.
Nude Woman with a Necklace (1968), Tate
He was commissioned to make a maquette for a huge -high public sculpture to be built in Chicago, known usually as the Chicago Picasso. He approached the project with a great deal of enthusiasm, designing a sculpture which was ambiguous and somewhat controversial. What the figure represents is not known; it could be a bird, a horse, a woman or a totally abstract shape. The sculpture, one of the most recognizable landmarks in downtown Chicago, was unveiled in 1967. Picasso refused to be paid $100,000 for it, donating it to the people of the city.
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Picassoâs final works were a mixture of styles, his means of expression in constant flux until the end of his life. Devoting his full energies to his work, Picasso became more daring, his works more colorful and expressive, and from 1968 through 1971 he produced a torrent of paintings and hundreds of copperplate etchings. At the time these works were dismissed by most as pornographic fantasies of an impotent old man or the slapdash works of an artist who was past his prime. Only later, after Picassoâs death, when the rest of the art world had moved on from abstract expressionism, did the critical community come to see that Picasso had already discovered neo-expressionism and was, as so often before, ahead of his time.
Picasso was exceptionally prolific throughout his long lifetime. The total number of artworks he produced has been estimated at 50,000, comprising 1,885 paintings; 1,228 sculptures; 2,880 ceramics, roughly 12,000 drawings, many thousands of prints, and numerous tapestries and rugs. On-line Picasso Project, citing Selfridge, John, 1994. At the time of his death many of his paintings were in his possession, as he had kept off the art market what he didnât need to sell. In addition, Picasso had a considerable collection of the work of other famous artists, some his contemporaries, such as Henri Matisse, with whom he had exchanged works. Since Picasso left no will, his death duties (estate tax) to the French state were paid in the form of his works and others from his collection. These works form the core of the immense and representative collection of the Musée Picasso in Paris. In 2003, relatives of Picasso inaugurated a museum dedicated to him in his birthplace, Málaga, Spain, the Museo Picasso Málaga.
Picasso sculpture in Halmstad
The Museu Picasso in Barcelona features many of Picassoâs early works, created while he was living in Spain, including many rarely seen works which reveal Picassoâs firm grounding in classical techniques. The museum also holds many precise and detailed figure studies done in his youth under his fatherâs tutelage, as well as the extensive collection of Jaime Sabartés, Picassoâs close friend and personal secretary.
Several paintings by Picasso rank among the most expensive paintings in the world. Garçon à la pipe sold for USD $104 million at Sotheby's on 4 May 2004, establishing a new price record. Dora Maar au Chat sold for USD $95.2 million at Sothebyâs on 3 May 2006.
As of 2004, Picasso remains the top ranked artist (based on sales of his works at auctions) according to the Art Market Trends report. (pdf) More of his paintings have been stolen than those by any other artist. S. Goodenough, 1500 Fascinating Facts, Treasure Press, London, 1987, p 241.
The Picasso Administration functions as his official Estate. The U.S. copyright representative for the Picasso Administration is the Artists Rights Society. | Most frequently requested artists list of the Artists Rights Society
Upon Picasso's death in 1973, actor Dustin Hoffman was having dinner with former Beatle Paul McCartney and told him about Picasso's last words. McCartney started creating and singing a song around those words and included the song on his 1973 album, Band on the Run.
In the 1996 movie Surviving Picasso Picasso is played by actor Anthony Hopkins.
*Becht-Jördens, Gereon; Wehmeier, Peter M. (2003). Picasso und die christliche Ikonographie. Mutterbeziehung und künstlerische Position. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag. ISBN 9783496012726
* Berger, John (1965). The Success and Failure of Picasso. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
* Cirlot, Juan-Eduardo (1972). Picasso: birth of a genius. New York and Washington: Praeger.
* Cowling, Elizabeth; Mundy, Jennifer (1990). On Classic Ground: Picasso, Léger, de Chirico and the New Classicism 1910â1930. London: Tate Gallery. ISBN 1-85437-043-X
* Daix, Pierre (1993). Picasso: Life And Art. Harper Collins. ISBN 9780064309769
* FitzGerald, Michael C. Making Modernism: Picasso and the Creation of the Market for Twentieth-Century Art. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.
*Eugenio Granell, Picassoâs Guernica : the end of a Spanish era (Ann Arbor, Mich. : UMI Research Press, 1981) ISBN 0835712060 9780835712064 9780835712064 0835712060
* Krauss, Rosalind (1998). The Picasso Papers. London: Thames and Hudson. ISBN 0500237611
* Mallen, Enrique (2003). The Visual Grammar of Pablo Picasso. Berkeley Insights in Linguistics & Semiotics Series. New York: Peter Lang.
* Mallen, Enrique (2005). La Sintaxis de la Carne: Pablo Picasso y Marie-Thérèse Walter. Santiago de Chile: Red Internacional del Libro.
* Mallen, Enrique (2009). A Concordance of Pablo Picasso's Spanish Writings. New York: Edwin Mellen Press.
* Nill, Raymond M. âA Visual Guide to Pablo Picassoâs Worksâ. New York: B&H Publishers, 1987.
* Picasso, Olivier Widmaier. (2004). Picasso: The Real Family Story. Prestel Publ. ISBN 3-7913-3149-3
* Rubin, William, ed. (1980) Pablo Picasso, a retrospective. Chronology by Jane Fluegel. New York: The Museum of Modern Art. ISBN 0-87070-519-9
* Wattenmaker, Richard J.; Distel, Anne, et al. (1993). Great French Paintings from the Barnes Foundation. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0-679-40963-7
* Wertenbaker, Lael (1967). The World of Picasso. TimeâLife Library of Art. Alexandria, Virginia: Time-Life Books.
* Over 17,671 catalogued artworks available on the On-Line Picasso Project
* Official website
* On-Line Picasso Project: Comprehensive summary of his life and his work.
* Biography and works of Pablo Picasso
* Pablo Picasso â Biography, Quotes & Paintings, retrieved 14 June 2007.
* Poems by Picasso in English translation from Samizdat (poetry magazine)
* Cubism, The Big Picture
* Artists Rights Society, Picasso's U.S. Copyright Representatives
* Union List of Artist Names, Getty Vocabularies. ULAN Full Record Display for Pablo Picasso. Getty Vocabulary Program, Getty Research Institute. Los Angeles, California.
Picasso Museum, Paris, (Hotel Salé, 1659)
* Guggenheim Museum Biography
* Hilo Art Museum, (Hilo Hawaii, USA)
* Honolulu Academy of Arts
* Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
* Musée National Picasso (Paris, France)
* Musée Picasso (Antibes, France)
* Museo Picasso Málaga (Málaga, Spain)
* Museu Picasso (Barcelona, Spain)
* Museum Berggruen (Berlin, Germany)
* Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
* National Gallery of Art list of paintings
* Graphikmuseum Pablo Picasso Münster (Münster, Germany)
* Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles, California
* Power and Tenderness in Men and in Picassoâs âMinotauromachyâ by Chaim Koppelman
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Pablo_Picasso | What happened in 1838? | Don José Ruiz y Blasco was born | data/set6/a1 | Pablo_Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno MarÃa de los Remedios Cipriano de la SantÃsima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso (25 October 1881 â 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, draughtsman, and sculptor. He is one of the most recognized figures in 20th-century art. He is best known for co-founding the Cubist movement and for the wide variety of styles embodied in his work. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907) and Guernica (1937), his portrayal of the German bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War.
Picasso demonstrated uncanny artistic talent in his early years, painting in a realistic manner through his childhood and adolescence; during the first decade of the twentieth century his style changed as he experimented with different theories, techniques, and ideas. Picassoâs creativity manifested itself in numerous mediums, including painting, sculpture, drawing, and architecture. His revolutionary artistic accomplishments brought him universal renown and immense fortunes throughout his life, making him the best-known figure in twentieth century art.
Picasso was baptized Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno MarÃa de los Remedios Crispiniano de la SantÃsima Trinidad, a series of names honouring various saints and relatives. The name on his baptismal certificate differs slightly from the name on his birth record. On-line Picasso Project Added to these were Ruiz and Picasso, for his father and mother, respectively, as per Spanish custom. Born in the city of Málaga in the Andalusian region of Spain, he was the first child of Don José Ruiz y Blasco (1838â1913) and MarÃa Picasso y López. Picassoâs family was middle-class; his father was also a painter who specialized in naturalistic depictions of birds and other game. For most of his life Ruiz was a professor of art at the School of Crafts and a curator of a local museum. Ruizâs ancestors were minor aristocrats.
The house where Picasso was born, in Málaga
Picasso showed a passion and a skill for drawing from an early age; according to his mother, --> his first words were âpiz, pizâ, a shortening of lápiz, the Spanish word for âpencilâ. Wertenbaker, 9. --> From the age of seven, Picasso received formal artistic training from his father in figure drawing and oil painting. Ruiz was a traditional, academic artist and instructor who believed that proper training required disciplined copying of the masters, and drawing the human body from plaster casts and live models. His son became preoccupied with art to the detriment of his classwork.
The family moved to La Coruña in 1891 where his father became a professor at the School of Fine Arts. They stayed almost four years. On one occasion the father found his son painting over his unfinished sketch of a pigeon. Observing the precision of his sonâs technique, Ruiz felt that the thirteen-year-old Picasso had surpassed him, and vowed to give up painting. Wertenbaker, 11.
In 1895, Picasso's seven-year old sister, Conchita, died of diphtheriaâa traumatic event in his life. After her death, the family moved to Barcelona, with Ruiz transferring to its School of Fine Arts. Picasso thrived in the city, regarding it in times of sadness or nostalgia as his true home. Wertenbaker, 13. Ruiz persuaded the officials at the academy to allow his son to take an entrance exam for the advanced class. This process often took students a month, but Picasso completed it in a week, and the impressed jury admitted Picasso, who was 13. The student lacked discipline but made friendships that would affect him in later life. His father rented him a small room close to home so Picasso could work alone, yet Ruiz checked up on him numerous times a day, judging his sonâs drawings. The two argued frequently.
Picassoâs father and uncle decided to send the young artist to Madridâs Royal Academy of San Fernando, the country's foremost art school. In 1897, Picasso, age 16, set off for the first time on his own, but he disliked formal instruction and quit attending classes soon after enrollment. Madrid, however, held many other attractions: the Prado housed paintings by the venerable Diego Velázquez, Francisco Goya, and Francisco Zurbarán. Picasso especially admired the works of El Greco; their elements, the elongated limbs, arresting colors, and mystical visages, are echoed in Picassoâs Åuvre.
[[Image:GertrudeStein.JPG|thumb|left|upright|Portrait of Gertrude Stein, 1906, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. When someone commented that Stein did not look like her portrait, Picasso replied, "She will". Portrait of Gertrude Stein Metropolitan Museum, Retrieved November 26, 2008 ]]
After studying art in Madrid, Picasso made his first trip to Paris in 1900, then the art capital of Europe. There, he met his first Parisian friend, the journalist and poet Max Jacob, who helped Picasso learn the language and its literature. Soon they shared an apartment; Max slept at night while Picasso slept during the day and worked at night. These were times of severe poverty, cold, and desperation. Much of his work was burned to keep the small room warm. During the first five months of 1901, Picasso lived in Madrid, where he and his anarchist friend Francisco de AsÃs Soler founded the magazine Arte Joven (Young Art), which published five issues. Soler solicited articles and Picasso illustrated the journal, mostly contributing grim cartoons depicting and sympathizing with the state of the poor. The first issue was published on 31 March 1901, by which time the artist had started to sign his work simply Picasso, while before he had signed Pablo Ruiz y Picasso. Cirlot, 1972, p. 125.
By 1905 Picasso became a favorite of the American art collectors Leo and Gertrude Stein. Their older brother Michael Stein and his wife Sarah also became collectors of his work. Picasso painted portraits of both Gertrude Stein and her nephew Allan Stein. Pablo Picasso, Portrait of Allan Stein, 1906, retrieved November 27, 2008 Gertrude Stein became Picasso's principal patron, acquiring his drawings and paintings and exhibiting them in her informal Salon at her home in Paris. Special Exhibit Examines Dynamic Relationship Between the Art of Pablo Picasso and Writing Yale University Art Gallery, Retrieved October 8, 2009 At one of her gatherings in 1905, he met Henri Matisse, who was to become a lifelong friend and rival. The Steins introduced him to Claribel Cone and her sister Etta who were American art collectors; they also began to acquire Picasso and Matisse's paintings. Eventually Leo Stein moved to Italy, and Michael and Sarah Stein became patrons of Matisse; while Gertrude Stein continued to collect Picasso. James R. Mellow, Charmed Circle: Gertrude Stein and Company, Retrieved November 27, 2008
Portrait of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, 1910, The Art Institute of Chicago. Picasso wrote of Kahnweiler What would have become of us if Kahnweiler hadn't had a business sense?
In 1907 Picasso joined the art gallery that had recently been opened in Paris by Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler. Kahnweiler was a German art historian, art collector who became one of the premier French Art dealers of the 20th century. He became prominent in Paris beginning in 1907 for being among the first champions of Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and Cubism. Kahnweiler championed burgeoning artists such as André Derain, Kees Van Dongen, Fernand Léger, Juan Gris, Maurice de Vlaminck and several others who had come from all over the globe to live and work in Montparnasse at the time. Cubism and its Legacy, Tate Liverpool, retrieved November 27, 2008
In Paris, Picasso entertained a distinguished coterie of friends in the Montmartre and Montparnasse quarters, including André Breton, poet Guillaume Apollinaire, writer Alfred Jarry, and Gertrude Stein. Apollinaire was arrested on suspicion of stealing the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in 1911. Apollonaire pointed to his friend Picasso, who was also brought in for questioning, but both were later exonerated. Time Magazine, Stealing the Mona Lisa, 1911. Consulted on 15 August 2007.
Portrait of Igor Stravinsky, c. 1920
In the early 20th century, Picasso divided his time between Barcelona and Paris. In 1904, in the middle of a storm, he met Fernande Olivier, a Bohemian artist who became his mistress. Olivier appears in many of his Rose period paintings. After acquiring fame and some fortune, Picasso left Olivier for Marcelle Humbert, whom he called Eva Gouel. Picasso included declarations of his love for Eva in many Cubist works. Picasso was devastated by her premature death from illness at the age of 30 in 1915. Charles Harrison, Francis Frascina, Gillian Perry, Primitivism, Cubism, Abstraction, retrieved November 27, 2008
After World War I, Picasso made a number of important associations and relationships with figures associated with Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. Among his friends during this period were Jean Cocteau, Jean Hugo, Juan Gris and others. In the summer of 1918, Picasso married Olga Khokhlova, a ballerina with Sergei Diaghilevâs troupe, for whom Picasso was designing a ballet, Parade, in Rome; and they spent their honeymoon in the villa near Biarritz of the glamorous Chilean art patron Eugenia Errázuriz. Khokhlova introduced Picasso to high society, formal dinner parties, and all the social niceties attendant on the life of the rich in 1920s Paris. The two had a son, Paulo, who would grow up to be a dissolute motorcycle racer and chauffeur to his father. Khokhlovaâs insistence on social propriety clashed with Picassoâs bohemian tendencies and the two lived in a state of constant conflict. During the same period that Picasso collaborated with Diaghilevâs troup, he and Igor Stravinsky collaborated on Pulcinella in 1920. Picasso took the opportunity to make several sketches of the composer.
In 1927 Picasso met 17-year-old Marie-Thérèse Walter and began a secret affair with her. Picassoâs marriage to Khokhlova soon ended in separation rather than divorce, as French law required an even division of property in the case of divorce, and Picasso did not want Khokhlova to have half his wealth. The two remained legally married until Khokhlovaâs death in 1955. Picasso carried on a long-standing affair with Marie-Thérèse Walter and fathered a daughter, Maia, with her. Marie-Thérèse lived in the vain hope that Picasso would one day marry her, and hanged herself four years after Picassoâs death. Throughout his life Picasso maintained a number of mistresses in addition to his wife or primary partner. Picasso was married twice and had four children by three women.
Dora Maar au Chat, 1941
The photographer and painter Dora Maar was also a constant companion and lover of Picasso. The two were closest in the late 1930s and early 1940s and it was Maar who documented the painting of Guernica.
During the Second World War, Picasso remained in Paris while the Germans occupied the city. Picassoâs artistic style did not fit the Nazi views of art, so he was not able to show his works during this time. Retreating to his studio, he continued to paint all the while. Although the Germans outlawed bronze casting in Paris, Picasso continued regardless, using bronze smuggled to him by the French resistance.
After the liberation of Paris in 1944, Picasso began to keep company with a young art student, Françoise Gilot. The two eventually became lovers, and had two children together, Claude and Paloma. Unique among Picassoâs women, Gilot left Picasso in 1953, allegedly because of abusive treatment and infidelities. This was a severe blow to Picasso.
He went through a difficult period after Gilotâs departure, coming to terms with his advancing age and his perception that, now in his 70s, he was no longer attractive, but rather grotesque to young women. A number of ink drawings from this period explore this theme of the hideous old dwarf as buffoonish counterpoint to the beautiful young girl, including several from a six-week affair with Geneviève Laporte, who in June 2005 auctioned off the drawings Picasso made of her.
Picasso was not long in finding another lover, Jacqueline Roque. She worked at the Madoura Pottery in Vallauris on the French Riviera, where Picasso made and painted ceramics. The two remained together for the rest of Picassoâs life, marrying in 1961. Their marriage was also the means of one last act of revenge against Gilot. Gilot had been seeking a legal means to legitimize her children with Picasso, Claude and Paloma. With Picassoâs encouragement, she had arranged to divorce her then husband, Luc Simon, and marry Picasso to secure her childrenâs rights. Picasso then secretly married Roque after Gilot had filed for divorce in order to exact his revenge for her leaving him.
Picasso had constructed a huge gothic structure and could afford large villas in the south of France, at Notre-dame-de-vie on the outskirts of Mougins, in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur. By this time he was a celebrity, and there was often as much interest in his personal life as his art.
In addition to his manifold artistic accomplishments, Picasso had a film career, including a cameo appearance in Jean Cocteauâs Testament of Orpheus. Picasso always played himself in his film appearances. In 1955 he helped make the film Le Mystère Picasso (The Mystery of Picasso) directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot.
Pablo Picasso died on 8 April 1973 in Mougins, France, while he and his wife Jacqueline entertained friends for dinner. His final words were âDrink to me, drink to my health, you know I canât drink any more.â accessed online 15 August 2007 He was interred at the Chateau of Vauvenargues near Aix-en-Provence, a property he had acquired in 1958 and occupied with Jacqueline between 1959 and 1962. Jacqueline Roque prevented his children Claude and Paloma from attending the funeral. The Rich Die Richer and You Can too, by William D. Zabel, Published 1996 John Wiley and Sons, p.11. ISBN 0471155322 Accessed online 15 August 2007 Devastated and lonely after the death of Picasso, Jacqueline Roque took her own life by gunshot in 1986 when she was 60 years old. Picasso's Family Album, Michael Kimmelman, New York Times, retrieved November 28, 2008
* Paulo (4 February 1921 â 5 June 1975) (Born Paul Joseph Picasso) â with Olga Khokhlova
* Maya (5 September 1935 â ) (Born Maria de la Concepcion Picasso) â with Marie-Thérèse Walter
* Claude (15 May 1947 â) (Born Claude Pierre Pablo Picasso) â with Françoise Gilot
* Paloma (19 April 1949 â ) (Born Anne Paloma Picasso) â with Françoise Gilot
Pablo Picasso, Massacre in Korea, 1951
Picasso remained neutral during World War I, the Spanish Civil War, and World War II, refusing to fight for any side or country. Some of his contemporaries felt that his pacifism had more to do with cowardice than principle. An article in The New Yorker called him âa coward, who sat out two world wars while his friends were suffering and dyingâ. As a Spanish citizen living in France, Picasso was under no compulsion to fight against the invading Germans in either World War. In the Spanish Civil War, service for Spaniards living abroad was optional and would have involved a voluntary return to the country to join either side. While Picasso expressed anger and condemnation of Francisco Franco and fascists through his art, he did not take up arms against them.
He also remained aloof from the Catalan independence movement during his youth despite expressing general support and being friendly with activists within it.
In 1944 Picasso joined the French Communist Party, attended an international peace conference in Poland, and in 1950 received the Lenin Peace Prize from the Soviet government. Picassoâs Party Line, ARTnews Retrieved 31 May 2007. But party criticism of a portrait of Stalin as insufficiently realistic cooled Picassoâs interest in communist politics, though he remained a loyal member of the Communist Party until his death. In a 1945 interview with Jerome Seckler, Picasso stated: âI am a Communist and my painting is Communist painting. ... But if I were a shoemaker, Royalist or Communist or anything else, I would not necessarily hammer my shoes in a special way to show my politics.â His Communist militancy, not uncommon among intellectuals and artists at the time although it was officially banned in Francoist Spain, has long been the subject of some controversy; a notable source or demonstration thereof was a sarcastic quote commonly attributed to Salvador Dalà (with whom Picasso had a rather strained relationship Failed attempts at correspondence between Dalà and Picasso ), ostensibly casting doubt on the true honesty of his political allegiances:
: Picasso es pintor, yo también; [...] Picasso es español, yo también; Picasso es comunista, yo tampoco.
:(Picasso is a painter, so am I; [...] Picasso is a Spaniard, so am I; Picasso is a communist, neither am I.) Picasso by Dalà Study on Salvador Dalà Salvador Dalà quotes Dalà "sympathetic"? De El Greco a Salvador DalÃ, Pasando por Picasso Article on Dalà in El Mundo
He was against the intervention of the United Nations and the United States Picasso A Retrospective, Museum of Modern Art, edited by William Rubin, copyright MoMA 1980, p.383 in the Korean War and he depicted it in Massacre in Korea. In 1962, he received the International Lenin Peace Prize.
Picassoâs work is often categorized into periods. While the names of many of his later periods are debated, the most commonly accepted periods in his work are the Blue Period (1901â1904), the Rose Period (1905â1907), the African-influenced Period (1908â1909), Analytic Cubism (1909â1912), and Synthetic Cubism (1912â1919).
In 1939â40 the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, under its director Alfred Barr, a Picasso enthusiast, held a major and highly successful retrospective of his principal works up until that time. This exhibition lionized the artist, brought into full public view in America the scope of his artistry, and resulted in a reinterpretation of his work by contemporary art historians and scholars. The MoMA retrospective of 1939â40 â see Michael C. FitzGerald, Making Modernism: Picasso and the Creation of the Market for Twentieth-Century Art (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), pp. 243â262.
Picassoâs training under his father began before 1890. His progress can be traced in the collection of early works now held by the Museu Picasso in Barcelona, which provides one of the most comprehensive records extant of any major artistâs beginnings. Cirlot,1972, p.6. During 1893 the juvenile quality of his earliest work falls away, and by 1894 his career as a painter can be said to have begun. Cirlot, 1972, p. 14. The academic realism apparent in the works of the mid-1890s is well displayed in The First Communion (1896), a large composition that depicts his sister, Lola. In the same year, at the age of 14, he painted Portrait of Aunt Pepa, a vigorous and dramatic portrait that Juan-Eduardo Cirlot has called âwithout a doubt one of the greatest in the whole history of Spanish painting.â Cirlot, 1972, p.37.
In 1897 his realism became tinged with Symbolist influence, in a series of landscape paintings rendered in non naturalistic violet and green tones. What some call his Modernist period (1899â1900) followed. His exposure to the work of Rossetti, Steinlen, Toulouse-Lautrec and Edvard Munch, combined with his admiration for favorite old masters such as El Greco, led Picasso to a personal version of modernism in his works of this period. Cirlot, 1972, p. 87â108.
Femme aux Bras Croisés, 1902
Picassoâs Blue Period (1901â1904) consists of somber paintings rendered in shades of blue and blue-green, only occasionally warmed by other colors. This periodâs starting point is uncertain; it may have begun in Spain in the spring of 1901, or in Paris in the second half of the year. Cirlot, 1972, p.127. Many paintings of gaunt mothers with children date from this period. In his austere use of color and sometimes doleful subject matterâprostitutes and beggars are frequent subjectsâPicasso was influenced by a trip through Spain and by the suicide of his friend Carlos Casagemas. Starting in autumn of 1901 he painted several posthumous portraits of Casagemas, culminating in the gloomy allegorical painting La Vie (1903), now in the Cleveland Museum of Art. Wattenmaker, Distel, et al.,1993, p. 304.
The same mood pervades the well-known etching The Frugal Repast (1904), which depicts a blind man and a sighted woman, both emaciated, seated at a nearly bare table. Blindness is a recurrent theme in Picassoâs works of this period, also represented in The Blindmanâs Meal (1903, the Metropolitan Museum of Art) and in the portrait of Celestina (1903). Other works include Portrait of Soler and Portrait of Suzanne Blochâ.
Pablo Picasso, Garçon à la pipe, (Boy with a Pipe), 1905, Rose Period
The Rose Period (1904â1906) Wattenmaker, Distel, et al.,1993, p. 194. is characterized by a more cheery style with orange and pink colors, and featuring many circus people, acrobats and harlequins known in France as saltimbanques. The harlequin, a comedic character usually depicted in checkered patterned clothing, became a personal symbol for Picasso. Picasso met Fernande Olivier, a model for sculptors and artists, in Paris in 1904, and many of these paintings are influenced by his warm relationship with her, in addition to his increased exposure to French painting. The generally upbeat and optimistic mood of paintings in this period is reminiscent of the 1899â1901 period (i.e. just prior to the Blue Period) and 1904 can be considered a transition year between the two periods.
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), Museum of Modern Art, New York
Picassoâs African-influenced Period (1907â1909) begins with the two figures on the right in his painting, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, which were inspired by African artifacts. Formal ideas developed during this period lead directly into the Cubist period that follows.
Three Musicians (1921), Museum of Modern Art
Analytic cubism (1909â1912) is a style of painting Picasso developed along with Georges Braque using monochrome brownish and neutral colors. Both artists took apart objects and âanalyzedâ them in terms of their shapes. Picasso and Braqueâs paintings at this time have many similarities. Synthetic cubism (1912â1919) was a further development of the genre, in which cut paper fragmentsâoften wallpaper or portions of newspaper pagesâwere pasted into compositions, marking the first use of collage in fine art.
In the period following the upheaval of World War I, Picasso produced work in a neoclassical style. This âreturn to orderâ is evident in the work of many European artists in the 1920s, including André Derain, Giorgio de Chirico, and the artists of the New Objectivity movement. Picassoâs paintings and drawings from this period frequently recall the work of Ingres.
During the 1930s, the minotaur replaced the harlequin as a common motif in his work. His use of the minotaur came partly from his contact with the surrealists, who often used it as their symbol, and it appears in Picassoâs Guernica.
Guernica, 1937, Museo Reina Sofia
Arguably Picassoâs most famous work is his depiction of the German bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil WarâGuernica. This large canvas embodies for many the inhumanity, brutality and hopelessness of war. Asked to explain its symbolism, Picasso said, âIt isnât up to the painter to define the symbols. Otherwise it would be better if he wrote them out in so many words! The public who look at the picture must interpret the symbols as they understand them.â
Guernica hung in New Yorkâs Museum of Modern Art for many years. In 1981 Guernica was returned to Spain and exhibited at the Casón del Buen Retiro. In 1992 the painting hung in Madridâs Reina SofÃa Museum when it opened.
Picasso sculpture in Chicago
Picasso was one of 250 sculptors who exhibited in the 3rd Sculpture International held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the summer of 1949. In the 1950s, Picassoâs style changed once again, as he took to producing reinterpretations of the art of the great masters. He made a series of works based on Velazquezâs painting of Las Meninas. He also based paintings on works by Goya, Poussin, Manet, Courbet and Delacroix.
Nude Woman with a Necklace (1968), Tate
He was commissioned to make a maquette for a huge -high public sculpture to be built in Chicago, known usually as the Chicago Picasso. He approached the project with a great deal of enthusiasm, designing a sculpture which was ambiguous and somewhat controversial. What the figure represents is not known; it could be a bird, a horse, a woman or a totally abstract shape. The sculpture, one of the most recognizable landmarks in downtown Chicago, was unveiled in 1967. Picasso refused to be paid $100,000 for it, donating it to the people of the city.
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Picassoâs final works were a mixture of styles, his means of expression in constant flux until the end of his life. Devoting his full energies to his work, Picasso became more daring, his works more colorful and expressive, and from 1968 through 1971 he produced a torrent of paintings and hundreds of copperplate etchings. At the time these works were dismissed by most as pornographic fantasies of an impotent old man or the slapdash works of an artist who was past his prime. Only later, after Picassoâs death, when the rest of the art world had moved on from abstract expressionism, did the critical community come to see that Picasso had already discovered neo-expressionism and was, as so often before, ahead of his time.
Picasso was exceptionally prolific throughout his long lifetime. The total number of artworks he produced has been estimated at 50,000, comprising 1,885 paintings; 1,228 sculptures; 2,880 ceramics, roughly 12,000 drawings, many thousands of prints, and numerous tapestries and rugs. On-line Picasso Project, citing Selfridge, John, 1994. At the time of his death many of his paintings were in his possession, as he had kept off the art market what he didnât need to sell. In addition, Picasso had a considerable collection of the work of other famous artists, some his contemporaries, such as Henri Matisse, with whom he had exchanged works. Since Picasso left no will, his death duties (estate tax) to the French state were paid in the form of his works and others from his collection. These works form the core of the immense and representative collection of the Musée Picasso in Paris. In 2003, relatives of Picasso inaugurated a museum dedicated to him in his birthplace, Málaga, Spain, the Museo Picasso Málaga.
Picasso sculpture in Halmstad
The Museu Picasso in Barcelona features many of Picassoâs early works, created while he was living in Spain, including many rarely seen works which reveal Picassoâs firm grounding in classical techniques. The museum also holds many precise and detailed figure studies done in his youth under his fatherâs tutelage, as well as the extensive collection of Jaime Sabartés, Picassoâs close friend and personal secretary.
Several paintings by Picasso rank among the most expensive paintings in the world. Garçon à la pipe sold for USD $104 million at Sotheby's on 4 May 2004, establishing a new price record. Dora Maar au Chat sold for USD $95.2 million at Sothebyâs on 3 May 2006.
As of 2004, Picasso remains the top ranked artist (based on sales of his works at auctions) according to the Art Market Trends report. (pdf) More of his paintings have been stolen than those by any other artist. S. Goodenough, 1500 Fascinating Facts, Treasure Press, London, 1987, p 241.
The Picasso Administration functions as his official Estate. The U.S. copyright representative for the Picasso Administration is the Artists Rights Society. | Most frequently requested artists list of the Artists Rights Society
Upon Picasso's death in 1973, actor Dustin Hoffman was having dinner with former Beatle Paul McCartney and told him about Picasso's last words. McCartney started creating and singing a song around those words and included the song on his 1973 album, Band on the Run.
In the 1996 movie Surviving Picasso Picasso is played by actor Anthony Hopkins.
*Becht-Jördens, Gereon; Wehmeier, Peter M. (2003). Picasso und die christliche Ikonographie. Mutterbeziehung und künstlerische Position. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag. ISBN 9783496012726
* Berger, John (1965). The Success and Failure of Picasso. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
* Cirlot, Juan-Eduardo (1972). Picasso: birth of a genius. New York and Washington: Praeger.
* Cowling, Elizabeth; Mundy, Jennifer (1990). On Classic Ground: Picasso, Léger, de Chirico and the New Classicism 1910â1930. London: Tate Gallery. ISBN 1-85437-043-X
* Daix, Pierre (1993). Picasso: Life And Art. Harper Collins. ISBN 9780064309769
* FitzGerald, Michael C. Making Modernism: Picasso and the Creation of the Market for Twentieth-Century Art. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.
*Eugenio Granell, Picassoâs Guernica : the end of a Spanish era (Ann Arbor, Mich. : UMI Research Press, 1981) ISBN 0835712060 9780835712064 9780835712064 0835712060
* Krauss, Rosalind (1998). The Picasso Papers. London: Thames and Hudson. ISBN 0500237611
* Mallen, Enrique (2003). The Visual Grammar of Pablo Picasso. Berkeley Insights in Linguistics & Semiotics Series. New York: Peter Lang.
* Mallen, Enrique (2005). La Sintaxis de la Carne: Pablo Picasso y Marie-Thérèse Walter. Santiago de Chile: Red Internacional del Libro.
* Mallen, Enrique (2009). A Concordance of Pablo Picasso's Spanish Writings. New York: Edwin Mellen Press.
* Nill, Raymond M. âA Visual Guide to Pablo Picassoâs Worksâ. New York: B&H Publishers, 1987.
* Picasso, Olivier Widmaier. (2004). Picasso: The Real Family Story. Prestel Publ. ISBN 3-7913-3149-3
* Rubin, William, ed. (1980) Pablo Picasso, a retrospective. Chronology by Jane Fluegel. New York: The Museum of Modern Art. ISBN 0-87070-519-9
* Wattenmaker, Richard J.; Distel, Anne, et al. (1993). Great French Paintings from the Barnes Foundation. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0-679-40963-7
* Wertenbaker, Lael (1967). The World of Picasso. TimeâLife Library of Art. Alexandria, Virginia: Time-Life Books.
* Over 17,671 catalogued artworks available on the On-Line Picasso Project
* Official website
* On-Line Picasso Project: Comprehensive summary of his life and his work.
* Biography and works of Pablo Picasso
* Pablo Picasso â Biography, Quotes & Paintings, retrieved 14 June 2007.
* Poems by Picasso in English translation from Samizdat (poetry magazine)
* Cubism, The Big Picture
* Artists Rights Society, Picasso's U.S. Copyright Representatives
* Union List of Artist Names, Getty Vocabularies. ULAN Full Record Display for Pablo Picasso. Getty Vocabulary Program, Getty Research Institute. Los Angeles, California.
Picasso Museum, Paris, (Hotel Salé, 1659)
* Guggenheim Museum Biography
* Hilo Art Museum, (Hilo Hawaii, USA)
* Honolulu Academy of Arts
* Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
* Musée National Picasso (Paris, France)
* Musée Picasso (Antibes, France)
* Museo Picasso Málaga (Málaga, Spain)
* Museu Picasso (Barcelona, Spain)
* Museum Berggruen (Berlin, Germany)
* Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
* National Gallery of Art list of paintings
* Graphikmuseum Pablo Picasso Münster (Münster, Germany)
* Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles, California
* Power and Tenderness in Men and in Picassoâs âMinotauromachyâ by Chaim Koppelman
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Pablo_Picasso | Who was not long in finding another lover, Jacqueline Roque? | Picasso. | data/set6/a1 | Pablo_Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno MarÃa de los Remedios Cipriano de la SantÃsima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso (25 October 1881 â 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, draughtsman, and sculptor. He is one of the most recognized figures in 20th-century art. He is best known for co-founding the Cubist movement and for the wide variety of styles embodied in his work. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907) and Guernica (1937), his portrayal of the German bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War.
Picasso demonstrated uncanny artistic talent in his early years, painting in a realistic manner through his childhood and adolescence; during the first decade of the twentieth century his style changed as he experimented with different theories, techniques, and ideas. Picassoâs creativity manifested itself in numerous mediums, including painting, sculpture, drawing, and architecture. His revolutionary artistic accomplishments brought him universal renown and immense fortunes throughout his life, making him the best-known figure in twentieth century art.
Picasso was baptized Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno MarÃa de los Remedios Crispiniano de la SantÃsima Trinidad, a series of names honouring various saints and relatives. The name on his baptismal certificate differs slightly from the name on his birth record. On-line Picasso Project Added to these were Ruiz and Picasso, for his father and mother, respectively, as per Spanish custom. Born in the city of Málaga in the Andalusian region of Spain, he was the first child of Don José Ruiz y Blasco (1838â1913) and MarÃa Picasso y López. Picassoâs family was middle-class; his father was also a painter who specialized in naturalistic depictions of birds and other game. For most of his life Ruiz was a professor of art at the School of Crafts and a curator of a local museum. Ruizâs ancestors were minor aristocrats.
The house where Picasso was born, in Málaga
Picasso showed a passion and a skill for drawing from an early age; according to his mother, --> his first words were âpiz, pizâ, a shortening of lápiz, the Spanish word for âpencilâ. Wertenbaker, 9. --> From the age of seven, Picasso received formal artistic training from his father in figure drawing and oil painting. Ruiz was a traditional, academic artist and instructor who believed that proper training required disciplined copying of the masters, and drawing the human body from plaster casts and live models. His son became preoccupied with art to the detriment of his classwork.
The family moved to La Coruña in 1891 where his father became a professor at the School of Fine Arts. They stayed almost four years. On one occasion the father found his son painting over his unfinished sketch of a pigeon. Observing the precision of his sonâs technique, Ruiz felt that the thirteen-year-old Picasso had surpassed him, and vowed to give up painting. Wertenbaker, 11.
In 1895, Picasso's seven-year old sister, Conchita, died of diphtheriaâa traumatic event in his life. After her death, the family moved to Barcelona, with Ruiz transferring to its School of Fine Arts. Picasso thrived in the city, regarding it in times of sadness or nostalgia as his true home. Wertenbaker, 13. Ruiz persuaded the officials at the academy to allow his son to take an entrance exam for the advanced class. This process often took students a month, but Picasso completed it in a week, and the impressed jury admitted Picasso, who was 13. The student lacked discipline but made friendships that would affect him in later life. His father rented him a small room close to home so Picasso could work alone, yet Ruiz checked up on him numerous times a day, judging his sonâs drawings. The two argued frequently.
Picassoâs father and uncle decided to send the young artist to Madridâs Royal Academy of San Fernando, the country's foremost art school. In 1897, Picasso, age 16, set off for the first time on his own, but he disliked formal instruction and quit attending classes soon after enrollment. Madrid, however, held many other attractions: the Prado housed paintings by the venerable Diego Velázquez, Francisco Goya, and Francisco Zurbarán. Picasso especially admired the works of El Greco; their elements, the elongated limbs, arresting colors, and mystical visages, are echoed in Picassoâs Åuvre.
[[Image:GertrudeStein.JPG|thumb|left|upright|Portrait of Gertrude Stein, 1906, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. When someone commented that Stein did not look like her portrait, Picasso replied, "She will". Portrait of Gertrude Stein Metropolitan Museum, Retrieved November 26, 2008 ]]
After studying art in Madrid, Picasso made his first trip to Paris in 1900, then the art capital of Europe. There, he met his first Parisian friend, the journalist and poet Max Jacob, who helped Picasso learn the language and its literature. Soon they shared an apartment; Max slept at night while Picasso slept during the day and worked at night. These were times of severe poverty, cold, and desperation. Much of his work was burned to keep the small room warm. During the first five months of 1901, Picasso lived in Madrid, where he and his anarchist friend Francisco de AsÃs Soler founded the magazine Arte Joven (Young Art), which published five issues. Soler solicited articles and Picasso illustrated the journal, mostly contributing grim cartoons depicting and sympathizing with the state of the poor. The first issue was published on 31 March 1901, by which time the artist had started to sign his work simply Picasso, while before he had signed Pablo Ruiz y Picasso. Cirlot, 1972, p. 125.
By 1905 Picasso became a favorite of the American art collectors Leo and Gertrude Stein. Their older brother Michael Stein and his wife Sarah also became collectors of his work. Picasso painted portraits of both Gertrude Stein and her nephew Allan Stein. Pablo Picasso, Portrait of Allan Stein, 1906, retrieved November 27, 2008 Gertrude Stein became Picasso's principal patron, acquiring his drawings and paintings and exhibiting them in her informal Salon at her home in Paris. Special Exhibit Examines Dynamic Relationship Between the Art of Pablo Picasso and Writing Yale University Art Gallery, Retrieved October 8, 2009 At one of her gatherings in 1905, he met Henri Matisse, who was to become a lifelong friend and rival. The Steins introduced him to Claribel Cone and her sister Etta who were American art collectors; they also began to acquire Picasso and Matisse's paintings. Eventually Leo Stein moved to Italy, and Michael and Sarah Stein became patrons of Matisse; while Gertrude Stein continued to collect Picasso. James R. Mellow, Charmed Circle: Gertrude Stein and Company, Retrieved November 27, 2008
Portrait of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, 1910, The Art Institute of Chicago. Picasso wrote of Kahnweiler What would have become of us if Kahnweiler hadn't had a business sense?
In 1907 Picasso joined the art gallery that had recently been opened in Paris by Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler. Kahnweiler was a German art historian, art collector who became one of the premier French Art dealers of the 20th century. He became prominent in Paris beginning in 1907 for being among the first champions of Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and Cubism. Kahnweiler championed burgeoning artists such as André Derain, Kees Van Dongen, Fernand Léger, Juan Gris, Maurice de Vlaminck and several others who had come from all over the globe to live and work in Montparnasse at the time. Cubism and its Legacy, Tate Liverpool, retrieved November 27, 2008
In Paris, Picasso entertained a distinguished coterie of friends in the Montmartre and Montparnasse quarters, including André Breton, poet Guillaume Apollinaire, writer Alfred Jarry, and Gertrude Stein. Apollinaire was arrested on suspicion of stealing the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in 1911. Apollonaire pointed to his friend Picasso, who was also brought in for questioning, but both were later exonerated. Time Magazine, Stealing the Mona Lisa, 1911. Consulted on 15 August 2007.
Portrait of Igor Stravinsky, c. 1920
In the early 20th century, Picasso divided his time between Barcelona and Paris. In 1904, in the middle of a storm, he met Fernande Olivier, a Bohemian artist who became his mistress. Olivier appears in many of his Rose period paintings. After acquiring fame and some fortune, Picasso left Olivier for Marcelle Humbert, whom he called Eva Gouel. Picasso included declarations of his love for Eva in many Cubist works. Picasso was devastated by her premature death from illness at the age of 30 in 1915. Charles Harrison, Francis Frascina, Gillian Perry, Primitivism, Cubism, Abstraction, retrieved November 27, 2008
After World War I, Picasso made a number of important associations and relationships with figures associated with Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. Among his friends during this period were Jean Cocteau, Jean Hugo, Juan Gris and others. In the summer of 1918, Picasso married Olga Khokhlova, a ballerina with Sergei Diaghilevâs troupe, for whom Picasso was designing a ballet, Parade, in Rome; and they spent their honeymoon in the villa near Biarritz of the glamorous Chilean art patron Eugenia Errázuriz. Khokhlova introduced Picasso to high society, formal dinner parties, and all the social niceties attendant on the life of the rich in 1920s Paris. The two had a son, Paulo, who would grow up to be a dissolute motorcycle racer and chauffeur to his father. Khokhlovaâs insistence on social propriety clashed with Picassoâs bohemian tendencies and the two lived in a state of constant conflict. During the same period that Picasso collaborated with Diaghilevâs troup, he and Igor Stravinsky collaborated on Pulcinella in 1920. Picasso took the opportunity to make several sketches of the composer.
In 1927 Picasso met 17-year-old Marie-Thérèse Walter and began a secret affair with her. Picassoâs marriage to Khokhlova soon ended in separation rather than divorce, as French law required an even division of property in the case of divorce, and Picasso did not want Khokhlova to have half his wealth. The two remained legally married until Khokhlovaâs death in 1955. Picasso carried on a long-standing affair with Marie-Thérèse Walter and fathered a daughter, Maia, with her. Marie-Thérèse lived in the vain hope that Picasso would one day marry her, and hanged herself four years after Picassoâs death. Throughout his life Picasso maintained a number of mistresses in addition to his wife or primary partner. Picasso was married twice and had four children by three women.
Dora Maar au Chat, 1941
The photographer and painter Dora Maar was also a constant companion and lover of Picasso. The two were closest in the late 1930s and early 1940s and it was Maar who documented the painting of Guernica.
During the Second World War, Picasso remained in Paris while the Germans occupied the city. Picassoâs artistic style did not fit the Nazi views of art, so he was not able to show his works during this time. Retreating to his studio, he continued to paint all the while. Although the Germans outlawed bronze casting in Paris, Picasso continued regardless, using bronze smuggled to him by the French resistance.
After the liberation of Paris in 1944, Picasso began to keep company with a young art student, Françoise Gilot. The two eventually became lovers, and had two children together, Claude and Paloma. Unique among Picassoâs women, Gilot left Picasso in 1953, allegedly because of abusive treatment and infidelities. This was a severe blow to Picasso.
He went through a difficult period after Gilotâs departure, coming to terms with his advancing age and his perception that, now in his 70s, he was no longer attractive, but rather grotesque to young women. A number of ink drawings from this period explore this theme of the hideous old dwarf as buffoonish counterpoint to the beautiful young girl, including several from a six-week affair with Geneviève Laporte, who in June 2005 auctioned off the drawings Picasso made of her.
Picasso was not long in finding another lover, Jacqueline Roque. She worked at the Madoura Pottery in Vallauris on the French Riviera, where Picasso made and painted ceramics. The two remained together for the rest of Picassoâs life, marrying in 1961. Their marriage was also the means of one last act of revenge against Gilot. Gilot had been seeking a legal means to legitimize her children with Picasso, Claude and Paloma. With Picassoâs encouragement, she had arranged to divorce her then husband, Luc Simon, and marry Picasso to secure her childrenâs rights. Picasso then secretly married Roque after Gilot had filed for divorce in order to exact his revenge for her leaving him.
Picasso had constructed a huge gothic structure and could afford large villas in the south of France, at Notre-dame-de-vie on the outskirts of Mougins, in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur. By this time he was a celebrity, and there was often as much interest in his personal life as his art.
In addition to his manifold artistic accomplishments, Picasso had a film career, including a cameo appearance in Jean Cocteauâs Testament of Orpheus. Picasso always played himself in his film appearances. In 1955 he helped make the film Le Mystère Picasso (The Mystery of Picasso) directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot.
Pablo Picasso died on 8 April 1973 in Mougins, France, while he and his wife Jacqueline entertained friends for dinner. His final words were âDrink to me, drink to my health, you know I canât drink any more.â accessed online 15 August 2007 He was interred at the Chateau of Vauvenargues near Aix-en-Provence, a property he had acquired in 1958 and occupied with Jacqueline between 1959 and 1962. Jacqueline Roque prevented his children Claude and Paloma from attending the funeral. The Rich Die Richer and You Can too, by William D. Zabel, Published 1996 John Wiley and Sons, p.11. ISBN 0471155322 Accessed online 15 August 2007 Devastated and lonely after the death of Picasso, Jacqueline Roque took her own life by gunshot in 1986 when she was 60 years old. Picasso's Family Album, Michael Kimmelman, New York Times, retrieved November 28, 2008
* Paulo (4 February 1921 â 5 June 1975) (Born Paul Joseph Picasso) â with Olga Khokhlova
* Maya (5 September 1935 â ) (Born Maria de la Concepcion Picasso) â with Marie-Thérèse Walter
* Claude (15 May 1947 â) (Born Claude Pierre Pablo Picasso) â with Françoise Gilot
* Paloma (19 April 1949 â ) (Born Anne Paloma Picasso) â with Françoise Gilot
Pablo Picasso, Massacre in Korea, 1951
Picasso remained neutral during World War I, the Spanish Civil War, and World War II, refusing to fight for any side or country. Some of his contemporaries felt that his pacifism had more to do with cowardice than principle. An article in The New Yorker called him âa coward, who sat out two world wars while his friends were suffering and dyingâ. As a Spanish citizen living in France, Picasso was under no compulsion to fight against the invading Germans in either World War. In the Spanish Civil War, service for Spaniards living abroad was optional and would have involved a voluntary return to the country to join either side. While Picasso expressed anger and condemnation of Francisco Franco and fascists through his art, he did not take up arms against them.
He also remained aloof from the Catalan independence movement during his youth despite expressing general support and being friendly with activists within it.
In 1944 Picasso joined the French Communist Party, attended an international peace conference in Poland, and in 1950 received the Lenin Peace Prize from the Soviet government. Picassoâs Party Line, ARTnews Retrieved 31 May 2007. But party criticism of a portrait of Stalin as insufficiently realistic cooled Picassoâs interest in communist politics, though he remained a loyal member of the Communist Party until his death. In a 1945 interview with Jerome Seckler, Picasso stated: âI am a Communist and my painting is Communist painting. ... But if I were a shoemaker, Royalist or Communist or anything else, I would not necessarily hammer my shoes in a special way to show my politics.â His Communist militancy, not uncommon among intellectuals and artists at the time although it was officially banned in Francoist Spain, has long been the subject of some controversy; a notable source or demonstration thereof was a sarcastic quote commonly attributed to Salvador Dalà (with whom Picasso had a rather strained relationship Failed attempts at correspondence between Dalà and Picasso ), ostensibly casting doubt on the true honesty of his political allegiances:
: Picasso es pintor, yo también; [...] Picasso es español, yo también; Picasso es comunista, yo tampoco.
:(Picasso is a painter, so am I; [...] Picasso is a Spaniard, so am I; Picasso is a communist, neither am I.) Picasso by Dalà Study on Salvador Dalà Salvador Dalà quotes Dalà "sympathetic"? De El Greco a Salvador DalÃ, Pasando por Picasso Article on Dalà in El Mundo
He was against the intervention of the United Nations and the United States Picasso A Retrospective, Museum of Modern Art, edited by William Rubin, copyright MoMA 1980, p.383 in the Korean War and he depicted it in Massacre in Korea. In 1962, he received the International Lenin Peace Prize.
Picassoâs work is often categorized into periods. While the names of many of his later periods are debated, the most commonly accepted periods in his work are the Blue Period (1901â1904), the Rose Period (1905â1907), the African-influenced Period (1908â1909), Analytic Cubism (1909â1912), and Synthetic Cubism (1912â1919).
In 1939â40 the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, under its director Alfred Barr, a Picasso enthusiast, held a major and highly successful retrospective of his principal works up until that time. This exhibition lionized the artist, brought into full public view in America the scope of his artistry, and resulted in a reinterpretation of his work by contemporary art historians and scholars. The MoMA retrospective of 1939â40 â see Michael C. FitzGerald, Making Modernism: Picasso and the Creation of the Market for Twentieth-Century Art (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), pp. 243â262.
Picassoâs training under his father began before 1890. His progress can be traced in the collection of early works now held by the Museu Picasso in Barcelona, which provides one of the most comprehensive records extant of any major artistâs beginnings. Cirlot,1972, p.6. During 1893 the juvenile quality of his earliest work falls away, and by 1894 his career as a painter can be said to have begun. Cirlot, 1972, p. 14. The academic realism apparent in the works of the mid-1890s is well displayed in The First Communion (1896), a large composition that depicts his sister, Lola. In the same year, at the age of 14, he painted Portrait of Aunt Pepa, a vigorous and dramatic portrait that Juan-Eduardo Cirlot has called âwithout a doubt one of the greatest in the whole history of Spanish painting.â Cirlot, 1972, p.37.
In 1897 his realism became tinged with Symbolist influence, in a series of landscape paintings rendered in non naturalistic violet and green tones. What some call his Modernist period (1899â1900) followed. His exposure to the work of Rossetti, Steinlen, Toulouse-Lautrec and Edvard Munch, combined with his admiration for favorite old masters such as El Greco, led Picasso to a personal version of modernism in his works of this period. Cirlot, 1972, p. 87â108.
Femme aux Bras Croisés, 1902
Picassoâs Blue Period (1901â1904) consists of somber paintings rendered in shades of blue and blue-green, only occasionally warmed by other colors. This periodâs starting point is uncertain; it may have begun in Spain in the spring of 1901, or in Paris in the second half of the year. Cirlot, 1972, p.127. Many paintings of gaunt mothers with children date from this period. In his austere use of color and sometimes doleful subject matterâprostitutes and beggars are frequent subjectsâPicasso was influenced by a trip through Spain and by the suicide of his friend Carlos Casagemas. Starting in autumn of 1901 he painted several posthumous portraits of Casagemas, culminating in the gloomy allegorical painting La Vie (1903), now in the Cleveland Museum of Art. Wattenmaker, Distel, et al.,1993, p. 304.
The same mood pervades the well-known etching The Frugal Repast (1904), which depicts a blind man and a sighted woman, both emaciated, seated at a nearly bare table. Blindness is a recurrent theme in Picassoâs works of this period, also represented in The Blindmanâs Meal (1903, the Metropolitan Museum of Art) and in the portrait of Celestina (1903). Other works include Portrait of Soler and Portrait of Suzanne Blochâ.
Pablo Picasso, Garçon à la pipe, (Boy with a Pipe), 1905, Rose Period
The Rose Period (1904â1906) Wattenmaker, Distel, et al.,1993, p. 194. is characterized by a more cheery style with orange and pink colors, and featuring many circus people, acrobats and harlequins known in France as saltimbanques. The harlequin, a comedic character usually depicted in checkered patterned clothing, became a personal symbol for Picasso. Picasso met Fernande Olivier, a model for sculptors and artists, in Paris in 1904, and many of these paintings are influenced by his warm relationship with her, in addition to his increased exposure to French painting. The generally upbeat and optimistic mood of paintings in this period is reminiscent of the 1899â1901 period (i.e. just prior to the Blue Period) and 1904 can be considered a transition year between the two periods.
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), Museum of Modern Art, New York
Picassoâs African-influenced Period (1907â1909) begins with the two figures on the right in his painting, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, which were inspired by African artifacts. Formal ideas developed during this period lead directly into the Cubist period that follows.
Three Musicians (1921), Museum of Modern Art
Analytic cubism (1909â1912) is a style of painting Picasso developed along with Georges Braque using monochrome brownish and neutral colors. Both artists took apart objects and âanalyzedâ them in terms of their shapes. Picasso and Braqueâs paintings at this time have many similarities. Synthetic cubism (1912â1919) was a further development of the genre, in which cut paper fragmentsâoften wallpaper or portions of newspaper pagesâwere pasted into compositions, marking the first use of collage in fine art.
In the period following the upheaval of World War I, Picasso produced work in a neoclassical style. This âreturn to orderâ is evident in the work of many European artists in the 1920s, including André Derain, Giorgio de Chirico, and the artists of the New Objectivity movement. Picassoâs paintings and drawings from this period frequently recall the work of Ingres.
During the 1930s, the minotaur replaced the harlequin as a common motif in his work. His use of the minotaur came partly from his contact with the surrealists, who often used it as their symbol, and it appears in Picassoâs Guernica.
Guernica, 1937, Museo Reina Sofia
Arguably Picassoâs most famous work is his depiction of the German bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil WarâGuernica. This large canvas embodies for many the inhumanity, brutality and hopelessness of war. Asked to explain its symbolism, Picasso said, âIt isnât up to the painter to define the symbols. Otherwise it would be better if he wrote them out in so many words! The public who look at the picture must interpret the symbols as they understand them.â
Guernica hung in New Yorkâs Museum of Modern Art for many years. In 1981 Guernica was returned to Spain and exhibited at the Casón del Buen Retiro. In 1992 the painting hung in Madridâs Reina SofÃa Museum when it opened.
Picasso sculpture in Chicago
Picasso was one of 250 sculptors who exhibited in the 3rd Sculpture International held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the summer of 1949. In the 1950s, Picassoâs style changed once again, as he took to producing reinterpretations of the art of the great masters. He made a series of works based on Velazquezâs painting of Las Meninas. He also based paintings on works by Goya, Poussin, Manet, Courbet and Delacroix.
Nude Woman with a Necklace (1968), Tate
He was commissioned to make a maquette for a huge -high public sculpture to be built in Chicago, known usually as the Chicago Picasso. He approached the project with a great deal of enthusiasm, designing a sculpture which was ambiguous and somewhat controversial. What the figure represents is not known; it could be a bird, a horse, a woman or a totally abstract shape. The sculpture, one of the most recognizable landmarks in downtown Chicago, was unveiled in 1967. Picasso refused to be paid $100,000 for it, donating it to the people of the city.
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Picassoâs final works were a mixture of styles, his means of expression in constant flux until the end of his life. Devoting his full energies to his work, Picasso became more daring, his works more colorful and expressive, and from 1968 through 1971 he produced a torrent of paintings and hundreds of copperplate etchings. At the time these works were dismissed by most as pornographic fantasies of an impotent old man or the slapdash works of an artist who was past his prime. Only later, after Picassoâs death, when the rest of the art world had moved on from abstract expressionism, did the critical community come to see that Picasso had already discovered neo-expressionism and was, as so often before, ahead of his time.
Picasso was exceptionally prolific throughout his long lifetime. The total number of artworks he produced has been estimated at 50,000, comprising 1,885 paintings; 1,228 sculptures; 2,880 ceramics, roughly 12,000 drawings, many thousands of prints, and numerous tapestries and rugs. On-line Picasso Project, citing Selfridge, John, 1994. At the time of his death many of his paintings were in his possession, as he had kept off the art market what he didnât need to sell. In addition, Picasso had a considerable collection of the work of other famous artists, some his contemporaries, such as Henri Matisse, with whom he had exchanged works. Since Picasso left no will, his death duties (estate tax) to the French state were paid in the form of his works and others from his collection. These works form the core of the immense and representative collection of the Musée Picasso in Paris. In 2003, relatives of Picasso inaugurated a museum dedicated to him in his birthplace, Málaga, Spain, the Museo Picasso Málaga.
Picasso sculpture in Halmstad
The Museu Picasso in Barcelona features many of Picassoâs early works, created while he was living in Spain, including many rarely seen works which reveal Picassoâs firm grounding in classical techniques. The museum also holds many precise and detailed figure studies done in his youth under his fatherâs tutelage, as well as the extensive collection of Jaime Sabartés, Picassoâs close friend and personal secretary.
Several paintings by Picasso rank among the most expensive paintings in the world. Garçon à la pipe sold for USD $104 million at Sotheby's on 4 May 2004, establishing a new price record. Dora Maar au Chat sold for USD $95.2 million at Sothebyâs on 3 May 2006.
As of 2004, Picasso remains the top ranked artist (based on sales of his works at auctions) according to the Art Market Trends report. (pdf) More of his paintings have been stolen than those by any other artist. S. Goodenough, 1500 Fascinating Facts, Treasure Press, London, 1987, p 241.
The Picasso Administration functions as his official Estate. The U.S. copyright representative for the Picasso Administration is the Artists Rights Society. | Most frequently requested artists list of the Artists Rights Society
Upon Picasso's death in 1973, actor Dustin Hoffman was having dinner with former Beatle Paul McCartney and told him about Picasso's last words. McCartney started creating and singing a song around those words and included the song on his 1973 album, Band on the Run.
In the 1996 movie Surviving Picasso Picasso is played by actor Anthony Hopkins.
*Becht-Jördens, Gereon; Wehmeier, Peter M. (2003). Picasso und die christliche Ikonographie. Mutterbeziehung und künstlerische Position. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag. ISBN 9783496012726
* Berger, John (1965). The Success and Failure of Picasso. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
* Cirlot, Juan-Eduardo (1972). Picasso: birth of a genius. New York and Washington: Praeger.
* Cowling, Elizabeth; Mundy, Jennifer (1990). On Classic Ground: Picasso, Léger, de Chirico and the New Classicism 1910â1930. London: Tate Gallery. ISBN 1-85437-043-X
* Daix, Pierre (1993). Picasso: Life And Art. Harper Collins. ISBN 9780064309769
* FitzGerald, Michael C. Making Modernism: Picasso and the Creation of the Market for Twentieth-Century Art. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.
*Eugenio Granell, Picassoâs Guernica : the end of a Spanish era (Ann Arbor, Mich. : UMI Research Press, 1981) ISBN 0835712060 9780835712064 9780835712064 0835712060
* Krauss, Rosalind (1998). The Picasso Papers. London: Thames and Hudson. ISBN 0500237611
* Mallen, Enrique (2003). The Visual Grammar of Pablo Picasso. Berkeley Insights in Linguistics & Semiotics Series. New York: Peter Lang.
* Mallen, Enrique (2005). La Sintaxis de la Carne: Pablo Picasso y Marie-Thérèse Walter. Santiago de Chile: Red Internacional del Libro.
* Mallen, Enrique (2009). A Concordance of Pablo Picasso's Spanish Writings. New York: Edwin Mellen Press.
* Nill, Raymond M. âA Visual Guide to Pablo Picassoâs Worksâ. New York: B&H Publishers, 1987.
* Picasso, Olivier Widmaier. (2004). Picasso: The Real Family Story. Prestel Publ. ISBN 3-7913-3149-3
* Rubin, William, ed. (1980) Pablo Picasso, a retrospective. Chronology by Jane Fluegel. New York: The Museum of Modern Art. ISBN 0-87070-519-9
* Wattenmaker, Richard J.; Distel, Anne, et al. (1993). Great French Paintings from the Barnes Foundation. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0-679-40963-7
* Wertenbaker, Lael (1967). The World of Picasso. TimeâLife Library of Art. Alexandria, Virginia: Time-Life Books.
* Over 17,671 catalogued artworks available on the On-Line Picasso Project
* Official website
* On-Line Picasso Project: Comprehensive summary of his life and his work.
* Biography and works of Pablo Picasso
* Pablo Picasso â Biography, Quotes & Paintings, retrieved 14 June 2007.
* Poems by Picasso in English translation from Samizdat (poetry magazine)
* Cubism, The Big Picture
* Artists Rights Society, Picasso's U.S. Copyright Representatives
* Union List of Artist Names, Getty Vocabularies. ULAN Full Record Display for Pablo Picasso. Getty Vocabulary Program, Getty Research Institute. Los Angeles, California.
Picasso Museum, Paris, (Hotel Salé, 1659)
* Guggenheim Museum Biography
* Hilo Art Museum, (Hilo Hawaii, USA)
* Honolulu Academy of Arts
* Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
* Musée National Picasso (Paris, France)
* Musée Picasso (Antibes, France)
* Museo Picasso Málaga (Málaga, Spain)
* Museu Picasso (Barcelona, Spain)
* Museum Berggruen (Berlin, Germany)
* Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
* National Gallery of Art list of paintings
* Graphikmuseum Pablo Picasso Münster (Münster, Germany)
* Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles, California
* Power and Tenderness in Men and in Picassoâs âMinotauromachyâ by Chaim Koppelman
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Pablo_Picasso | When did Picasso make his first trip to Paris? | 1900 | data/set6/a1 | Pablo_Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno MarÃa de los Remedios Cipriano de la SantÃsima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso (25 October 1881 â 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, draughtsman, and sculptor. He is one of the most recognized figures in 20th-century art. He is best known for co-founding the Cubist movement and for the wide variety of styles embodied in his work. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907) and Guernica (1937), his portrayal of the German bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War.
Picasso demonstrated uncanny artistic talent in his early years, painting in a realistic manner through his childhood and adolescence; during the first decade of the twentieth century his style changed as he experimented with different theories, techniques, and ideas. Picassoâs creativity manifested itself in numerous mediums, including painting, sculpture, drawing, and architecture. His revolutionary artistic accomplishments brought him universal renown and immense fortunes throughout his life, making him the best-known figure in twentieth century art.
Picasso was baptized Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno MarÃa de los Remedios Crispiniano de la SantÃsima Trinidad, a series of names honouring various saints and relatives. The name on his baptismal certificate differs slightly from the name on his birth record. On-line Picasso Project Added to these were Ruiz and Picasso, for his father and mother, respectively, as per Spanish custom. Born in the city of Málaga in the Andalusian region of Spain, he was the first child of Don José Ruiz y Blasco (1838â1913) and MarÃa Picasso y López. Picassoâs family was middle-class; his father was also a painter who specialized in naturalistic depictions of birds and other game. For most of his life Ruiz was a professor of art at the School of Crafts and a curator of a local museum. Ruizâs ancestors were minor aristocrats.
The house where Picasso was born, in Málaga
Picasso showed a passion and a skill for drawing from an early age; according to his mother, --> his first words were âpiz, pizâ, a shortening of lápiz, the Spanish word for âpencilâ. Wertenbaker, 9. --> From the age of seven, Picasso received formal artistic training from his father in figure drawing and oil painting. Ruiz was a traditional, academic artist and instructor who believed that proper training required disciplined copying of the masters, and drawing the human body from plaster casts and live models. His son became preoccupied with art to the detriment of his classwork.
The family moved to La Coruña in 1891 where his father became a professor at the School of Fine Arts. They stayed almost four years. On one occasion the father found his son painting over his unfinished sketch of a pigeon. Observing the precision of his sonâs technique, Ruiz felt that the thirteen-year-old Picasso had surpassed him, and vowed to give up painting. Wertenbaker, 11.
In 1895, Picasso's seven-year old sister, Conchita, died of diphtheriaâa traumatic event in his life. After her death, the family moved to Barcelona, with Ruiz transferring to its School of Fine Arts. Picasso thrived in the city, regarding it in times of sadness or nostalgia as his true home. Wertenbaker, 13. Ruiz persuaded the officials at the academy to allow his son to take an entrance exam for the advanced class. This process often took students a month, but Picasso completed it in a week, and the impressed jury admitted Picasso, who was 13. The student lacked discipline but made friendships that would affect him in later life. His father rented him a small room close to home so Picasso could work alone, yet Ruiz checked up on him numerous times a day, judging his sonâs drawings. The two argued frequently.
Picassoâs father and uncle decided to send the young artist to Madridâs Royal Academy of San Fernando, the country's foremost art school. In 1897, Picasso, age 16, set off for the first time on his own, but he disliked formal instruction and quit attending classes soon after enrollment. Madrid, however, held many other attractions: the Prado housed paintings by the venerable Diego Velázquez, Francisco Goya, and Francisco Zurbarán. Picasso especially admired the works of El Greco; their elements, the elongated limbs, arresting colors, and mystical visages, are echoed in Picassoâs Åuvre.
[[Image:GertrudeStein.JPG|thumb|left|upright|Portrait of Gertrude Stein, 1906, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. When someone commented that Stein did not look like her portrait, Picasso replied, "She will". Portrait of Gertrude Stein Metropolitan Museum, Retrieved November 26, 2008 ]]
After studying art in Madrid, Picasso made his first trip to Paris in 1900, then the art capital of Europe. There, he met his first Parisian friend, the journalist and poet Max Jacob, who helped Picasso learn the language and its literature. Soon they shared an apartment; Max slept at night while Picasso slept during the day and worked at night. These were times of severe poverty, cold, and desperation. Much of his work was burned to keep the small room warm. During the first five months of 1901, Picasso lived in Madrid, where he and his anarchist friend Francisco de AsÃs Soler founded the magazine Arte Joven (Young Art), which published five issues. Soler solicited articles and Picasso illustrated the journal, mostly contributing grim cartoons depicting and sympathizing with the state of the poor. The first issue was published on 31 March 1901, by which time the artist had started to sign his work simply Picasso, while before he had signed Pablo Ruiz y Picasso. Cirlot, 1972, p. 125.
By 1905 Picasso became a favorite of the American art collectors Leo and Gertrude Stein. Their older brother Michael Stein and his wife Sarah also became collectors of his work. Picasso painted portraits of both Gertrude Stein and her nephew Allan Stein. Pablo Picasso, Portrait of Allan Stein, 1906, retrieved November 27, 2008 Gertrude Stein became Picasso's principal patron, acquiring his drawings and paintings and exhibiting them in her informal Salon at her home in Paris. Special Exhibit Examines Dynamic Relationship Between the Art of Pablo Picasso and Writing Yale University Art Gallery, Retrieved October 8, 2009 At one of her gatherings in 1905, he met Henri Matisse, who was to become a lifelong friend and rival. The Steins introduced him to Claribel Cone and her sister Etta who were American art collectors; they also began to acquire Picasso and Matisse's paintings. Eventually Leo Stein moved to Italy, and Michael and Sarah Stein became patrons of Matisse; while Gertrude Stein continued to collect Picasso. James R. Mellow, Charmed Circle: Gertrude Stein and Company, Retrieved November 27, 2008
Portrait of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, 1910, The Art Institute of Chicago. Picasso wrote of Kahnweiler What would have become of us if Kahnweiler hadn't had a business sense?
In 1907 Picasso joined the art gallery that had recently been opened in Paris by Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler. Kahnweiler was a German art historian, art collector who became one of the premier French Art dealers of the 20th century. He became prominent in Paris beginning in 1907 for being among the first champions of Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and Cubism. Kahnweiler championed burgeoning artists such as André Derain, Kees Van Dongen, Fernand Léger, Juan Gris, Maurice de Vlaminck and several others who had come from all over the globe to live and work in Montparnasse at the time. Cubism and its Legacy, Tate Liverpool, retrieved November 27, 2008
In Paris, Picasso entertained a distinguished coterie of friends in the Montmartre and Montparnasse quarters, including André Breton, poet Guillaume Apollinaire, writer Alfred Jarry, and Gertrude Stein. Apollinaire was arrested on suspicion of stealing the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in 1911. Apollonaire pointed to his friend Picasso, who was also brought in for questioning, but both were later exonerated. Time Magazine, Stealing the Mona Lisa, 1911. Consulted on 15 August 2007.
Portrait of Igor Stravinsky, c. 1920
In the early 20th century, Picasso divided his time between Barcelona and Paris. In 1904, in the middle of a storm, he met Fernande Olivier, a Bohemian artist who became his mistress. Olivier appears in many of his Rose period paintings. After acquiring fame and some fortune, Picasso left Olivier for Marcelle Humbert, whom he called Eva Gouel. Picasso included declarations of his love for Eva in many Cubist works. Picasso was devastated by her premature death from illness at the age of 30 in 1915. Charles Harrison, Francis Frascina, Gillian Perry, Primitivism, Cubism, Abstraction, retrieved November 27, 2008
After World War I, Picasso made a number of important associations and relationships with figures associated with Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. Among his friends during this period were Jean Cocteau, Jean Hugo, Juan Gris and others. In the summer of 1918, Picasso married Olga Khokhlova, a ballerina with Sergei Diaghilevâs troupe, for whom Picasso was designing a ballet, Parade, in Rome; and they spent their honeymoon in the villa near Biarritz of the glamorous Chilean art patron Eugenia Errázuriz. Khokhlova introduced Picasso to high society, formal dinner parties, and all the social niceties attendant on the life of the rich in 1920s Paris. The two had a son, Paulo, who would grow up to be a dissolute motorcycle racer and chauffeur to his father. Khokhlovaâs insistence on social propriety clashed with Picassoâs bohemian tendencies and the two lived in a state of constant conflict. During the same period that Picasso collaborated with Diaghilevâs troup, he and Igor Stravinsky collaborated on Pulcinella in 1920. Picasso took the opportunity to make several sketches of the composer.
In 1927 Picasso met 17-year-old Marie-Thérèse Walter and began a secret affair with her. Picassoâs marriage to Khokhlova soon ended in separation rather than divorce, as French law required an even division of property in the case of divorce, and Picasso did not want Khokhlova to have half his wealth. The two remained legally married until Khokhlovaâs death in 1955. Picasso carried on a long-standing affair with Marie-Thérèse Walter and fathered a daughter, Maia, with her. Marie-Thérèse lived in the vain hope that Picasso would one day marry her, and hanged herself four years after Picassoâs death. Throughout his life Picasso maintained a number of mistresses in addition to his wife or primary partner. Picasso was married twice and had four children by three women.
Dora Maar au Chat, 1941
The photographer and painter Dora Maar was also a constant companion and lover of Picasso. The two were closest in the late 1930s and early 1940s and it was Maar who documented the painting of Guernica.
During the Second World War, Picasso remained in Paris while the Germans occupied the city. Picassoâs artistic style did not fit the Nazi views of art, so he was not able to show his works during this time. Retreating to his studio, he continued to paint all the while. Although the Germans outlawed bronze casting in Paris, Picasso continued regardless, using bronze smuggled to him by the French resistance.
After the liberation of Paris in 1944, Picasso began to keep company with a young art student, Françoise Gilot. The two eventually became lovers, and had two children together, Claude and Paloma. Unique among Picassoâs women, Gilot left Picasso in 1953, allegedly because of abusive treatment and infidelities. This was a severe blow to Picasso.
He went through a difficult period after Gilotâs departure, coming to terms with his advancing age and his perception that, now in his 70s, he was no longer attractive, but rather grotesque to young women. A number of ink drawings from this period explore this theme of the hideous old dwarf as buffoonish counterpoint to the beautiful young girl, including several from a six-week affair with Geneviève Laporte, who in June 2005 auctioned off the drawings Picasso made of her.
Picasso was not long in finding another lover, Jacqueline Roque. She worked at the Madoura Pottery in Vallauris on the French Riviera, where Picasso made and painted ceramics. The two remained together for the rest of Picassoâs life, marrying in 1961. Their marriage was also the means of one last act of revenge against Gilot. Gilot had been seeking a legal means to legitimize her children with Picasso, Claude and Paloma. With Picassoâs encouragement, she had arranged to divorce her then husband, Luc Simon, and marry Picasso to secure her childrenâs rights. Picasso then secretly married Roque after Gilot had filed for divorce in order to exact his revenge for her leaving him.
Picasso had constructed a huge gothic structure and could afford large villas in the south of France, at Notre-dame-de-vie on the outskirts of Mougins, in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur. By this time he was a celebrity, and there was often as much interest in his personal life as his art.
In addition to his manifold artistic accomplishments, Picasso had a film career, including a cameo appearance in Jean Cocteauâs Testament of Orpheus. Picasso always played himself in his film appearances. In 1955 he helped make the film Le Mystère Picasso (The Mystery of Picasso) directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot.
Pablo Picasso died on 8 April 1973 in Mougins, France, while he and his wife Jacqueline entertained friends for dinner. His final words were âDrink to me, drink to my health, you know I canât drink any more.â accessed online 15 August 2007 He was interred at the Chateau of Vauvenargues near Aix-en-Provence, a property he had acquired in 1958 and occupied with Jacqueline between 1959 and 1962. Jacqueline Roque prevented his children Claude and Paloma from attending the funeral. The Rich Die Richer and You Can too, by William D. Zabel, Published 1996 John Wiley and Sons, p.11. ISBN 0471155322 Accessed online 15 August 2007 Devastated and lonely after the death of Picasso, Jacqueline Roque took her own life by gunshot in 1986 when she was 60 years old. Picasso's Family Album, Michael Kimmelman, New York Times, retrieved November 28, 2008
* Paulo (4 February 1921 â 5 June 1975) (Born Paul Joseph Picasso) â with Olga Khokhlova
* Maya (5 September 1935 â ) (Born Maria de la Concepcion Picasso) â with Marie-Thérèse Walter
* Claude (15 May 1947 â) (Born Claude Pierre Pablo Picasso) â with Françoise Gilot
* Paloma (19 April 1949 â ) (Born Anne Paloma Picasso) â with Françoise Gilot
Pablo Picasso, Massacre in Korea, 1951
Picasso remained neutral during World War I, the Spanish Civil War, and World War II, refusing to fight for any side or country. Some of his contemporaries felt that his pacifism had more to do with cowardice than principle. An article in The New Yorker called him âa coward, who sat out two world wars while his friends were suffering and dyingâ. As a Spanish citizen living in France, Picasso was under no compulsion to fight against the invading Germans in either World War. In the Spanish Civil War, service for Spaniards living abroad was optional and would have involved a voluntary return to the country to join either side. While Picasso expressed anger and condemnation of Francisco Franco and fascists through his art, he did not take up arms against them.
He also remained aloof from the Catalan independence movement during his youth despite expressing general support and being friendly with activists within it.
In 1944 Picasso joined the French Communist Party, attended an international peace conference in Poland, and in 1950 received the Lenin Peace Prize from the Soviet government. Picassoâs Party Line, ARTnews Retrieved 31 May 2007. But party criticism of a portrait of Stalin as insufficiently realistic cooled Picassoâs interest in communist politics, though he remained a loyal member of the Communist Party until his death. In a 1945 interview with Jerome Seckler, Picasso stated: âI am a Communist and my painting is Communist painting. ... But if I were a shoemaker, Royalist or Communist or anything else, I would not necessarily hammer my shoes in a special way to show my politics.â His Communist militancy, not uncommon among intellectuals and artists at the time although it was officially banned in Francoist Spain, has long been the subject of some controversy; a notable source or demonstration thereof was a sarcastic quote commonly attributed to Salvador Dalà (with whom Picasso had a rather strained relationship Failed attempts at correspondence between Dalà and Picasso ), ostensibly casting doubt on the true honesty of his political allegiances:
: Picasso es pintor, yo también; [...] Picasso es español, yo también; Picasso es comunista, yo tampoco.
:(Picasso is a painter, so am I; [...] Picasso is a Spaniard, so am I; Picasso is a communist, neither am I.) Picasso by Dalà Study on Salvador Dalà Salvador Dalà quotes Dalà "sympathetic"? De El Greco a Salvador DalÃ, Pasando por Picasso Article on Dalà in El Mundo
He was against the intervention of the United Nations and the United States Picasso A Retrospective, Museum of Modern Art, edited by William Rubin, copyright MoMA 1980, p.383 in the Korean War and he depicted it in Massacre in Korea. In 1962, he received the International Lenin Peace Prize.
Picassoâs work is often categorized into periods. While the names of many of his later periods are debated, the most commonly accepted periods in his work are the Blue Period (1901â1904), the Rose Period (1905â1907), the African-influenced Period (1908â1909), Analytic Cubism (1909â1912), and Synthetic Cubism (1912â1919).
In 1939â40 the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, under its director Alfred Barr, a Picasso enthusiast, held a major and highly successful retrospective of his principal works up until that time. This exhibition lionized the artist, brought into full public view in America the scope of his artistry, and resulted in a reinterpretation of his work by contemporary art historians and scholars. The MoMA retrospective of 1939â40 â see Michael C. FitzGerald, Making Modernism: Picasso and the Creation of the Market for Twentieth-Century Art (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), pp. 243â262.
Picassoâs training under his father began before 1890. His progress can be traced in the collection of early works now held by the Museu Picasso in Barcelona, which provides one of the most comprehensive records extant of any major artistâs beginnings. Cirlot,1972, p.6. During 1893 the juvenile quality of his earliest work falls away, and by 1894 his career as a painter can be said to have begun. Cirlot, 1972, p. 14. The academic realism apparent in the works of the mid-1890s is well displayed in The First Communion (1896), a large composition that depicts his sister, Lola. In the same year, at the age of 14, he painted Portrait of Aunt Pepa, a vigorous and dramatic portrait that Juan-Eduardo Cirlot has called âwithout a doubt one of the greatest in the whole history of Spanish painting.â Cirlot, 1972, p.37.
In 1897 his realism became tinged with Symbolist influence, in a series of landscape paintings rendered in non naturalistic violet and green tones. What some call his Modernist period (1899â1900) followed. His exposure to the work of Rossetti, Steinlen, Toulouse-Lautrec and Edvard Munch, combined with his admiration for favorite old masters such as El Greco, led Picasso to a personal version of modernism in his works of this period. Cirlot, 1972, p. 87â108.
Femme aux Bras Croisés, 1902
Picassoâs Blue Period (1901â1904) consists of somber paintings rendered in shades of blue and blue-green, only occasionally warmed by other colors. This periodâs starting point is uncertain; it may have begun in Spain in the spring of 1901, or in Paris in the second half of the year. Cirlot, 1972, p.127. Many paintings of gaunt mothers with children date from this period. In his austere use of color and sometimes doleful subject matterâprostitutes and beggars are frequent subjectsâPicasso was influenced by a trip through Spain and by the suicide of his friend Carlos Casagemas. Starting in autumn of 1901 he painted several posthumous portraits of Casagemas, culminating in the gloomy allegorical painting La Vie (1903), now in the Cleveland Museum of Art. Wattenmaker, Distel, et al.,1993, p. 304.
The same mood pervades the well-known etching The Frugal Repast (1904), which depicts a blind man and a sighted woman, both emaciated, seated at a nearly bare table. Blindness is a recurrent theme in Picassoâs works of this period, also represented in The Blindmanâs Meal (1903, the Metropolitan Museum of Art) and in the portrait of Celestina (1903). Other works include Portrait of Soler and Portrait of Suzanne Blochâ.
Pablo Picasso, Garçon à la pipe, (Boy with a Pipe), 1905, Rose Period
The Rose Period (1904â1906) Wattenmaker, Distel, et al.,1993, p. 194. is characterized by a more cheery style with orange and pink colors, and featuring many circus people, acrobats and harlequins known in France as saltimbanques. The harlequin, a comedic character usually depicted in checkered patterned clothing, became a personal symbol for Picasso. Picasso met Fernande Olivier, a model for sculptors and artists, in Paris in 1904, and many of these paintings are influenced by his warm relationship with her, in addition to his increased exposure to French painting. The generally upbeat and optimistic mood of paintings in this period is reminiscent of the 1899â1901 period (i.e. just prior to the Blue Period) and 1904 can be considered a transition year between the two periods.
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), Museum of Modern Art, New York
Picassoâs African-influenced Period (1907â1909) begins with the two figures on the right in his painting, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, which were inspired by African artifacts. Formal ideas developed during this period lead directly into the Cubist period that follows.
Three Musicians (1921), Museum of Modern Art
Analytic cubism (1909â1912) is a style of painting Picasso developed along with Georges Braque using monochrome brownish and neutral colors. Both artists took apart objects and âanalyzedâ them in terms of their shapes. Picasso and Braqueâs paintings at this time have many similarities. Synthetic cubism (1912â1919) was a further development of the genre, in which cut paper fragmentsâoften wallpaper or portions of newspaper pagesâwere pasted into compositions, marking the first use of collage in fine art.
In the period following the upheaval of World War I, Picasso produced work in a neoclassical style. This âreturn to orderâ is evident in the work of many European artists in the 1920s, including André Derain, Giorgio de Chirico, and the artists of the New Objectivity movement. Picassoâs paintings and drawings from this period frequently recall the work of Ingres.
During the 1930s, the minotaur replaced the harlequin as a common motif in his work. His use of the minotaur came partly from his contact with the surrealists, who often used it as their symbol, and it appears in Picassoâs Guernica.
Guernica, 1937, Museo Reina Sofia
Arguably Picassoâs most famous work is his depiction of the German bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil WarâGuernica. This large canvas embodies for many the inhumanity, brutality and hopelessness of war. Asked to explain its symbolism, Picasso said, âIt isnât up to the painter to define the symbols. Otherwise it would be better if he wrote them out in so many words! The public who look at the picture must interpret the symbols as they understand them.â
Guernica hung in New Yorkâs Museum of Modern Art for many years. In 1981 Guernica was returned to Spain and exhibited at the Casón del Buen Retiro. In 1992 the painting hung in Madridâs Reina SofÃa Museum when it opened.
Picasso sculpture in Chicago
Picasso was one of 250 sculptors who exhibited in the 3rd Sculpture International held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the summer of 1949. In the 1950s, Picassoâs style changed once again, as he took to producing reinterpretations of the art of the great masters. He made a series of works based on Velazquezâs painting of Las Meninas. He also based paintings on works by Goya, Poussin, Manet, Courbet and Delacroix.
Nude Woman with a Necklace (1968), Tate
He was commissioned to make a maquette for a huge -high public sculpture to be built in Chicago, known usually as the Chicago Picasso. He approached the project with a great deal of enthusiasm, designing a sculpture which was ambiguous and somewhat controversial. What the figure represents is not known; it could be a bird, a horse, a woman or a totally abstract shape. The sculpture, one of the most recognizable landmarks in downtown Chicago, was unveiled in 1967. Picasso refused to be paid $100,000 for it, donating it to the people of the city.
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Picassoâs final works were a mixture of styles, his means of expression in constant flux until the end of his life. Devoting his full energies to his work, Picasso became more daring, his works more colorful and expressive, and from 1968 through 1971 he produced a torrent of paintings and hundreds of copperplate etchings. At the time these works were dismissed by most as pornographic fantasies of an impotent old man or the slapdash works of an artist who was past his prime. Only later, after Picassoâs death, when the rest of the art world had moved on from abstract expressionism, did the critical community come to see that Picasso had already discovered neo-expressionism and was, as so often before, ahead of his time.
Picasso was exceptionally prolific throughout his long lifetime. The total number of artworks he produced has been estimated at 50,000, comprising 1,885 paintings; 1,228 sculptures; 2,880 ceramics, roughly 12,000 drawings, many thousands of prints, and numerous tapestries and rugs. On-line Picasso Project, citing Selfridge, John, 1994. At the time of his death many of his paintings were in his possession, as he had kept off the art market what he didnât need to sell. In addition, Picasso had a considerable collection of the work of other famous artists, some his contemporaries, such as Henri Matisse, with whom he had exchanged works. Since Picasso left no will, his death duties (estate tax) to the French state were paid in the form of his works and others from his collection. These works form the core of the immense and representative collection of the Musée Picasso in Paris. In 2003, relatives of Picasso inaugurated a museum dedicated to him in his birthplace, Málaga, Spain, the Museo Picasso Málaga.
Picasso sculpture in Halmstad
The Museu Picasso in Barcelona features many of Picassoâs early works, created while he was living in Spain, including many rarely seen works which reveal Picassoâs firm grounding in classical techniques. The museum also holds many precise and detailed figure studies done in his youth under his fatherâs tutelage, as well as the extensive collection of Jaime Sabartés, Picassoâs close friend and personal secretary.
Several paintings by Picasso rank among the most expensive paintings in the world. Garçon à la pipe sold for USD $104 million at Sotheby's on 4 May 2004, establishing a new price record. Dora Maar au Chat sold for USD $95.2 million at Sothebyâs on 3 May 2006.
As of 2004, Picasso remains the top ranked artist (based on sales of his works at auctions) according to the Art Market Trends report. (pdf) More of his paintings have been stolen than those by any other artist. S. Goodenough, 1500 Fascinating Facts, Treasure Press, London, 1987, p 241.
The Picasso Administration functions as his official Estate. The U.S. copyright representative for the Picasso Administration is the Artists Rights Society. | Most frequently requested artists list of the Artists Rights Society
Upon Picasso's death in 1973, actor Dustin Hoffman was having dinner with former Beatle Paul McCartney and told him about Picasso's last words. McCartney started creating and singing a song around those words and included the song on his 1973 album, Band on the Run.
In the 1996 movie Surviving Picasso Picasso is played by actor Anthony Hopkins.
*Becht-Jördens, Gereon; Wehmeier, Peter M. (2003). Picasso und die christliche Ikonographie. Mutterbeziehung und künstlerische Position. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag. ISBN 9783496012726
* Berger, John (1965). The Success and Failure of Picasso. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
* Cirlot, Juan-Eduardo (1972). Picasso: birth of a genius. New York and Washington: Praeger.
* Cowling, Elizabeth; Mundy, Jennifer (1990). On Classic Ground: Picasso, Léger, de Chirico and the New Classicism 1910â1930. London: Tate Gallery. ISBN 1-85437-043-X
* Daix, Pierre (1993). Picasso: Life And Art. Harper Collins. ISBN 9780064309769
* FitzGerald, Michael C. Making Modernism: Picasso and the Creation of the Market for Twentieth-Century Art. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.
*Eugenio Granell, Picassoâs Guernica : the end of a Spanish era (Ann Arbor, Mich. : UMI Research Press, 1981) ISBN 0835712060 9780835712064 9780835712064 0835712060
* Krauss, Rosalind (1998). The Picasso Papers. London: Thames and Hudson. ISBN 0500237611
* Mallen, Enrique (2003). The Visual Grammar of Pablo Picasso. Berkeley Insights in Linguistics & Semiotics Series. New York: Peter Lang.
* Mallen, Enrique (2005). La Sintaxis de la Carne: Pablo Picasso y Marie-Thérèse Walter. Santiago de Chile: Red Internacional del Libro.
* Mallen, Enrique (2009). A Concordance of Pablo Picasso's Spanish Writings. New York: Edwin Mellen Press.
* Nill, Raymond M. âA Visual Guide to Pablo Picassoâs Worksâ. New York: B&H Publishers, 1987.
* Picasso, Olivier Widmaier. (2004). Picasso: The Real Family Story. Prestel Publ. ISBN 3-7913-3149-3
* Rubin, William, ed. (1980) Pablo Picasso, a retrospective. Chronology by Jane Fluegel. New York: The Museum of Modern Art. ISBN 0-87070-519-9
* Wattenmaker, Richard J.; Distel, Anne, et al. (1993). Great French Paintings from the Barnes Foundation. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0-679-40963-7
* Wertenbaker, Lael (1967). The World of Picasso. TimeâLife Library of Art. Alexandria, Virginia: Time-Life Books.
* Over 17,671 catalogued artworks available on the On-Line Picasso Project
* Official website
* On-Line Picasso Project: Comprehensive summary of his life and his work.
* Biography and works of Pablo Picasso
* Pablo Picasso â Biography, Quotes & Paintings, retrieved 14 June 2007.
* Poems by Picasso in English translation from Samizdat (poetry magazine)
* Cubism, The Big Picture
* Artists Rights Society, Picasso's U.S. Copyright Representatives
* Union List of Artist Names, Getty Vocabularies. ULAN Full Record Display for Pablo Picasso. Getty Vocabulary Program, Getty Research Institute. Los Angeles, California.
Picasso Museum, Paris, (Hotel Salé, 1659)
* Guggenheim Museum Biography
* Hilo Art Museum, (Hilo Hawaii, USA)
* Honolulu Academy of Arts
* Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
* Musée National Picasso (Paris, France)
* Musée Picasso (Antibes, France)
* Museo Picasso Málaga (Málaga, Spain)
* Museu Picasso (Barcelona, Spain)
* Museum Berggruen (Berlin, Germany)
* Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
* National Gallery of Art list of paintings
* Graphikmuseum Pablo Picasso Münster (Münster, Germany)
* Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles, California
* Power and Tenderness in Men and in Picassoâs âMinotauromachyâ by Chaim Koppelman
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Pablo_Picasso | Give an example of the most comprehensive records extant of any major artists beginnings. | Museu Picasso | data/set6/a1 | Pablo_Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno MarÃa de los Remedios Cipriano de la SantÃsima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso (25 October 1881 â 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, draughtsman, and sculptor. He is one of the most recognized figures in 20th-century art. He is best known for co-founding the Cubist movement and for the wide variety of styles embodied in his work. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907) and Guernica (1937), his portrayal of the German bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War.
Picasso demonstrated uncanny artistic talent in his early years, painting in a realistic manner through his childhood and adolescence; during the first decade of the twentieth century his style changed as he experimented with different theories, techniques, and ideas. Picassoâs creativity manifested itself in numerous mediums, including painting, sculpture, drawing, and architecture. His revolutionary artistic accomplishments brought him universal renown and immense fortunes throughout his life, making him the best-known figure in twentieth century art.
Picasso was baptized Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno MarÃa de los Remedios Crispiniano de la SantÃsima Trinidad, a series of names honouring various saints and relatives. The name on his baptismal certificate differs slightly from the name on his birth record. On-line Picasso Project Added to these were Ruiz and Picasso, for his father and mother, respectively, as per Spanish custom. Born in the city of Málaga in the Andalusian region of Spain, he was the first child of Don José Ruiz y Blasco (1838â1913) and MarÃa Picasso y López. Picassoâs family was middle-class; his father was also a painter who specialized in naturalistic depictions of birds and other game. For most of his life Ruiz was a professor of art at the School of Crafts and a curator of a local museum. Ruizâs ancestors were minor aristocrats.
The house where Picasso was born, in Málaga
Picasso showed a passion and a skill for drawing from an early age; according to his mother, --> his first words were âpiz, pizâ, a shortening of lápiz, the Spanish word for âpencilâ. Wertenbaker, 9. --> From the age of seven, Picasso received formal artistic training from his father in figure drawing and oil painting. Ruiz was a traditional, academic artist and instructor who believed that proper training required disciplined copying of the masters, and drawing the human body from plaster casts and live models. His son became preoccupied with art to the detriment of his classwork.
The family moved to La Coruña in 1891 where his father became a professor at the School of Fine Arts. They stayed almost four years. On one occasion the father found his son painting over his unfinished sketch of a pigeon. Observing the precision of his sonâs technique, Ruiz felt that the thirteen-year-old Picasso had surpassed him, and vowed to give up painting. Wertenbaker, 11.
In 1895, Picasso's seven-year old sister, Conchita, died of diphtheriaâa traumatic event in his life. After her death, the family moved to Barcelona, with Ruiz transferring to its School of Fine Arts. Picasso thrived in the city, regarding it in times of sadness or nostalgia as his true home. Wertenbaker, 13. Ruiz persuaded the officials at the academy to allow his son to take an entrance exam for the advanced class. This process often took students a month, but Picasso completed it in a week, and the impressed jury admitted Picasso, who was 13. The student lacked discipline but made friendships that would affect him in later life. His father rented him a small room close to home so Picasso could work alone, yet Ruiz checked up on him numerous times a day, judging his sonâs drawings. The two argued frequently.
Picassoâs father and uncle decided to send the young artist to Madridâs Royal Academy of San Fernando, the country's foremost art school. In 1897, Picasso, age 16, set off for the first time on his own, but he disliked formal instruction and quit attending classes soon after enrollment. Madrid, however, held many other attractions: the Prado housed paintings by the venerable Diego Velázquez, Francisco Goya, and Francisco Zurbarán. Picasso especially admired the works of El Greco; their elements, the elongated limbs, arresting colors, and mystical visages, are echoed in Picassoâs Åuvre.
[[Image:GertrudeStein.JPG|thumb|left|upright|Portrait of Gertrude Stein, 1906, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. When someone commented that Stein did not look like her portrait, Picasso replied, "She will". Portrait of Gertrude Stein Metropolitan Museum, Retrieved November 26, 2008 ]]
After studying art in Madrid, Picasso made his first trip to Paris in 1900, then the art capital of Europe. There, he met his first Parisian friend, the journalist and poet Max Jacob, who helped Picasso learn the language and its literature. Soon they shared an apartment; Max slept at night while Picasso slept during the day and worked at night. These were times of severe poverty, cold, and desperation. Much of his work was burned to keep the small room warm. During the first five months of 1901, Picasso lived in Madrid, where he and his anarchist friend Francisco de AsÃs Soler founded the magazine Arte Joven (Young Art), which published five issues. Soler solicited articles and Picasso illustrated the journal, mostly contributing grim cartoons depicting and sympathizing with the state of the poor. The first issue was published on 31 March 1901, by which time the artist had started to sign his work simply Picasso, while before he had signed Pablo Ruiz y Picasso. Cirlot, 1972, p. 125.
By 1905 Picasso became a favorite of the American art collectors Leo and Gertrude Stein. Their older brother Michael Stein and his wife Sarah also became collectors of his work. Picasso painted portraits of both Gertrude Stein and her nephew Allan Stein. Pablo Picasso, Portrait of Allan Stein, 1906, retrieved November 27, 2008 Gertrude Stein became Picasso's principal patron, acquiring his drawings and paintings and exhibiting them in her informal Salon at her home in Paris. Special Exhibit Examines Dynamic Relationship Between the Art of Pablo Picasso and Writing Yale University Art Gallery, Retrieved October 8, 2009 At one of her gatherings in 1905, he met Henri Matisse, who was to become a lifelong friend and rival. The Steins introduced him to Claribel Cone and her sister Etta who were American art collectors; they also began to acquire Picasso and Matisse's paintings. Eventually Leo Stein moved to Italy, and Michael and Sarah Stein became patrons of Matisse; while Gertrude Stein continued to collect Picasso. James R. Mellow, Charmed Circle: Gertrude Stein and Company, Retrieved November 27, 2008
Portrait of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, 1910, The Art Institute of Chicago. Picasso wrote of Kahnweiler What would have become of us if Kahnweiler hadn't had a business sense?
In 1907 Picasso joined the art gallery that had recently been opened in Paris by Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler. Kahnweiler was a German art historian, art collector who became one of the premier French Art dealers of the 20th century. He became prominent in Paris beginning in 1907 for being among the first champions of Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and Cubism. Kahnweiler championed burgeoning artists such as André Derain, Kees Van Dongen, Fernand Léger, Juan Gris, Maurice de Vlaminck and several others who had come from all over the globe to live and work in Montparnasse at the time. Cubism and its Legacy, Tate Liverpool, retrieved November 27, 2008
In Paris, Picasso entertained a distinguished coterie of friends in the Montmartre and Montparnasse quarters, including André Breton, poet Guillaume Apollinaire, writer Alfred Jarry, and Gertrude Stein. Apollinaire was arrested on suspicion of stealing the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in 1911. Apollonaire pointed to his friend Picasso, who was also brought in for questioning, but both were later exonerated. Time Magazine, Stealing the Mona Lisa, 1911. Consulted on 15 August 2007.
Portrait of Igor Stravinsky, c. 1920
In the early 20th century, Picasso divided his time between Barcelona and Paris. In 1904, in the middle of a storm, he met Fernande Olivier, a Bohemian artist who became his mistress. Olivier appears in many of his Rose period paintings. After acquiring fame and some fortune, Picasso left Olivier for Marcelle Humbert, whom he called Eva Gouel. Picasso included declarations of his love for Eva in many Cubist works. Picasso was devastated by her premature death from illness at the age of 30 in 1915. Charles Harrison, Francis Frascina, Gillian Perry, Primitivism, Cubism, Abstraction, retrieved November 27, 2008
After World War I, Picasso made a number of important associations and relationships with figures associated with Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. Among his friends during this period were Jean Cocteau, Jean Hugo, Juan Gris and others. In the summer of 1918, Picasso married Olga Khokhlova, a ballerina with Sergei Diaghilevâs troupe, for whom Picasso was designing a ballet, Parade, in Rome; and they spent their honeymoon in the villa near Biarritz of the glamorous Chilean art patron Eugenia Errázuriz. Khokhlova introduced Picasso to high society, formal dinner parties, and all the social niceties attendant on the life of the rich in 1920s Paris. The two had a son, Paulo, who would grow up to be a dissolute motorcycle racer and chauffeur to his father. Khokhlovaâs insistence on social propriety clashed with Picassoâs bohemian tendencies and the two lived in a state of constant conflict. During the same period that Picasso collaborated with Diaghilevâs troup, he and Igor Stravinsky collaborated on Pulcinella in 1920. Picasso took the opportunity to make several sketches of the composer.
In 1927 Picasso met 17-year-old Marie-Thérèse Walter and began a secret affair with her. Picassoâs marriage to Khokhlova soon ended in separation rather than divorce, as French law required an even division of property in the case of divorce, and Picasso did not want Khokhlova to have half his wealth. The two remained legally married until Khokhlovaâs death in 1955. Picasso carried on a long-standing affair with Marie-Thérèse Walter and fathered a daughter, Maia, with her. Marie-Thérèse lived in the vain hope that Picasso would one day marry her, and hanged herself four years after Picassoâs death. Throughout his life Picasso maintained a number of mistresses in addition to his wife or primary partner. Picasso was married twice and had four children by three women.
Dora Maar au Chat, 1941
The photographer and painter Dora Maar was also a constant companion and lover of Picasso. The two were closest in the late 1930s and early 1940s and it was Maar who documented the painting of Guernica.
During the Second World War, Picasso remained in Paris while the Germans occupied the city. Picassoâs artistic style did not fit the Nazi views of art, so he was not able to show his works during this time. Retreating to his studio, he continued to paint all the while. Although the Germans outlawed bronze casting in Paris, Picasso continued regardless, using bronze smuggled to him by the French resistance.
After the liberation of Paris in 1944, Picasso began to keep company with a young art student, Françoise Gilot. The two eventually became lovers, and had two children together, Claude and Paloma. Unique among Picassoâs women, Gilot left Picasso in 1953, allegedly because of abusive treatment and infidelities. This was a severe blow to Picasso.
He went through a difficult period after Gilotâs departure, coming to terms with his advancing age and his perception that, now in his 70s, he was no longer attractive, but rather grotesque to young women. A number of ink drawings from this period explore this theme of the hideous old dwarf as buffoonish counterpoint to the beautiful young girl, including several from a six-week affair with Geneviève Laporte, who in June 2005 auctioned off the drawings Picasso made of her.
Picasso was not long in finding another lover, Jacqueline Roque. She worked at the Madoura Pottery in Vallauris on the French Riviera, where Picasso made and painted ceramics. The two remained together for the rest of Picassoâs life, marrying in 1961. Their marriage was also the means of one last act of revenge against Gilot. Gilot had been seeking a legal means to legitimize her children with Picasso, Claude and Paloma. With Picassoâs encouragement, she had arranged to divorce her then husband, Luc Simon, and marry Picasso to secure her childrenâs rights. Picasso then secretly married Roque after Gilot had filed for divorce in order to exact his revenge for her leaving him.
Picasso had constructed a huge gothic structure and could afford large villas in the south of France, at Notre-dame-de-vie on the outskirts of Mougins, in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur. By this time he was a celebrity, and there was often as much interest in his personal life as his art.
In addition to his manifold artistic accomplishments, Picasso had a film career, including a cameo appearance in Jean Cocteauâs Testament of Orpheus. Picasso always played himself in his film appearances. In 1955 he helped make the film Le Mystère Picasso (The Mystery of Picasso) directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot.
Pablo Picasso died on 8 April 1973 in Mougins, France, while he and his wife Jacqueline entertained friends for dinner. His final words were âDrink to me, drink to my health, you know I canât drink any more.â accessed online 15 August 2007 He was interred at the Chateau of Vauvenargues near Aix-en-Provence, a property he had acquired in 1958 and occupied with Jacqueline between 1959 and 1962. Jacqueline Roque prevented his children Claude and Paloma from attending the funeral. The Rich Die Richer and You Can too, by William D. Zabel, Published 1996 John Wiley and Sons, p.11. ISBN 0471155322 Accessed online 15 August 2007 Devastated and lonely after the death of Picasso, Jacqueline Roque took her own life by gunshot in 1986 when she was 60 years old. Picasso's Family Album, Michael Kimmelman, New York Times, retrieved November 28, 2008
* Paulo (4 February 1921 â 5 June 1975) (Born Paul Joseph Picasso) â with Olga Khokhlova
* Maya (5 September 1935 â ) (Born Maria de la Concepcion Picasso) â with Marie-Thérèse Walter
* Claude (15 May 1947 â) (Born Claude Pierre Pablo Picasso) â with Françoise Gilot
* Paloma (19 April 1949 â ) (Born Anne Paloma Picasso) â with Françoise Gilot
Pablo Picasso, Massacre in Korea, 1951
Picasso remained neutral during World War I, the Spanish Civil War, and World War II, refusing to fight for any side or country. Some of his contemporaries felt that his pacifism had more to do with cowardice than principle. An article in The New Yorker called him âa coward, who sat out two world wars while his friends were suffering and dyingâ. As a Spanish citizen living in France, Picasso was under no compulsion to fight against the invading Germans in either World War. In the Spanish Civil War, service for Spaniards living abroad was optional and would have involved a voluntary return to the country to join either side. While Picasso expressed anger and condemnation of Francisco Franco and fascists through his art, he did not take up arms against them.
He also remained aloof from the Catalan independence movement during his youth despite expressing general support and being friendly with activists within it.
In 1944 Picasso joined the French Communist Party, attended an international peace conference in Poland, and in 1950 received the Lenin Peace Prize from the Soviet government. Picassoâs Party Line, ARTnews Retrieved 31 May 2007. But party criticism of a portrait of Stalin as insufficiently realistic cooled Picassoâs interest in communist politics, though he remained a loyal member of the Communist Party until his death. In a 1945 interview with Jerome Seckler, Picasso stated: âI am a Communist and my painting is Communist painting. ... But if I were a shoemaker, Royalist or Communist or anything else, I would not necessarily hammer my shoes in a special way to show my politics.â His Communist militancy, not uncommon among intellectuals and artists at the time although it was officially banned in Francoist Spain, has long been the subject of some controversy; a notable source or demonstration thereof was a sarcastic quote commonly attributed to Salvador Dalà (with whom Picasso had a rather strained relationship Failed attempts at correspondence between Dalà and Picasso ), ostensibly casting doubt on the true honesty of his political allegiances:
: Picasso es pintor, yo también; [...] Picasso es español, yo también; Picasso es comunista, yo tampoco.
:(Picasso is a painter, so am I; [...] Picasso is a Spaniard, so am I; Picasso is a communist, neither am I.) Picasso by Dalà Study on Salvador Dalà Salvador Dalà quotes Dalà "sympathetic"? De El Greco a Salvador DalÃ, Pasando por Picasso Article on Dalà in El Mundo
He was against the intervention of the United Nations and the United States Picasso A Retrospective, Museum of Modern Art, edited by William Rubin, copyright MoMA 1980, p.383 in the Korean War and he depicted it in Massacre in Korea. In 1962, he received the International Lenin Peace Prize.
Picassoâs work is often categorized into periods. While the names of many of his later periods are debated, the most commonly accepted periods in his work are the Blue Period (1901â1904), the Rose Period (1905â1907), the African-influenced Period (1908â1909), Analytic Cubism (1909â1912), and Synthetic Cubism (1912â1919).
In 1939â40 the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, under its director Alfred Barr, a Picasso enthusiast, held a major and highly successful retrospective of his principal works up until that time. This exhibition lionized the artist, brought into full public view in America the scope of his artistry, and resulted in a reinterpretation of his work by contemporary art historians and scholars. The MoMA retrospective of 1939â40 â see Michael C. FitzGerald, Making Modernism: Picasso and the Creation of the Market for Twentieth-Century Art (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), pp. 243â262.
Picassoâs training under his father began before 1890. His progress can be traced in the collection of early works now held by the Museu Picasso in Barcelona, which provides one of the most comprehensive records extant of any major artistâs beginnings. Cirlot,1972, p.6. During 1893 the juvenile quality of his earliest work falls away, and by 1894 his career as a painter can be said to have begun. Cirlot, 1972, p. 14. The academic realism apparent in the works of the mid-1890s is well displayed in The First Communion (1896), a large composition that depicts his sister, Lola. In the same year, at the age of 14, he painted Portrait of Aunt Pepa, a vigorous and dramatic portrait that Juan-Eduardo Cirlot has called âwithout a doubt one of the greatest in the whole history of Spanish painting.â Cirlot, 1972, p.37.
In 1897 his realism became tinged with Symbolist influence, in a series of landscape paintings rendered in non naturalistic violet and green tones. What some call his Modernist period (1899â1900) followed. His exposure to the work of Rossetti, Steinlen, Toulouse-Lautrec and Edvard Munch, combined with his admiration for favorite old masters such as El Greco, led Picasso to a personal version of modernism in his works of this period. Cirlot, 1972, p. 87â108.
Femme aux Bras Croisés, 1902
Picassoâs Blue Period (1901â1904) consists of somber paintings rendered in shades of blue and blue-green, only occasionally warmed by other colors. This periodâs starting point is uncertain; it may have begun in Spain in the spring of 1901, or in Paris in the second half of the year. Cirlot, 1972, p.127. Many paintings of gaunt mothers with children date from this period. In his austere use of color and sometimes doleful subject matterâprostitutes and beggars are frequent subjectsâPicasso was influenced by a trip through Spain and by the suicide of his friend Carlos Casagemas. Starting in autumn of 1901 he painted several posthumous portraits of Casagemas, culminating in the gloomy allegorical painting La Vie (1903), now in the Cleveland Museum of Art. Wattenmaker, Distel, et al.,1993, p. 304.
The same mood pervades the well-known etching The Frugal Repast (1904), which depicts a blind man and a sighted woman, both emaciated, seated at a nearly bare table. Blindness is a recurrent theme in Picassoâs works of this period, also represented in The Blindmanâs Meal (1903, the Metropolitan Museum of Art) and in the portrait of Celestina (1903). Other works include Portrait of Soler and Portrait of Suzanne Blochâ.
Pablo Picasso, Garçon à la pipe, (Boy with a Pipe), 1905, Rose Period
The Rose Period (1904â1906) Wattenmaker, Distel, et al.,1993, p. 194. is characterized by a more cheery style with orange and pink colors, and featuring many circus people, acrobats and harlequins known in France as saltimbanques. The harlequin, a comedic character usually depicted in checkered patterned clothing, became a personal symbol for Picasso. Picasso met Fernande Olivier, a model for sculptors and artists, in Paris in 1904, and many of these paintings are influenced by his warm relationship with her, in addition to his increased exposure to French painting. The generally upbeat and optimistic mood of paintings in this period is reminiscent of the 1899â1901 period (i.e. just prior to the Blue Period) and 1904 can be considered a transition year between the two periods.
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), Museum of Modern Art, New York
Picassoâs African-influenced Period (1907â1909) begins with the two figures on the right in his painting, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, which were inspired by African artifacts. Formal ideas developed during this period lead directly into the Cubist period that follows.
Three Musicians (1921), Museum of Modern Art
Analytic cubism (1909â1912) is a style of painting Picasso developed along with Georges Braque using monochrome brownish and neutral colors. Both artists took apart objects and âanalyzedâ them in terms of their shapes. Picasso and Braqueâs paintings at this time have many similarities. Synthetic cubism (1912â1919) was a further development of the genre, in which cut paper fragmentsâoften wallpaper or portions of newspaper pagesâwere pasted into compositions, marking the first use of collage in fine art.
In the period following the upheaval of World War I, Picasso produced work in a neoclassical style. This âreturn to orderâ is evident in the work of many European artists in the 1920s, including André Derain, Giorgio de Chirico, and the artists of the New Objectivity movement. Picassoâs paintings and drawings from this period frequently recall the work of Ingres.
During the 1930s, the minotaur replaced the harlequin as a common motif in his work. His use of the minotaur came partly from his contact with the surrealists, who often used it as their symbol, and it appears in Picassoâs Guernica.
Guernica, 1937, Museo Reina Sofia
Arguably Picassoâs most famous work is his depiction of the German bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil WarâGuernica. This large canvas embodies for many the inhumanity, brutality and hopelessness of war. Asked to explain its symbolism, Picasso said, âIt isnât up to the painter to define the symbols. Otherwise it would be better if he wrote them out in so many words! The public who look at the picture must interpret the symbols as they understand them.â
Guernica hung in New Yorkâs Museum of Modern Art for many years. In 1981 Guernica was returned to Spain and exhibited at the Casón del Buen Retiro. In 1992 the painting hung in Madridâs Reina SofÃa Museum when it opened.
Picasso sculpture in Chicago
Picasso was one of 250 sculptors who exhibited in the 3rd Sculpture International held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the summer of 1949. In the 1950s, Picassoâs style changed once again, as he took to producing reinterpretations of the art of the great masters. He made a series of works based on Velazquezâs painting of Las Meninas. He also based paintings on works by Goya, Poussin, Manet, Courbet and Delacroix.
Nude Woman with a Necklace (1968), Tate
He was commissioned to make a maquette for a huge -high public sculpture to be built in Chicago, known usually as the Chicago Picasso. He approached the project with a great deal of enthusiasm, designing a sculpture which was ambiguous and somewhat controversial. What the figure represents is not known; it could be a bird, a horse, a woman or a totally abstract shape. The sculpture, one of the most recognizable landmarks in downtown Chicago, was unveiled in 1967. Picasso refused to be paid $100,000 for it, donating it to the people of the city.
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Picassoâs final works were a mixture of styles, his means of expression in constant flux until the end of his life. Devoting his full energies to his work, Picasso became more daring, his works more colorful and expressive, and from 1968 through 1971 he produced a torrent of paintings and hundreds of copperplate etchings. At the time these works were dismissed by most as pornographic fantasies of an impotent old man or the slapdash works of an artist who was past his prime. Only later, after Picassoâs death, when the rest of the art world had moved on from abstract expressionism, did the critical community come to see that Picasso had already discovered neo-expressionism and was, as so often before, ahead of his time.
Picasso was exceptionally prolific throughout his long lifetime. The total number of artworks he produced has been estimated at 50,000, comprising 1,885 paintings; 1,228 sculptures; 2,880 ceramics, roughly 12,000 drawings, many thousands of prints, and numerous tapestries and rugs. On-line Picasso Project, citing Selfridge, John, 1994. At the time of his death many of his paintings were in his possession, as he had kept off the art market what he didnât need to sell. In addition, Picasso had a considerable collection of the work of other famous artists, some his contemporaries, such as Henri Matisse, with whom he had exchanged works. Since Picasso left no will, his death duties (estate tax) to the French state were paid in the form of his works and others from his collection. These works form the core of the immense and representative collection of the Musée Picasso in Paris. In 2003, relatives of Picasso inaugurated a museum dedicated to him in his birthplace, Málaga, Spain, the Museo Picasso Málaga.
Picasso sculpture in Halmstad
The Museu Picasso in Barcelona features many of Picassoâs early works, created while he was living in Spain, including many rarely seen works which reveal Picassoâs firm grounding in classical techniques. The museum also holds many precise and detailed figure studies done in his youth under his fatherâs tutelage, as well as the extensive collection of Jaime Sabartés, Picassoâs close friend and personal secretary.
Several paintings by Picasso rank among the most expensive paintings in the world. Garçon à la pipe sold for USD $104 million at Sotheby's on 4 May 2004, establishing a new price record. Dora Maar au Chat sold for USD $95.2 million at Sothebyâs on 3 May 2006.
As of 2004, Picasso remains the top ranked artist (based on sales of his works at auctions) according to the Art Market Trends report. (pdf) More of his paintings have been stolen than those by any other artist. S. Goodenough, 1500 Fascinating Facts, Treasure Press, London, 1987, p 241.
The Picasso Administration functions as his official Estate. The U.S. copyright representative for the Picasso Administration is the Artists Rights Society. | Most frequently requested artists list of the Artists Rights Society
Upon Picasso's death in 1973, actor Dustin Hoffman was having dinner with former Beatle Paul McCartney and told him about Picasso's last words. McCartney started creating and singing a song around those words and included the song on his 1973 album, Band on the Run.
In the 1996 movie Surviving Picasso Picasso is played by actor Anthony Hopkins.
*Becht-Jördens, Gereon; Wehmeier, Peter M. (2003). Picasso und die christliche Ikonographie. Mutterbeziehung und künstlerische Position. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag. ISBN 9783496012726
* Berger, John (1965). The Success and Failure of Picasso. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
* Cirlot, Juan-Eduardo (1972). Picasso: birth of a genius. New York and Washington: Praeger.
* Cowling, Elizabeth; Mundy, Jennifer (1990). On Classic Ground: Picasso, Léger, de Chirico and the New Classicism 1910â1930. London: Tate Gallery. ISBN 1-85437-043-X
* Daix, Pierre (1993). Picasso: Life And Art. Harper Collins. ISBN 9780064309769
* FitzGerald, Michael C. Making Modernism: Picasso and the Creation of the Market for Twentieth-Century Art. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.
*Eugenio Granell, Picassoâs Guernica : the end of a Spanish era (Ann Arbor, Mich. : UMI Research Press, 1981) ISBN 0835712060 9780835712064 9780835712064 0835712060
* Krauss, Rosalind (1998). The Picasso Papers. London: Thames and Hudson. ISBN 0500237611
* Mallen, Enrique (2003). The Visual Grammar of Pablo Picasso. Berkeley Insights in Linguistics & Semiotics Series. New York: Peter Lang.
* Mallen, Enrique (2005). La Sintaxis de la Carne: Pablo Picasso y Marie-Thérèse Walter. Santiago de Chile: Red Internacional del Libro.
* Mallen, Enrique (2009). A Concordance of Pablo Picasso's Spanish Writings. New York: Edwin Mellen Press.
* Nill, Raymond M. âA Visual Guide to Pablo Picassoâs Worksâ. New York: B&H Publishers, 1987.
* Picasso, Olivier Widmaier. (2004). Picasso: The Real Family Story. Prestel Publ. ISBN 3-7913-3149-3
* Rubin, William, ed. (1980) Pablo Picasso, a retrospective. Chronology by Jane Fluegel. New York: The Museum of Modern Art. ISBN 0-87070-519-9
* Wattenmaker, Richard J.; Distel, Anne, et al. (1993). Great French Paintings from the Barnes Foundation. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0-679-40963-7
* Wertenbaker, Lael (1967). The World of Picasso. TimeâLife Library of Art. Alexandria, Virginia: Time-Life Books.
* Over 17,671 catalogued artworks available on the On-Line Picasso Project
* Official website
* On-Line Picasso Project: Comprehensive summary of his life and his work.
* Biography and works of Pablo Picasso
* Pablo Picasso â Biography, Quotes & Paintings, retrieved 14 June 2007.
* Poems by Picasso in English translation from Samizdat (poetry magazine)
* Cubism, The Big Picture
* Artists Rights Society, Picasso's U.S. Copyright Representatives
* Union List of Artist Names, Getty Vocabularies. ULAN Full Record Display for Pablo Picasso. Getty Vocabulary Program, Getty Research Institute. Los Angeles, California.
Picasso Museum, Paris, (Hotel Salé, 1659)
* Guggenheim Museum Biography
* Hilo Art Museum, (Hilo Hawaii, USA)
* Honolulu Academy of Arts
* Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
* Musée National Picasso (Paris, France)
* Musée Picasso (Antibes, France)
* Museo Picasso Málaga (Málaga, Spain)
* Museu Picasso (Barcelona, Spain)
* Museum Berggruen (Berlin, Germany)
* Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
* National Gallery of Art list of paintings
* Graphikmuseum Pablo Picasso Münster (Münster, Germany)
* Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles, California
* Power and Tenderness in Men and in Picassoâs âMinotauromachyâ by Chaim Koppelman
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Pablo_Picasso | Is in the 1996 movie Surviving Picasso Picasso played by actor Anthony Hopkins? | Yes. | data/set6/a1 | Pablo_Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno MarÃa de los Remedios Cipriano de la SantÃsima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso (25 October 1881 â 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, draughtsman, and sculptor. He is one of the most recognized figures in 20th-century art. He is best known for co-founding the Cubist movement and for the wide variety of styles embodied in his work. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907) and Guernica (1937), his portrayal of the German bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War.
Picasso demonstrated uncanny artistic talent in his early years, painting in a realistic manner through his childhood and adolescence; during the first decade of the twentieth century his style changed as he experimented with different theories, techniques, and ideas. Picassoâs creativity manifested itself in numerous mediums, including painting, sculpture, drawing, and architecture. His revolutionary artistic accomplishments brought him universal renown and immense fortunes throughout his life, making him the best-known figure in twentieth century art.
Picasso was baptized Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno MarÃa de los Remedios Crispiniano de la SantÃsima Trinidad, a series of names honouring various saints and relatives. The name on his baptismal certificate differs slightly from the name on his birth record. On-line Picasso Project Added to these were Ruiz and Picasso, for his father and mother, respectively, as per Spanish custom. Born in the city of Málaga in the Andalusian region of Spain, he was the first child of Don José Ruiz y Blasco (1838â1913) and MarÃa Picasso y López. Picassoâs family was middle-class; his father was also a painter who specialized in naturalistic depictions of birds and other game. For most of his life Ruiz was a professor of art at the School of Crafts and a curator of a local museum. Ruizâs ancestors were minor aristocrats.
The house where Picasso was born, in Málaga
Picasso showed a passion and a skill for drawing from an early age; according to his mother, --> his first words were âpiz, pizâ, a shortening of lápiz, the Spanish word for âpencilâ. Wertenbaker, 9. --> From the age of seven, Picasso received formal artistic training from his father in figure drawing and oil painting. Ruiz was a traditional, academic artist and instructor who believed that proper training required disciplined copying of the masters, and drawing the human body from plaster casts and live models. His son became preoccupied with art to the detriment of his classwork.
The family moved to La Coruña in 1891 where his father became a professor at the School of Fine Arts. They stayed almost four years. On one occasion the father found his son painting over his unfinished sketch of a pigeon. Observing the precision of his sonâs technique, Ruiz felt that the thirteen-year-old Picasso had surpassed him, and vowed to give up painting. Wertenbaker, 11.
In 1895, Picasso's seven-year old sister, Conchita, died of diphtheriaâa traumatic event in his life. After her death, the family moved to Barcelona, with Ruiz transferring to its School of Fine Arts. Picasso thrived in the city, regarding it in times of sadness or nostalgia as his true home. Wertenbaker, 13. Ruiz persuaded the officials at the academy to allow his son to take an entrance exam for the advanced class. This process often took students a month, but Picasso completed it in a week, and the impressed jury admitted Picasso, who was 13. The student lacked discipline but made friendships that would affect him in later life. His father rented him a small room close to home so Picasso could work alone, yet Ruiz checked up on him numerous times a day, judging his sonâs drawings. The two argued frequently.
Picassoâs father and uncle decided to send the young artist to Madridâs Royal Academy of San Fernando, the country's foremost art school. In 1897, Picasso, age 16, set off for the first time on his own, but he disliked formal instruction and quit attending classes soon after enrollment. Madrid, however, held many other attractions: the Prado housed paintings by the venerable Diego Velázquez, Francisco Goya, and Francisco Zurbarán. Picasso especially admired the works of El Greco; their elements, the elongated limbs, arresting colors, and mystical visages, are echoed in Picassoâs Åuvre.
[[Image:GertrudeStein.JPG|thumb|left|upright|Portrait of Gertrude Stein, 1906, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. When someone commented that Stein did not look like her portrait, Picasso replied, "She will". Portrait of Gertrude Stein Metropolitan Museum, Retrieved November 26, 2008 ]]
After studying art in Madrid, Picasso made his first trip to Paris in 1900, then the art capital of Europe. There, he met his first Parisian friend, the journalist and poet Max Jacob, who helped Picasso learn the language and its literature. Soon they shared an apartment; Max slept at night while Picasso slept during the day and worked at night. These were times of severe poverty, cold, and desperation. Much of his work was burned to keep the small room warm. During the first five months of 1901, Picasso lived in Madrid, where he and his anarchist friend Francisco de AsÃs Soler founded the magazine Arte Joven (Young Art), which published five issues. Soler solicited articles and Picasso illustrated the journal, mostly contributing grim cartoons depicting and sympathizing with the state of the poor. The first issue was published on 31 March 1901, by which time the artist had started to sign his work simply Picasso, while before he had signed Pablo Ruiz y Picasso. Cirlot, 1972, p. 125.
By 1905 Picasso became a favorite of the American art collectors Leo and Gertrude Stein. Their older brother Michael Stein and his wife Sarah also became collectors of his work. Picasso painted portraits of both Gertrude Stein and her nephew Allan Stein. Pablo Picasso, Portrait of Allan Stein, 1906, retrieved November 27, 2008 Gertrude Stein became Picasso's principal patron, acquiring his drawings and paintings and exhibiting them in her informal Salon at her home in Paris. Special Exhibit Examines Dynamic Relationship Between the Art of Pablo Picasso and Writing Yale University Art Gallery, Retrieved October 8, 2009 At one of her gatherings in 1905, he met Henri Matisse, who was to become a lifelong friend and rival. The Steins introduced him to Claribel Cone and her sister Etta who were American art collectors; they also began to acquire Picasso and Matisse's paintings. Eventually Leo Stein moved to Italy, and Michael and Sarah Stein became patrons of Matisse; while Gertrude Stein continued to collect Picasso. James R. Mellow, Charmed Circle: Gertrude Stein and Company, Retrieved November 27, 2008
Portrait of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, 1910, The Art Institute of Chicago. Picasso wrote of Kahnweiler What would have become of us if Kahnweiler hadn't had a business sense?
In 1907 Picasso joined the art gallery that had recently been opened in Paris by Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler. Kahnweiler was a German art historian, art collector who became one of the premier French Art dealers of the 20th century. He became prominent in Paris beginning in 1907 for being among the first champions of Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and Cubism. Kahnweiler championed burgeoning artists such as André Derain, Kees Van Dongen, Fernand Léger, Juan Gris, Maurice de Vlaminck and several others who had come from all over the globe to live and work in Montparnasse at the time. Cubism and its Legacy, Tate Liverpool, retrieved November 27, 2008
In Paris, Picasso entertained a distinguished coterie of friends in the Montmartre and Montparnasse quarters, including André Breton, poet Guillaume Apollinaire, writer Alfred Jarry, and Gertrude Stein. Apollinaire was arrested on suspicion of stealing the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in 1911. Apollonaire pointed to his friend Picasso, who was also brought in for questioning, but both were later exonerated. Time Magazine, Stealing the Mona Lisa, 1911. Consulted on 15 August 2007.
Portrait of Igor Stravinsky, c. 1920
In the early 20th century, Picasso divided his time between Barcelona and Paris. In 1904, in the middle of a storm, he met Fernande Olivier, a Bohemian artist who became his mistress. Olivier appears in many of his Rose period paintings. After acquiring fame and some fortune, Picasso left Olivier for Marcelle Humbert, whom he called Eva Gouel. Picasso included declarations of his love for Eva in many Cubist works. Picasso was devastated by her premature death from illness at the age of 30 in 1915. Charles Harrison, Francis Frascina, Gillian Perry, Primitivism, Cubism, Abstraction, retrieved November 27, 2008
After World War I, Picasso made a number of important associations and relationships with figures associated with Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. Among his friends during this period were Jean Cocteau, Jean Hugo, Juan Gris and others. In the summer of 1918, Picasso married Olga Khokhlova, a ballerina with Sergei Diaghilevâs troupe, for whom Picasso was designing a ballet, Parade, in Rome; and they spent their honeymoon in the villa near Biarritz of the glamorous Chilean art patron Eugenia Errázuriz. Khokhlova introduced Picasso to high society, formal dinner parties, and all the social niceties attendant on the life of the rich in 1920s Paris. The two had a son, Paulo, who would grow up to be a dissolute motorcycle racer and chauffeur to his father. Khokhlovaâs insistence on social propriety clashed with Picassoâs bohemian tendencies and the two lived in a state of constant conflict. During the same period that Picasso collaborated with Diaghilevâs troup, he and Igor Stravinsky collaborated on Pulcinella in 1920. Picasso took the opportunity to make several sketches of the composer.
In 1927 Picasso met 17-year-old Marie-Thérèse Walter and began a secret affair with her. Picassoâs marriage to Khokhlova soon ended in separation rather than divorce, as French law required an even division of property in the case of divorce, and Picasso did not want Khokhlova to have half his wealth. The two remained legally married until Khokhlovaâs death in 1955. Picasso carried on a long-standing affair with Marie-Thérèse Walter and fathered a daughter, Maia, with her. Marie-Thérèse lived in the vain hope that Picasso would one day marry her, and hanged herself four years after Picassoâs death. Throughout his life Picasso maintained a number of mistresses in addition to his wife or primary partner. Picasso was married twice and had four children by three women.
Dora Maar au Chat, 1941
The photographer and painter Dora Maar was also a constant companion and lover of Picasso. The two were closest in the late 1930s and early 1940s and it was Maar who documented the painting of Guernica.
During the Second World War, Picasso remained in Paris while the Germans occupied the city. Picassoâs artistic style did not fit the Nazi views of art, so he was not able to show his works during this time. Retreating to his studio, he continued to paint all the while. Although the Germans outlawed bronze casting in Paris, Picasso continued regardless, using bronze smuggled to him by the French resistance.
After the liberation of Paris in 1944, Picasso began to keep company with a young art student, Françoise Gilot. The two eventually became lovers, and had two children together, Claude and Paloma. Unique among Picassoâs women, Gilot left Picasso in 1953, allegedly because of abusive treatment and infidelities. This was a severe blow to Picasso.
He went through a difficult period after Gilotâs departure, coming to terms with his advancing age and his perception that, now in his 70s, he was no longer attractive, but rather grotesque to young women. A number of ink drawings from this period explore this theme of the hideous old dwarf as buffoonish counterpoint to the beautiful young girl, including several from a six-week affair with Geneviève Laporte, who in June 2005 auctioned off the drawings Picasso made of her.
Picasso was not long in finding another lover, Jacqueline Roque. She worked at the Madoura Pottery in Vallauris on the French Riviera, where Picasso made and painted ceramics. The two remained together for the rest of Picassoâs life, marrying in 1961. Their marriage was also the means of one last act of revenge against Gilot. Gilot had been seeking a legal means to legitimize her children with Picasso, Claude and Paloma. With Picassoâs encouragement, she had arranged to divorce her then husband, Luc Simon, and marry Picasso to secure her childrenâs rights. Picasso then secretly married Roque after Gilot had filed for divorce in order to exact his revenge for her leaving him.
Picasso had constructed a huge gothic structure and could afford large villas in the south of France, at Notre-dame-de-vie on the outskirts of Mougins, in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur. By this time he was a celebrity, and there was often as much interest in his personal life as his art.
In addition to his manifold artistic accomplishments, Picasso had a film career, including a cameo appearance in Jean Cocteauâs Testament of Orpheus. Picasso always played himself in his film appearances. In 1955 he helped make the film Le Mystère Picasso (The Mystery of Picasso) directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot.
Pablo Picasso died on 8 April 1973 in Mougins, France, while he and his wife Jacqueline entertained friends for dinner. His final words were âDrink to me, drink to my health, you know I canât drink any more.â accessed online 15 August 2007 He was interred at the Chateau of Vauvenargues near Aix-en-Provence, a property he had acquired in 1958 and occupied with Jacqueline between 1959 and 1962. Jacqueline Roque prevented his children Claude and Paloma from attending the funeral. The Rich Die Richer and You Can too, by William D. Zabel, Published 1996 John Wiley and Sons, p.11. ISBN 0471155322 Accessed online 15 August 2007 Devastated and lonely after the death of Picasso, Jacqueline Roque took her own life by gunshot in 1986 when she was 60 years old. Picasso's Family Album, Michael Kimmelman, New York Times, retrieved November 28, 2008
* Paulo (4 February 1921 â 5 June 1975) (Born Paul Joseph Picasso) â with Olga Khokhlova
* Maya (5 September 1935 â ) (Born Maria de la Concepcion Picasso) â with Marie-Thérèse Walter
* Claude (15 May 1947 â) (Born Claude Pierre Pablo Picasso) â with Françoise Gilot
* Paloma (19 April 1949 â ) (Born Anne Paloma Picasso) â with Françoise Gilot
Pablo Picasso, Massacre in Korea, 1951
Picasso remained neutral during World War I, the Spanish Civil War, and World War II, refusing to fight for any side or country. Some of his contemporaries felt that his pacifism had more to do with cowardice than principle. An article in The New Yorker called him âa coward, who sat out two world wars while his friends were suffering and dyingâ. As a Spanish citizen living in France, Picasso was under no compulsion to fight against the invading Germans in either World War. In the Spanish Civil War, service for Spaniards living abroad was optional and would have involved a voluntary return to the country to join either side. While Picasso expressed anger and condemnation of Francisco Franco and fascists through his art, he did not take up arms against them.
He also remained aloof from the Catalan independence movement during his youth despite expressing general support and being friendly with activists within it.
In 1944 Picasso joined the French Communist Party, attended an international peace conference in Poland, and in 1950 received the Lenin Peace Prize from the Soviet government. Picassoâs Party Line, ARTnews Retrieved 31 May 2007. But party criticism of a portrait of Stalin as insufficiently realistic cooled Picassoâs interest in communist politics, though he remained a loyal member of the Communist Party until his death. In a 1945 interview with Jerome Seckler, Picasso stated: âI am a Communist and my painting is Communist painting. ... But if I were a shoemaker, Royalist or Communist or anything else, I would not necessarily hammer my shoes in a special way to show my politics.â His Communist militancy, not uncommon among intellectuals and artists at the time although it was officially banned in Francoist Spain, has long been the subject of some controversy; a notable source or demonstration thereof was a sarcastic quote commonly attributed to Salvador Dalà (with whom Picasso had a rather strained relationship Failed attempts at correspondence between Dalà and Picasso ), ostensibly casting doubt on the true honesty of his political allegiances:
: Picasso es pintor, yo también; [...] Picasso es español, yo también; Picasso es comunista, yo tampoco.
:(Picasso is a painter, so am I; [...] Picasso is a Spaniard, so am I; Picasso is a communist, neither am I.) Picasso by Dalà Study on Salvador Dalà Salvador Dalà quotes Dalà "sympathetic"? De El Greco a Salvador DalÃ, Pasando por Picasso Article on Dalà in El Mundo
He was against the intervention of the United Nations and the United States Picasso A Retrospective, Museum of Modern Art, edited by William Rubin, copyright MoMA 1980, p.383 in the Korean War and he depicted it in Massacre in Korea. In 1962, he received the International Lenin Peace Prize.
Picassoâs work is often categorized into periods. While the names of many of his later periods are debated, the most commonly accepted periods in his work are the Blue Period (1901â1904), the Rose Period (1905â1907), the African-influenced Period (1908â1909), Analytic Cubism (1909â1912), and Synthetic Cubism (1912â1919).
In 1939â40 the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, under its director Alfred Barr, a Picasso enthusiast, held a major and highly successful retrospective of his principal works up until that time. This exhibition lionized the artist, brought into full public view in America the scope of his artistry, and resulted in a reinterpretation of his work by contemporary art historians and scholars. The MoMA retrospective of 1939â40 â see Michael C. FitzGerald, Making Modernism: Picasso and the Creation of the Market for Twentieth-Century Art (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), pp. 243â262.
Picassoâs training under his father began before 1890. His progress can be traced in the collection of early works now held by the Museu Picasso in Barcelona, which provides one of the most comprehensive records extant of any major artistâs beginnings. Cirlot,1972, p.6. During 1893 the juvenile quality of his earliest work falls away, and by 1894 his career as a painter can be said to have begun. Cirlot, 1972, p. 14. The academic realism apparent in the works of the mid-1890s is well displayed in The First Communion (1896), a large composition that depicts his sister, Lola. In the same year, at the age of 14, he painted Portrait of Aunt Pepa, a vigorous and dramatic portrait that Juan-Eduardo Cirlot has called âwithout a doubt one of the greatest in the whole history of Spanish painting.â Cirlot, 1972, p.37.
In 1897 his realism became tinged with Symbolist influence, in a series of landscape paintings rendered in non naturalistic violet and green tones. What some call his Modernist period (1899â1900) followed. His exposure to the work of Rossetti, Steinlen, Toulouse-Lautrec and Edvard Munch, combined with his admiration for favorite old masters such as El Greco, led Picasso to a personal version of modernism in his works of this period. Cirlot, 1972, p. 87â108.
Femme aux Bras Croisés, 1902
Picassoâs Blue Period (1901â1904) consists of somber paintings rendered in shades of blue and blue-green, only occasionally warmed by other colors. This periodâs starting point is uncertain; it may have begun in Spain in the spring of 1901, or in Paris in the second half of the year. Cirlot, 1972, p.127. Many paintings of gaunt mothers with children date from this period. In his austere use of color and sometimes doleful subject matterâprostitutes and beggars are frequent subjectsâPicasso was influenced by a trip through Spain and by the suicide of his friend Carlos Casagemas. Starting in autumn of 1901 he painted several posthumous portraits of Casagemas, culminating in the gloomy allegorical painting La Vie (1903), now in the Cleveland Museum of Art. Wattenmaker, Distel, et al.,1993, p. 304.
The same mood pervades the well-known etching The Frugal Repast (1904), which depicts a blind man and a sighted woman, both emaciated, seated at a nearly bare table. Blindness is a recurrent theme in Picassoâs works of this period, also represented in The Blindmanâs Meal (1903, the Metropolitan Museum of Art) and in the portrait of Celestina (1903). Other works include Portrait of Soler and Portrait of Suzanne Blochâ.
Pablo Picasso, Garçon à la pipe, (Boy with a Pipe), 1905, Rose Period
The Rose Period (1904â1906) Wattenmaker, Distel, et al.,1993, p. 194. is characterized by a more cheery style with orange and pink colors, and featuring many circus people, acrobats and harlequins known in France as saltimbanques. The harlequin, a comedic character usually depicted in checkered patterned clothing, became a personal symbol for Picasso. Picasso met Fernande Olivier, a model for sculptors and artists, in Paris in 1904, and many of these paintings are influenced by his warm relationship with her, in addition to his increased exposure to French painting. The generally upbeat and optimistic mood of paintings in this period is reminiscent of the 1899â1901 period (i.e. just prior to the Blue Period) and 1904 can be considered a transition year between the two periods.
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), Museum of Modern Art, New York
Picassoâs African-influenced Period (1907â1909) begins with the two figures on the right in his painting, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, which were inspired by African artifacts. Formal ideas developed during this period lead directly into the Cubist period that follows.
Three Musicians (1921), Museum of Modern Art
Analytic cubism (1909â1912) is a style of painting Picasso developed along with Georges Braque using monochrome brownish and neutral colors. Both artists took apart objects and âanalyzedâ them in terms of their shapes. Picasso and Braqueâs paintings at this time have many similarities. Synthetic cubism (1912â1919) was a further development of the genre, in which cut paper fragmentsâoften wallpaper or portions of newspaper pagesâwere pasted into compositions, marking the first use of collage in fine art.
In the period following the upheaval of World War I, Picasso produced work in a neoclassical style. This âreturn to orderâ is evident in the work of many European artists in the 1920s, including André Derain, Giorgio de Chirico, and the artists of the New Objectivity movement. Picassoâs paintings and drawings from this period frequently recall the work of Ingres.
During the 1930s, the minotaur replaced the harlequin as a common motif in his work. His use of the minotaur came partly from his contact with the surrealists, who often used it as their symbol, and it appears in Picassoâs Guernica.
Guernica, 1937, Museo Reina Sofia
Arguably Picassoâs most famous work is his depiction of the German bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil WarâGuernica. This large canvas embodies for many the inhumanity, brutality and hopelessness of war. Asked to explain its symbolism, Picasso said, âIt isnât up to the painter to define the symbols. Otherwise it would be better if he wrote them out in so many words! The public who look at the picture must interpret the symbols as they understand them.â
Guernica hung in New Yorkâs Museum of Modern Art for many years. In 1981 Guernica was returned to Spain and exhibited at the Casón del Buen Retiro. In 1992 the painting hung in Madridâs Reina SofÃa Museum when it opened.
Picasso sculpture in Chicago
Picasso was one of 250 sculptors who exhibited in the 3rd Sculpture International held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the summer of 1949. In the 1950s, Picassoâs style changed once again, as he took to producing reinterpretations of the art of the great masters. He made a series of works based on Velazquezâs painting of Las Meninas. He also based paintings on works by Goya, Poussin, Manet, Courbet and Delacroix.
Nude Woman with a Necklace (1968), Tate
He was commissioned to make a maquette for a huge -high public sculpture to be built in Chicago, known usually as the Chicago Picasso. He approached the project with a great deal of enthusiasm, designing a sculpture which was ambiguous and somewhat controversial. What the figure represents is not known; it could be a bird, a horse, a woman or a totally abstract shape. The sculpture, one of the most recognizable landmarks in downtown Chicago, was unveiled in 1967. Picasso refused to be paid $100,000 for it, donating it to the people of the city.
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Picassoâs final works were a mixture of styles, his means of expression in constant flux until the end of his life. Devoting his full energies to his work, Picasso became more daring, his works more colorful and expressive, and from 1968 through 1971 he produced a torrent of paintings and hundreds of copperplate etchings. At the time these works were dismissed by most as pornographic fantasies of an impotent old man or the slapdash works of an artist who was past his prime. Only later, after Picassoâs death, when the rest of the art world had moved on from abstract expressionism, did the critical community come to see that Picasso had already discovered neo-expressionism and was, as so often before, ahead of his time.
Picasso was exceptionally prolific throughout his long lifetime. The total number of artworks he produced has been estimated at 50,000, comprising 1,885 paintings; 1,228 sculptures; 2,880 ceramics, roughly 12,000 drawings, many thousands of prints, and numerous tapestries and rugs. On-line Picasso Project, citing Selfridge, John, 1994. At the time of his death many of his paintings were in his possession, as he had kept off the art market what he didnât need to sell. In addition, Picasso had a considerable collection of the work of other famous artists, some his contemporaries, such as Henri Matisse, with whom he had exchanged works. Since Picasso left no will, his death duties (estate tax) to the French state were paid in the form of his works and others from his collection. These works form the core of the immense and representative collection of the Musée Picasso in Paris. In 2003, relatives of Picasso inaugurated a museum dedicated to him in his birthplace, Málaga, Spain, the Museo Picasso Málaga.
Picasso sculpture in Halmstad
The Museu Picasso in Barcelona features many of Picassoâs early works, created while he was living in Spain, including many rarely seen works which reveal Picassoâs firm grounding in classical techniques. The museum also holds many precise and detailed figure studies done in his youth under his fatherâs tutelage, as well as the extensive collection of Jaime Sabartés, Picassoâs close friend and personal secretary.
Several paintings by Picasso rank among the most expensive paintings in the world. Garçon à la pipe sold for USD $104 million at Sotheby's on 4 May 2004, establishing a new price record. Dora Maar au Chat sold for USD $95.2 million at Sothebyâs on 3 May 2006.
As of 2004, Picasso remains the top ranked artist (based on sales of his works at auctions) according to the Art Market Trends report. (pdf) More of his paintings have been stolen than those by any other artist. S. Goodenough, 1500 Fascinating Facts, Treasure Press, London, 1987, p 241.
The Picasso Administration functions as his official Estate. The U.S. copyright representative for the Picasso Administration is the Artists Rights Society. | Most frequently requested artists list of the Artists Rights Society
Upon Picasso's death in 1973, actor Dustin Hoffman was having dinner with former Beatle Paul McCartney and told him about Picasso's last words. McCartney started creating and singing a song around those words and included the song on his 1973 album, Band on the Run.
In the 1996 movie Surviving Picasso Picasso is played by actor Anthony Hopkins.
*Becht-Jördens, Gereon; Wehmeier, Peter M. (2003). Picasso und die christliche Ikonographie. Mutterbeziehung und künstlerische Position. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag. ISBN 9783496012726
* Berger, John (1965). The Success and Failure of Picasso. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
* Cirlot, Juan-Eduardo (1972). Picasso: birth of a genius. New York and Washington: Praeger.
* Cowling, Elizabeth; Mundy, Jennifer (1990). On Classic Ground: Picasso, Léger, de Chirico and the New Classicism 1910â1930. London: Tate Gallery. ISBN 1-85437-043-X
* Daix, Pierre (1993). Picasso: Life And Art. Harper Collins. ISBN 9780064309769
* FitzGerald, Michael C. Making Modernism: Picasso and the Creation of the Market for Twentieth-Century Art. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.
*Eugenio Granell, Picassoâs Guernica : the end of a Spanish era (Ann Arbor, Mich. : UMI Research Press, 1981) ISBN 0835712060 9780835712064 9780835712064 0835712060
* Krauss, Rosalind (1998). The Picasso Papers. London: Thames and Hudson. ISBN 0500237611
* Mallen, Enrique (2003). The Visual Grammar of Pablo Picasso. Berkeley Insights in Linguistics & Semiotics Series. New York: Peter Lang.
* Mallen, Enrique (2005). La Sintaxis de la Carne: Pablo Picasso y Marie-Thérèse Walter. Santiago de Chile: Red Internacional del Libro.
* Mallen, Enrique (2009). A Concordance of Pablo Picasso's Spanish Writings. New York: Edwin Mellen Press.
* Nill, Raymond M. âA Visual Guide to Pablo Picassoâs Worksâ. New York: B&H Publishers, 1987.
* Picasso, Olivier Widmaier. (2004). Picasso: The Real Family Story. Prestel Publ. ISBN 3-7913-3149-3
* Rubin, William, ed. (1980) Pablo Picasso, a retrospective. Chronology by Jane Fluegel. New York: The Museum of Modern Art. ISBN 0-87070-519-9
* Wattenmaker, Richard J.; Distel, Anne, et al. (1993). Great French Paintings from the Barnes Foundation. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0-679-40963-7
* Wertenbaker, Lael (1967). The World of Picasso. TimeâLife Library of Art. Alexandria, Virginia: Time-Life Books.
* Over 17,671 catalogued artworks available on the On-Line Picasso Project
* Official website
* On-Line Picasso Project: Comprehensive summary of his life and his work.
* Biography and works of Pablo Picasso
* Pablo Picasso â Biography, Quotes & Paintings, retrieved 14 June 2007.
* Poems by Picasso in English translation from Samizdat (poetry magazine)
* Cubism, The Big Picture
* Artists Rights Society, Picasso's U.S. Copyright Representatives
* Union List of Artist Names, Getty Vocabularies. ULAN Full Record Display for Pablo Picasso. Getty Vocabulary Program, Getty Research Institute. Los Angeles, California.
Picasso Museum, Paris, (Hotel Salé, 1659)
* Guggenheim Museum Biography
* Hilo Art Museum, (Hilo Hawaii, USA)
* Honolulu Academy of Arts
* Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
* Musée National Picasso (Paris, France)
* Musée Picasso (Antibes, France)
* Museo Picasso Málaga (Málaga, Spain)
* Museu Picasso (Barcelona, Spain)
* Museum Berggruen (Berlin, Germany)
* Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
* National Gallery of Art list of paintings
* Graphikmuseum Pablo Picasso Münster (Münster, Germany)
* Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles, California
* Power and Tenderness in Men and in Picassoâs âMinotauromachyâ by Chaim Koppelman
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Pablo_Picasso | Is the U.S. copyright representative for the Picasso Administration the Artists Rights Society? | yes | data/set6/a1 | Pablo_Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno MarÃa de los Remedios Cipriano de la SantÃsima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso (25 October 1881 â 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, draughtsman, and sculptor. He is one of the most recognized figures in 20th-century art. He is best known for co-founding the Cubist movement and for the wide variety of styles embodied in his work. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907) and Guernica (1937), his portrayal of the German bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War.
Picasso demonstrated uncanny artistic talent in his early years, painting in a realistic manner through his childhood and adolescence; during the first decade of the twentieth century his style changed as he experimented with different theories, techniques, and ideas. Picassoâs creativity manifested itself in numerous mediums, including painting, sculpture, drawing, and architecture. His revolutionary artistic accomplishments brought him universal renown and immense fortunes throughout his life, making him the best-known figure in twentieth century art.
Picasso was baptized Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno MarÃa de los Remedios Crispiniano de la SantÃsima Trinidad, a series of names honouring various saints and relatives. The name on his baptismal certificate differs slightly from the name on his birth record. On-line Picasso Project Added to these were Ruiz and Picasso, for his father and mother, respectively, as per Spanish custom. Born in the city of Málaga in the Andalusian region of Spain, he was the first child of Don José Ruiz y Blasco (1838â1913) and MarÃa Picasso y López. Picassoâs family was middle-class; his father was also a painter who specialized in naturalistic depictions of birds and other game. For most of his life Ruiz was a professor of art at the School of Crafts and a curator of a local museum. Ruizâs ancestors were minor aristocrats.
The house where Picasso was born, in Málaga
Picasso showed a passion and a skill for drawing from an early age; according to his mother, --> his first words were âpiz, pizâ, a shortening of lápiz, the Spanish word for âpencilâ. Wertenbaker, 9. --> From the age of seven, Picasso received formal artistic training from his father in figure drawing and oil painting. Ruiz was a traditional, academic artist and instructor who believed that proper training required disciplined copying of the masters, and drawing the human body from plaster casts and live models. His son became preoccupied with art to the detriment of his classwork.
The family moved to La Coruña in 1891 where his father became a professor at the School of Fine Arts. They stayed almost four years. On one occasion the father found his son painting over his unfinished sketch of a pigeon. Observing the precision of his sonâs technique, Ruiz felt that the thirteen-year-old Picasso had surpassed him, and vowed to give up painting. Wertenbaker, 11.
In 1895, Picasso's seven-year old sister, Conchita, died of diphtheriaâa traumatic event in his life. After her death, the family moved to Barcelona, with Ruiz transferring to its School of Fine Arts. Picasso thrived in the city, regarding it in times of sadness or nostalgia as his true home. Wertenbaker, 13. Ruiz persuaded the officials at the academy to allow his son to take an entrance exam for the advanced class. This process often took students a month, but Picasso completed it in a week, and the impressed jury admitted Picasso, who was 13. The student lacked discipline but made friendships that would affect him in later life. His father rented him a small room close to home so Picasso could work alone, yet Ruiz checked up on him numerous times a day, judging his sonâs drawings. The two argued frequently.
Picassoâs father and uncle decided to send the young artist to Madridâs Royal Academy of San Fernando, the country's foremost art school. In 1897, Picasso, age 16, set off for the first time on his own, but he disliked formal instruction and quit attending classes soon after enrollment. Madrid, however, held many other attractions: the Prado housed paintings by the venerable Diego Velázquez, Francisco Goya, and Francisco Zurbarán. Picasso especially admired the works of El Greco; their elements, the elongated limbs, arresting colors, and mystical visages, are echoed in Picassoâs Åuvre.
[[Image:GertrudeStein.JPG|thumb|left|upright|Portrait of Gertrude Stein, 1906, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. When someone commented that Stein did not look like her portrait, Picasso replied, "She will". Portrait of Gertrude Stein Metropolitan Museum, Retrieved November 26, 2008 ]]
After studying art in Madrid, Picasso made his first trip to Paris in 1900, then the art capital of Europe. There, he met his first Parisian friend, the journalist and poet Max Jacob, who helped Picasso learn the language and its literature. Soon they shared an apartment; Max slept at night while Picasso slept during the day and worked at night. These were times of severe poverty, cold, and desperation. Much of his work was burned to keep the small room warm. During the first five months of 1901, Picasso lived in Madrid, where he and his anarchist friend Francisco de AsÃs Soler founded the magazine Arte Joven (Young Art), which published five issues. Soler solicited articles and Picasso illustrated the journal, mostly contributing grim cartoons depicting and sympathizing with the state of the poor. The first issue was published on 31 March 1901, by which time the artist had started to sign his work simply Picasso, while before he had signed Pablo Ruiz y Picasso. Cirlot, 1972, p. 125.
By 1905 Picasso became a favorite of the American art collectors Leo and Gertrude Stein. Their older brother Michael Stein and his wife Sarah also became collectors of his work. Picasso painted portraits of both Gertrude Stein and her nephew Allan Stein. Pablo Picasso, Portrait of Allan Stein, 1906, retrieved November 27, 2008 Gertrude Stein became Picasso's principal patron, acquiring his drawings and paintings and exhibiting them in her informal Salon at her home in Paris. Special Exhibit Examines Dynamic Relationship Between the Art of Pablo Picasso and Writing Yale University Art Gallery, Retrieved October 8, 2009 At one of her gatherings in 1905, he met Henri Matisse, who was to become a lifelong friend and rival. The Steins introduced him to Claribel Cone and her sister Etta who were American art collectors; they also began to acquire Picasso and Matisse's paintings. Eventually Leo Stein moved to Italy, and Michael and Sarah Stein became patrons of Matisse; while Gertrude Stein continued to collect Picasso. James R. Mellow, Charmed Circle: Gertrude Stein and Company, Retrieved November 27, 2008
Portrait of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, 1910, The Art Institute of Chicago. Picasso wrote of Kahnweiler What would have become of us if Kahnweiler hadn't had a business sense?
In 1907 Picasso joined the art gallery that had recently been opened in Paris by Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler. Kahnweiler was a German art historian, art collector who became one of the premier French Art dealers of the 20th century. He became prominent in Paris beginning in 1907 for being among the first champions of Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and Cubism. Kahnweiler championed burgeoning artists such as André Derain, Kees Van Dongen, Fernand Léger, Juan Gris, Maurice de Vlaminck and several others who had come from all over the globe to live and work in Montparnasse at the time. Cubism and its Legacy, Tate Liverpool, retrieved November 27, 2008
In Paris, Picasso entertained a distinguished coterie of friends in the Montmartre and Montparnasse quarters, including André Breton, poet Guillaume Apollinaire, writer Alfred Jarry, and Gertrude Stein. Apollinaire was arrested on suspicion of stealing the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in 1911. Apollonaire pointed to his friend Picasso, who was also brought in for questioning, but both were later exonerated. Time Magazine, Stealing the Mona Lisa, 1911. Consulted on 15 August 2007.
Portrait of Igor Stravinsky, c. 1920
In the early 20th century, Picasso divided his time between Barcelona and Paris. In 1904, in the middle of a storm, he met Fernande Olivier, a Bohemian artist who became his mistress. Olivier appears in many of his Rose period paintings. After acquiring fame and some fortune, Picasso left Olivier for Marcelle Humbert, whom he called Eva Gouel. Picasso included declarations of his love for Eva in many Cubist works. Picasso was devastated by her premature death from illness at the age of 30 in 1915. Charles Harrison, Francis Frascina, Gillian Perry, Primitivism, Cubism, Abstraction, retrieved November 27, 2008
After World War I, Picasso made a number of important associations and relationships with figures associated with Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. Among his friends during this period were Jean Cocteau, Jean Hugo, Juan Gris and others. In the summer of 1918, Picasso married Olga Khokhlova, a ballerina with Sergei Diaghilevâs troupe, for whom Picasso was designing a ballet, Parade, in Rome; and they spent their honeymoon in the villa near Biarritz of the glamorous Chilean art patron Eugenia Errázuriz. Khokhlova introduced Picasso to high society, formal dinner parties, and all the social niceties attendant on the life of the rich in 1920s Paris. The two had a son, Paulo, who would grow up to be a dissolute motorcycle racer and chauffeur to his father. Khokhlovaâs insistence on social propriety clashed with Picassoâs bohemian tendencies and the two lived in a state of constant conflict. During the same period that Picasso collaborated with Diaghilevâs troup, he and Igor Stravinsky collaborated on Pulcinella in 1920. Picasso took the opportunity to make several sketches of the composer.
In 1927 Picasso met 17-year-old Marie-Thérèse Walter and began a secret affair with her. Picassoâs marriage to Khokhlova soon ended in separation rather than divorce, as French law required an even division of property in the case of divorce, and Picasso did not want Khokhlova to have half his wealth. The two remained legally married until Khokhlovaâs death in 1955. Picasso carried on a long-standing affair with Marie-Thérèse Walter and fathered a daughter, Maia, with her. Marie-Thérèse lived in the vain hope that Picasso would one day marry her, and hanged herself four years after Picassoâs death. Throughout his life Picasso maintained a number of mistresses in addition to his wife or primary partner. Picasso was married twice and had four children by three women.
Dora Maar au Chat, 1941
The photographer and painter Dora Maar was also a constant companion and lover of Picasso. The two were closest in the late 1930s and early 1940s and it was Maar who documented the painting of Guernica.
During the Second World War, Picasso remained in Paris while the Germans occupied the city. Picassoâs artistic style did not fit the Nazi views of art, so he was not able to show his works during this time. Retreating to his studio, he continued to paint all the while. Although the Germans outlawed bronze casting in Paris, Picasso continued regardless, using bronze smuggled to him by the French resistance.
After the liberation of Paris in 1944, Picasso began to keep company with a young art student, Françoise Gilot. The two eventually became lovers, and had two children together, Claude and Paloma. Unique among Picassoâs women, Gilot left Picasso in 1953, allegedly because of abusive treatment and infidelities. This was a severe blow to Picasso.
He went through a difficult period after Gilotâs departure, coming to terms with his advancing age and his perception that, now in his 70s, he was no longer attractive, but rather grotesque to young women. A number of ink drawings from this period explore this theme of the hideous old dwarf as buffoonish counterpoint to the beautiful young girl, including several from a six-week affair with Geneviève Laporte, who in June 2005 auctioned off the drawings Picasso made of her.
Picasso was not long in finding another lover, Jacqueline Roque. She worked at the Madoura Pottery in Vallauris on the French Riviera, where Picasso made and painted ceramics. The two remained together for the rest of Picassoâs life, marrying in 1961. Their marriage was also the means of one last act of revenge against Gilot. Gilot had been seeking a legal means to legitimize her children with Picasso, Claude and Paloma. With Picassoâs encouragement, she had arranged to divorce her then husband, Luc Simon, and marry Picasso to secure her childrenâs rights. Picasso then secretly married Roque after Gilot had filed for divorce in order to exact his revenge for her leaving him.
Picasso had constructed a huge gothic structure and could afford large villas in the south of France, at Notre-dame-de-vie on the outskirts of Mougins, in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur. By this time he was a celebrity, and there was often as much interest in his personal life as his art.
In addition to his manifold artistic accomplishments, Picasso had a film career, including a cameo appearance in Jean Cocteauâs Testament of Orpheus. Picasso always played himself in his film appearances. In 1955 he helped make the film Le Mystère Picasso (The Mystery of Picasso) directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot.
Pablo Picasso died on 8 April 1973 in Mougins, France, while he and his wife Jacqueline entertained friends for dinner. His final words were âDrink to me, drink to my health, you know I canât drink any more.â accessed online 15 August 2007 He was interred at the Chateau of Vauvenargues near Aix-en-Provence, a property he had acquired in 1958 and occupied with Jacqueline between 1959 and 1962. Jacqueline Roque prevented his children Claude and Paloma from attending the funeral. The Rich Die Richer and You Can too, by William D. Zabel, Published 1996 John Wiley and Sons, p.11. ISBN 0471155322 Accessed online 15 August 2007 Devastated and lonely after the death of Picasso, Jacqueline Roque took her own life by gunshot in 1986 when she was 60 years old. Picasso's Family Album, Michael Kimmelman, New York Times, retrieved November 28, 2008
* Paulo (4 February 1921 â 5 June 1975) (Born Paul Joseph Picasso) â with Olga Khokhlova
* Maya (5 September 1935 â ) (Born Maria de la Concepcion Picasso) â with Marie-Thérèse Walter
* Claude (15 May 1947 â) (Born Claude Pierre Pablo Picasso) â with Françoise Gilot
* Paloma (19 April 1949 â ) (Born Anne Paloma Picasso) â with Françoise Gilot
Pablo Picasso, Massacre in Korea, 1951
Picasso remained neutral during World War I, the Spanish Civil War, and World War II, refusing to fight for any side or country. Some of his contemporaries felt that his pacifism had more to do with cowardice than principle. An article in The New Yorker called him âa coward, who sat out two world wars while his friends were suffering and dyingâ. As a Spanish citizen living in France, Picasso was under no compulsion to fight against the invading Germans in either World War. In the Spanish Civil War, service for Spaniards living abroad was optional and would have involved a voluntary return to the country to join either side. While Picasso expressed anger and condemnation of Francisco Franco and fascists through his art, he did not take up arms against them.
He also remained aloof from the Catalan independence movement during his youth despite expressing general support and being friendly with activists within it.
In 1944 Picasso joined the French Communist Party, attended an international peace conference in Poland, and in 1950 received the Lenin Peace Prize from the Soviet government. Picassoâs Party Line, ARTnews Retrieved 31 May 2007. But party criticism of a portrait of Stalin as insufficiently realistic cooled Picassoâs interest in communist politics, though he remained a loyal member of the Communist Party until his death. In a 1945 interview with Jerome Seckler, Picasso stated: âI am a Communist and my painting is Communist painting. ... But if I were a shoemaker, Royalist or Communist or anything else, I would not necessarily hammer my shoes in a special way to show my politics.â His Communist militancy, not uncommon among intellectuals and artists at the time although it was officially banned in Francoist Spain, has long been the subject of some controversy; a notable source or demonstration thereof was a sarcastic quote commonly attributed to Salvador Dalà (with whom Picasso had a rather strained relationship Failed attempts at correspondence between Dalà and Picasso ), ostensibly casting doubt on the true honesty of his political allegiances:
: Picasso es pintor, yo también; [...] Picasso es español, yo también; Picasso es comunista, yo tampoco.
:(Picasso is a painter, so am I; [...] Picasso is a Spaniard, so am I; Picasso is a communist, neither am I.) Picasso by Dalà Study on Salvador Dalà Salvador Dalà quotes Dalà "sympathetic"? De El Greco a Salvador DalÃ, Pasando por Picasso Article on Dalà in El Mundo
He was against the intervention of the United Nations and the United States Picasso A Retrospective, Museum of Modern Art, edited by William Rubin, copyright MoMA 1980, p.383 in the Korean War and he depicted it in Massacre in Korea. In 1962, he received the International Lenin Peace Prize.
Picassoâs work is often categorized into periods. While the names of many of his later periods are debated, the most commonly accepted periods in his work are the Blue Period (1901â1904), the Rose Period (1905â1907), the African-influenced Period (1908â1909), Analytic Cubism (1909â1912), and Synthetic Cubism (1912â1919).
In 1939â40 the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, under its director Alfred Barr, a Picasso enthusiast, held a major and highly successful retrospective of his principal works up until that time. This exhibition lionized the artist, brought into full public view in America the scope of his artistry, and resulted in a reinterpretation of his work by contemporary art historians and scholars. The MoMA retrospective of 1939â40 â see Michael C. FitzGerald, Making Modernism: Picasso and the Creation of the Market for Twentieth-Century Art (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), pp. 243â262.
Picassoâs training under his father began before 1890. His progress can be traced in the collection of early works now held by the Museu Picasso in Barcelona, which provides one of the most comprehensive records extant of any major artistâs beginnings. Cirlot,1972, p.6. During 1893 the juvenile quality of his earliest work falls away, and by 1894 his career as a painter can be said to have begun. Cirlot, 1972, p. 14. The academic realism apparent in the works of the mid-1890s is well displayed in The First Communion (1896), a large composition that depicts his sister, Lola. In the same year, at the age of 14, he painted Portrait of Aunt Pepa, a vigorous and dramatic portrait that Juan-Eduardo Cirlot has called âwithout a doubt one of the greatest in the whole history of Spanish painting.â Cirlot, 1972, p.37.
In 1897 his realism became tinged with Symbolist influence, in a series of landscape paintings rendered in non naturalistic violet and green tones. What some call his Modernist period (1899â1900) followed. His exposure to the work of Rossetti, Steinlen, Toulouse-Lautrec and Edvard Munch, combined with his admiration for favorite old masters such as El Greco, led Picasso to a personal version of modernism in his works of this period. Cirlot, 1972, p. 87â108.
Femme aux Bras Croisés, 1902
Picassoâs Blue Period (1901â1904) consists of somber paintings rendered in shades of blue and blue-green, only occasionally warmed by other colors. This periodâs starting point is uncertain; it may have begun in Spain in the spring of 1901, or in Paris in the second half of the year. Cirlot, 1972, p.127. Many paintings of gaunt mothers with children date from this period. In his austere use of color and sometimes doleful subject matterâprostitutes and beggars are frequent subjectsâPicasso was influenced by a trip through Spain and by the suicide of his friend Carlos Casagemas. Starting in autumn of 1901 he painted several posthumous portraits of Casagemas, culminating in the gloomy allegorical painting La Vie (1903), now in the Cleveland Museum of Art. Wattenmaker, Distel, et al.,1993, p. 304.
The same mood pervades the well-known etching The Frugal Repast (1904), which depicts a blind man and a sighted woman, both emaciated, seated at a nearly bare table. Blindness is a recurrent theme in Picassoâs works of this period, also represented in The Blindmanâs Meal (1903, the Metropolitan Museum of Art) and in the portrait of Celestina (1903). Other works include Portrait of Soler and Portrait of Suzanne Blochâ.
Pablo Picasso, Garçon à la pipe, (Boy with a Pipe), 1905, Rose Period
The Rose Period (1904â1906) Wattenmaker, Distel, et al.,1993, p. 194. is characterized by a more cheery style with orange and pink colors, and featuring many circus people, acrobats and harlequins known in France as saltimbanques. The harlequin, a comedic character usually depicted in checkered patterned clothing, became a personal symbol for Picasso. Picasso met Fernande Olivier, a model for sculptors and artists, in Paris in 1904, and many of these paintings are influenced by his warm relationship with her, in addition to his increased exposure to French painting. The generally upbeat and optimistic mood of paintings in this period is reminiscent of the 1899â1901 period (i.e. just prior to the Blue Period) and 1904 can be considered a transition year between the two periods.
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), Museum of Modern Art, New York
Picassoâs African-influenced Period (1907â1909) begins with the two figures on the right in his painting, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, which were inspired by African artifacts. Formal ideas developed during this period lead directly into the Cubist period that follows.
Three Musicians (1921), Museum of Modern Art
Analytic cubism (1909â1912) is a style of painting Picasso developed along with Georges Braque using monochrome brownish and neutral colors. Both artists took apart objects and âanalyzedâ them in terms of their shapes. Picasso and Braqueâs paintings at this time have many similarities. Synthetic cubism (1912â1919) was a further development of the genre, in which cut paper fragmentsâoften wallpaper or portions of newspaper pagesâwere pasted into compositions, marking the first use of collage in fine art.
In the period following the upheaval of World War I, Picasso produced work in a neoclassical style. This âreturn to orderâ is evident in the work of many European artists in the 1920s, including André Derain, Giorgio de Chirico, and the artists of the New Objectivity movement. Picassoâs paintings and drawings from this period frequently recall the work of Ingres.
During the 1930s, the minotaur replaced the harlequin as a common motif in his work. His use of the minotaur came partly from his contact with the surrealists, who often used it as their symbol, and it appears in Picassoâs Guernica.
Guernica, 1937, Museo Reina Sofia
Arguably Picassoâs most famous work is his depiction of the German bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil WarâGuernica. This large canvas embodies for many the inhumanity, brutality and hopelessness of war. Asked to explain its symbolism, Picasso said, âIt isnât up to the painter to define the symbols. Otherwise it would be better if he wrote them out in so many words! The public who look at the picture must interpret the symbols as they understand them.â
Guernica hung in New Yorkâs Museum of Modern Art for many years. In 1981 Guernica was returned to Spain and exhibited at the Casón del Buen Retiro. In 1992 the painting hung in Madridâs Reina SofÃa Museum when it opened.
Picasso sculpture in Chicago
Picasso was one of 250 sculptors who exhibited in the 3rd Sculpture International held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the summer of 1949. In the 1950s, Picassoâs style changed once again, as he took to producing reinterpretations of the art of the great masters. He made a series of works based on Velazquezâs painting of Las Meninas. He also based paintings on works by Goya, Poussin, Manet, Courbet and Delacroix.
Nude Woman with a Necklace (1968), Tate
He was commissioned to make a maquette for a huge -high public sculpture to be built in Chicago, known usually as the Chicago Picasso. He approached the project with a great deal of enthusiasm, designing a sculpture which was ambiguous and somewhat controversial. What the figure represents is not known; it could be a bird, a horse, a woman or a totally abstract shape. The sculpture, one of the most recognizable landmarks in downtown Chicago, was unveiled in 1967. Picasso refused to be paid $100,000 for it, donating it to the people of the city.
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Picassoâs final works were a mixture of styles, his means of expression in constant flux until the end of his life. Devoting his full energies to his work, Picasso became more daring, his works more colorful and expressive, and from 1968 through 1971 he produced a torrent of paintings and hundreds of copperplate etchings. At the time these works were dismissed by most as pornographic fantasies of an impotent old man or the slapdash works of an artist who was past his prime. Only later, after Picassoâs death, when the rest of the art world had moved on from abstract expressionism, did the critical community come to see that Picasso had already discovered neo-expressionism and was, as so often before, ahead of his time.
Picasso was exceptionally prolific throughout his long lifetime. The total number of artworks he produced has been estimated at 50,000, comprising 1,885 paintings; 1,228 sculptures; 2,880 ceramics, roughly 12,000 drawings, many thousands of prints, and numerous tapestries and rugs. On-line Picasso Project, citing Selfridge, John, 1994. At the time of his death many of his paintings were in his possession, as he had kept off the art market what he didnât need to sell. In addition, Picasso had a considerable collection of the work of other famous artists, some his contemporaries, such as Henri Matisse, with whom he had exchanged works. Since Picasso left no will, his death duties (estate tax) to the French state were paid in the form of his works and others from his collection. These works form the core of the immense and representative collection of the Musée Picasso in Paris. In 2003, relatives of Picasso inaugurated a museum dedicated to him in his birthplace, Málaga, Spain, the Museo Picasso Málaga.
Picasso sculpture in Halmstad
The Museu Picasso in Barcelona features many of Picassoâs early works, created while he was living in Spain, including many rarely seen works which reveal Picassoâs firm grounding in classical techniques. The museum also holds many precise and detailed figure studies done in his youth under his fatherâs tutelage, as well as the extensive collection of Jaime Sabartés, Picassoâs close friend and personal secretary.
Several paintings by Picasso rank among the most expensive paintings in the world. Garçon à la pipe sold for USD $104 million at Sotheby's on 4 May 2004, establishing a new price record. Dora Maar au Chat sold for USD $95.2 million at Sothebyâs on 3 May 2006.
As of 2004, Picasso remains the top ranked artist (based on sales of his works at auctions) according to the Art Market Trends report. (pdf) More of his paintings have been stolen than those by any other artist. S. Goodenough, 1500 Fascinating Facts, Treasure Press, London, 1987, p 241.
The Picasso Administration functions as his official Estate. The U.S. copyright representative for the Picasso Administration is the Artists Rights Society. | Most frequently requested artists list of the Artists Rights Society
Upon Picasso's death in 1973, actor Dustin Hoffman was having dinner with former Beatle Paul McCartney and told him about Picasso's last words. McCartney started creating and singing a song around those words and included the song on his 1973 album, Band on the Run.
In the 1996 movie Surviving Picasso Picasso is played by actor Anthony Hopkins.
*Becht-Jördens, Gereon; Wehmeier, Peter M. (2003). Picasso und die christliche Ikonographie. Mutterbeziehung und künstlerische Position. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag. ISBN 9783496012726
* Berger, John (1965). The Success and Failure of Picasso. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
* Cirlot, Juan-Eduardo (1972). Picasso: birth of a genius. New York and Washington: Praeger.
* Cowling, Elizabeth; Mundy, Jennifer (1990). On Classic Ground: Picasso, Léger, de Chirico and the New Classicism 1910â1930. London: Tate Gallery. ISBN 1-85437-043-X
* Daix, Pierre (1993). Picasso: Life And Art. Harper Collins. ISBN 9780064309769
* FitzGerald, Michael C. Making Modernism: Picasso and the Creation of the Market for Twentieth-Century Art. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.
*Eugenio Granell, Picassoâs Guernica : the end of a Spanish era (Ann Arbor, Mich. : UMI Research Press, 1981) ISBN 0835712060 9780835712064 9780835712064 0835712060
* Krauss, Rosalind (1998). The Picasso Papers. London: Thames and Hudson. ISBN 0500237611
* Mallen, Enrique (2003). The Visual Grammar of Pablo Picasso. Berkeley Insights in Linguistics & Semiotics Series. New York: Peter Lang.
* Mallen, Enrique (2005). La Sintaxis de la Carne: Pablo Picasso y Marie-Thérèse Walter. Santiago de Chile: Red Internacional del Libro.
* Mallen, Enrique (2009). A Concordance of Pablo Picasso's Spanish Writings. New York: Edwin Mellen Press.
* Nill, Raymond M. âA Visual Guide to Pablo Picassoâs Worksâ. New York: B&H Publishers, 1987.
* Picasso, Olivier Widmaier. (2004). Picasso: The Real Family Story. Prestel Publ. ISBN 3-7913-3149-3
* Rubin, William, ed. (1980) Pablo Picasso, a retrospective. Chronology by Jane Fluegel. New York: The Museum of Modern Art. ISBN 0-87070-519-9
* Wattenmaker, Richard J.; Distel, Anne, et al. (1993). Great French Paintings from the Barnes Foundation. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0-679-40963-7
* Wertenbaker, Lael (1967). The World of Picasso. TimeâLife Library of Art. Alexandria, Virginia: Time-Life Books.
* Over 17,671 catalogued artworks available on the On-Line Picasso Project
* Official website
* On-Line Picasso Project: Comprehensive summary of his life and his work.
* Biography and works of Pablo Picasso
* Pablo Picasso â Biography, Quotes & Paintings, retrieved 14 June 2007.
* Poems by Picasso in English translation from Samizdat (poetry magazine)
* Cubism, The Big Picture
* Artists Rights Society, Picasso's U.S. Copyright Representatives
* Union List of Artist Names, Getty Vocabularies. ULAN Full Record Display for Pablo Picasso. Getty Vocabulary Program, Getty Research Institute. Los Angeles, California.
Picasso Museum, Paris, (Hotel Salé, 1659)
* Guggenheim Museum Biography
* Hilo Art Museum, (Hilo Hawaii, USA)
* Honolulu Academy of Arts
* Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
* Musée National Picasso (Paris, France)
* Musée Picasso (Antibes, France)
* Museo Picasso Málaga (Málaga, Spain)
* Museu Picasso (Barcelona, Spain)
* Museum Berggruen (Berlin, Germany)
* Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
* National Gallery of Art list of paintings
* Graphikmuseum Pablo Picasso Münster (Münster, Germany)
* Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles, California
* Power and Tenderness in Men and in Picassoâs âMinotauromachyâ by Chaim Koppelman
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Pablo_Picasso | Is he one of the most recognized figures in 20th-century art? | yes | data/set6/a1 | Pablo_Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno MarÃa de los Remedios Cipriano de la SantÃsima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso (25 October 1881 â 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, draughtsman, and sculptor. He is one of the most recognized figures in 20th-century art. He is best known for co-founding the Cubist movement and for the wide variety of styles embodied in his work. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907) and Guernica (1937), his portrayal of the German bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War.
Picasso demonstrated uncanny artistic talent in his early years, painting in a realistic manner through his childhood and adolescence; during the first decade of the twentieth century his style changed as he experimented with different theories, techniques, and ideas. Picassoâs creativity manifested itself in numerous mediums, including painting, sculpture, drawing, and architecture. His revolutionary artistic accomplishments brought him universal renown and immense fortunes throughout his life, making him the best-known figure in twentieth century art.
Picasso was baptized Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno MarÃa de los Remedios Crispiniano de la SantÃsima Trinidad, a series of names honouring various saints and relatives. The name on his baptismal certificate differs slightly from the name on his birth record. On-line Picasso Project Added to these were Ruiz and Picasso, for his father and mother, respectively, as per Spanish custom. Born in the city of Málaga in the Andalusian region of Spain, he was the first child of Don José Ruiz y Blasco (1838â1913) and MarÃa Picasso y López. Picassoâs family was middle-class; his father was also a painter who specialized in naturalistic depictions of birds and other game. For most of his life Ruiz was a professor of art at the School of Crafts and a curator of a local museum. Ruizâs ancestors were minor aristocrats.
The house where Picasso was born, in Málaga
Picasso showed a passion and a skill for drawing from an early age; according to his mother, --> his first words were âpiz, pizâ, a shortening of lápiz, the Spanish word for âpencilâ. Wertenbaker, 9. --> From the age of seven, Picasso received formal artistic training from his father in figure drawing and oil painting. Ruiz was a traditional, academic artist and instructor who believed that proper training required disciplined copying of the masters, and drawing the human body from plaster casts and live models. His son became preoccupied with art to the detriment of his classwork.
The family moved to La Coruña in 1891 where his father became a professor at the School of Fine Arts. They stayed almost four years. On one occasion the father found his son painting over his unfinished sketch of a pigeon. Observing the precision of his sonâs technique, Ruiz felt that the thirteen-year-old Picasso had surpassed him, and vowed to give up painting. Wertenbaker, 11.
In 1895, Picasso's seven-year old sister, Conchita, died of diphtheriaâa traumatic event in his life. After her death, the family moved to Barcelona, with Ruiz transferring to its School of Fine Arts. Picasso thrived in the city, regarding it in times of sadness or nostalgia as his true home. Wertenbaker, 13. Ruiz persuaded the officials at the academy to allow his son to take an entrance exam for the advanced class. This process often took students a month, but Picasso completed it in a week, and the impressed jury admitted Picasso, who was 13. The student lacked discipline but made friendships that would affect him in later life. His father rented him a small room close to home so Picasso could work alone, yet Ruiz checked up on him numerous times a day, judging his sonâs drawings. The two argued frequently.
Picassoâs father and uncle decided to send the young artist to Madridâs Royal Academy of San Fernando, the country's foremost art school. In 1897, Picasso, age 16, set off for the first time on his own, but he disliked formal instruction and quit attending classes soon after enrollment. Madrid, however, held many other attractions: the Prado housed paintings by the venerable Diego Velázquez, Francisco Goya, and Francisco Zurbarán. Picasso especially admired the works of El Greco; their elements, the elongated limbs, arresting colors, and mystical visages, are echoed in Picassoâs Åuvre.
[[Image:GertrudeStein.JPG|thumb|left|upright|Portrait of Gertrude Stein, 1906, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. When someone commented that Stein did not look like her portrait, Picasso replied, "She will". Portrait of Gertrude Stein Metropolitan Museum, Retrieved November 26, 2008 ]]
After studying art in Madrid, Picasso made his first trip to Paris in 1900, then the art capital of Europe. There, he met his first Parisian friend, the journalist and poet Max Jacob, who helped Picasso learn the language and its literature. Soon they shared an apartment; Max slept at night while Picasso slept during the day and worked at night. These were times of severe poverty, cold, and desperation. Much of his work was burned to keep the small room warm. During the first five months of 1901, Picasso lived in Madrid, where he and his anarchist friend Francisco de AsÃs Soler founded the magazine Arte Joven (Young Art), which published five issues. Soler solicited articles and Picasso illustrated the journal, mostly contributing grim cartoons depicting and sympathizing with the state of the poor. The first issue was published on 31 March 1901, by which time the artist had started to sign his work simply Picasso, while before he had signed Pablo Ruiz y Picasso. Cirlot, 1972, p. 125.
By 1905 Picasso became a favorite of the American art collectors Leo and Gertrude Stein. Their older brother Michael Stein and his wife Sarah also became collectors of his work. Picasso painted portraits of both Gertrude Stein and her nephew Allan Stein. Pablo Picasso, Portrait of Allan Stein, 1906, retrieved November 27, 2008 Gertrude Stein became Picasso's principal patron, acquiring his drawings and paintings and exhibiting them in her informal Salon at her home in Paris. Special Exhibit Examines Dynamic Relationship Between the Art of Pablo Picasso and Writing Yale University Art Gallery, Retrieved October 8, 2009 At one of her gatherings in 1905, he met Henri Matisse, who was to become a lifelong friend and rival. The Steins introduced him to Claribel Cone and her sister Etta who were American art collectors; they also began to acquire Picasso and Matisse's paintings. Eventually Leo Stein moved to Italy, and Michael and Sarah Stein became patrons of Matisse; while Gertrude Stein continued to collect Picasso. James R. Mellow, Charmed Circle: Gertrude Stein and Company, Retrieved November 27, 2008
Portrait of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, 1910, The Art Institute of Chicago. Picasso wrote of Kahnweiler What would have become of us if Kahnweiler hadn't had a business sense?
In 1907 Picasso joined the art gallery that had recently been opened in Paris by Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler. Kahnweiler was a German art historian, art collector who became one of the premier French Art dealers of the 20th century. He became prominent in Paris beginning in 1907 for being among the first champions of Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and Cubism. Kahnweiler championed burgeoning artists such as André Derain, Kees Van Dongen, Fernand Léger, Juan Gris, Maurice de Vlaminck and several others who had come from all over the globe to live and work in Montparnasse at the time. Cubism and its Legacy, Tate Liverpool, retrieved November 27, 2008
In Paris, Picasso entertained a distinguished coterie of friends in the Montmartre and Montparnasse quarters, including André Breton, poet Guillaume Apollinaire, writer Alfred Jarry, and Gertrude Stein. Apollinaire was arrested on suspicion of stealing the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in 1911. Apollonaire pointed to his friend Picasso, who was also brought in for questioning, but both were later exonerated. Time Magazine, Stealing the Mona Lisa, 1911. Consulted on 15 August 2007.
Portrait of Igor Stravinsky, c. 1920
In the early 20th century, Picasso divided his time between Barcelona and Paris. In 1904, in the middle of a storm, he met Fernande Olivier, a Bohemian artist who became his mistress. Olivier appears in many of his Rose period paintings. After acquiring fame and some fortune, Picasso left Olivier for Marcelle Humbert, whom he called Eva Gouel. Picasso included declarations of his love for Eva in many Cubist works. Picasso was devastated by her premature death from illness at the age of 30 in 1915. Charles Harrison, Francis Frascina, Gillian Perry, Primitivism, Cubism, Abstraction, retrieved November 27, 2008
After World War I, Picasso made a number of important associations and relationships with figures associated with Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. Among his friends during this period were Jean Cocteau, Jean Hugo, Juan Gris and others. In the summer of 1918, Picasso married Olga Khokhlova, a ballerina with Sergei Diaghilevâs troupe, for whom Picasso was designing a ballet, Parade, in Rome; and they spent their honeymoon in the villa near Biarritz of the glamorous Chilean art patron Eugenia Errázuriz. Khokhlova introduced Picasso to high society, formal dinner parties, and all the social niceties attendant on the life of the rich in 1920s Paris. The two had a son, Paulo, who would grow up to be a dissolute motorcycle racer and chauffeur to his father. Khokhlovaâs insistence on social propriety clashed with Picassoâs bohemian tendencies and the two lived in a state of constant conflict. During the same period that Picasso collaborated with Diaghilevâs troup, he and Igor Stravinsky collaborated on Pulcinella in 1920. Picasso took the opportunity to make several sketches of the composer.
In 1927 Picasso met 17-year-old Marie-Thérèse Walter and began a secret affair with her. Picassoâs marriage to Khokhlova soon ended in separation rather than divorce, as French law required an even division of property in the case of divorce, and Picasso did not want Khokhlova to have half his wealth. The two remained legally married until Khokhlovaâs death in 1955. Picasso carried on a long-standing affair with Marie-Thérèse Walter and fathered a daughter, Maia, with her. Marie-Thérèse lived in the vain hope that Picasso would one day marry her, and hanged herself four years after Picassoâs death. Throughout his life Picasso maintained a number of mistresses in addition to his wife or primary partner. Picasso was married twice and had four children by three women.
Dora Maar au Chat, 1941
The photographer and painter Dora Maar was also a constant companion and lover of Picasso. The two were closest in the late 1930s and early 1940s and it was Maar who documented the painting of Guernica.
During the Second World War, Picasso remained in Paris while the Germans occupied the city. Picassoâs artistic style did not fit the Nazi views of art, so he was not able to show his works during this time. Retreating to his studio, he continued to paint all the while. Although the Germans outlawed bronze casting in Paris, Picasso continued regardless, using bronze smuggled to him by the French resistance.
After the liberation of Paris in 1944, Picasso began to keep company with a young art student, Françoise Gilot. The two eventually became lovers, and had two children together, Claude and Paloma. Unique among Picassoâs women, Gilot left Picasso in 1953, allegedly because of abusive treatment and infidelities. This was a severe blow to Picasso.
He went through a difficult period after Gilotâs departure, coming to terms with his advancing age and his perception that, now in his 70s, he was no longer attractive, but rather grotesque to young women. A number of ink drawings from this period explore this theme of the hideous old dwarf as buffoonish counterpoint to the beautiful young girl, including several from a six-week affair with Geneviève Laporte, who in June 2005 auctioned off the drawings Picasso made of her.
Picasso was not long in finding another lover, Jacqueline Roque. She worked at the Madoura Pottery in Vallauris on the French Riviera, where Picasso made and painted ceramics. The two remained together for the rest of Picassoâs life, marrying in 1961. Their marriage was also the means of one last act of revenge against Gilot. Gilot had been seeking a legal means to legitimize her children with Picasso, Claude and Paloma. With Picassoâs encouragement, she had arranged to divorce her then husband, Luc Simon, and marry Picasso to secure her childrenâs rights. Picasso then secretly married Roque after Gilot had filed for divorce in order to exact his revenge for her leaving him.
Picasso had constructed a huge gothic structure and could afford large villas in the south of France, at Notre-dame-de-vie on the outskirts of Mougins, in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur. By this time he was a celebrity, and there was often as much interest in his personal life as his art.
In addition to his manifold artistic accomplishments, Picasso had a film career, including a cameo appearance in Jean Cocteauâs Testament of Orpheus. Picasso always played himself in his film appearances. In 1955 he helped make the film Le Mystère Picasso (The Mystery of Picasso) directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot.
Pablo Picasso died on 8 April 1973 in Mougins, France, while he and his wife Jacqueline entertained friends for dinner. His final words were âDrink to me, drink to my health, you know I canât drink any more.â accessed online 15 August 2007 He was interred at the Chateau of Vauvenargues near Aix-en-Provence, a property he had acquired in 1958 and occupied with Jacqueline between 1959 and 1962. Jacqueline Roque prevented his children Claude and Paloma from attending the funeral. The Rich Die Richer and You Can too, by William D. Zabel, Published 1996 John Wiley and Sons, p.11. ISBN 0471155322 Accessed online 15 August 2007 Devastated and lonely after the death of Picasso, Jacqueline Roque took her own life by gunshot in 1986 when she was 60 years old. Picasso's Family Album, Michael Kimmelman, New York Times, retrieved November 28, 2008
* Paulo (4 February 1921 â 5 June 1975) (Born Paul Joseph Picasso) â with Olga Khokhlova
* Maya (5 September 1935 â ) (Born Maria de la Concepcion Picasso) â with Marie-Thérèse Walter
* Claude (15 May 1947 â) (Born Claude Pierre Pablo Picasso) â with Françoise Gilot
* Paloma (19 April 1949 â ) (Born Anne Paloma Picasso) â with Françoise Gilot
Pablo Picasso, Massacre in Korea, 1951
Picasso remained neutral during World War I, the Spanish Civil War, and World War II, refusing to fight for any side or country. Some of his contemporaries felt that his pacifism had more to do with cowardice than principle. An article in The New Yorker called him âa coward, who sat out two world wars while his friends were suffering and dyingâ. As a Spanish citizen living in France, Picasso was under no compulsion to fight against the invading Germans in either World War. In the Spanish Civil War, service for Spaniards living abroad was optional and would have involved a voluntary return to the country to join either side. While Picasso expressed anger and condemnation of Francisco Franco and fascists through his art, he did not take up arms against them.
He also remained aloof from the Catalan independence movement during his youth despite expressing general support and being friendly with activists within it.
In 1944 Picasso joined the French Communist Party, attended an international peace conference in Poland, and in 1950 received the Lenin Peace Prize from the Soviet government. Picassoâs Party Line, ARTnews Retrieved 31 May 2007. But party criticism of a portrait of Stalin as insufficiently realistic cooled Picassoâs interest in communist politics, though he remained a loyal member of the Communist Party until his death. In a 1945 interview with Jerome Seckler, Picasso stated: âI am a Communist and my painting is Communist painting. ... But if I were a shoemaker, Royalist or Communist or anything else, I would not necessarily hammer my shoes in a special way to show my politics.â His Communist militancy, not uncommon among intellectuals and artists at the time although it was officially banned in Francoist Spain, has long been the subject of some controversy; a notable source or demonstration thereof was a sarcastic quote commonly attributed to Salvador Dalà (with whom Picasso had a rather strained relationship Failed attempts at correspondence between Dalà and Picasso ), ostensibly casting doubt on the true honesty of his political allegiances:
: Picasso es pintor, yo también; [...] Picasso es español, yo también; Picasso es comunista, yo tampoco.
:(Picasso is a painter, so am I; [...] Picasso is a Spaniard, so am I; Picasso is a communist, neither am I.) Picasso by Dalà Study on Salvador Dalà Salvador Dalà quotes Dalà "sympathetic"? De El Greco a Salvador DalÃ, Pasando por Picasso Article on Dalà in El Mundo
He was against the intervention of the United Nations and the United States Picasso A Retrospective, Museum of Modern Art, edited by William Rubin, copyright MoMA 1980, p.383 in the Korean War and he depicted it in Massacre in Korea. In 1962, he received the International Lenin Peace Prize.
Picassoâs work is often categorized into periods. While the names of many of his later periods are debated, the most commonly accepted periods in his work are the Blue Period (1901â1904), the Rose Period (1905â1907), the African-influenced Period (1908â1909), Analytic Cubism (1909â1912), and Synthetic Cubism (1912â1919).
In 1939â40 the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, under its director Alfred Barr, a Picasso enthusiast, held a major and highly successful retrospective of his principal works up until that time. This exhibition lionized the artist, brought into full public view in America the scope of his artistry, and resulted in a reinterpretation of his work by contemporary art historians and scholars. The MoMA retrospective of 1939â40 â see Michael C. FitzGerald, Making Modernism: Picasso and the Creation of the Market for Twentieth-Century Art (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), pp. 243â262.
Picassoâs training under his father began before 1890. His progress can be traced in the collection of early works now held by the Museu Picasso in Barcelona, which provides one of the most comprehensive records extant of any major artistâs beginnings. Cirlot,1972, p.6. During 1893 the juvenile quality of his earliest work falls away, and by 1894 his career as a painter can be said to have begun. Cirlot, 1972, p. 14. The academic realism apparent in the works of the mid-1890s is well displayed in The First Communion (1896), a large composition that depicts his sister, Lola. In the same year, at the age of 14, he painted Portrait of Aunt Pepa, a vigorous and dramatic portrait that Juan-Eduardo Cirlot has called âwithout a doubt one of the greatest in the whole history of Spanish painting.â Cirlot, 1972, p.37.
In 1897 his realism became tinged with Symbolist influence, in a series of landscape paintings rendered in non naturalistic violet and green tones. What some call his Modernist period (1899â1900) followed. His exposure to the work of Rossetti, Steinlen, Toulouse-Lautrec and Edvard Munch, combined with his admiration for favorite old masters such as El Greco, led Picasso to a personal version of modernism in his works of this period. Cirlot, 1972, p. 87â108.
Femme aux Bras Croisés, 1902
Picassoâs Blue Period (1901â1904) consists of somber paintings rendered in shades of blue and blue-green, only occasionally warmed by other colors. This periodâs starting point is uncertain; it may have begun in Spain in the spring of 1901, or in Paris in the second half of the year. Cirlot, 1972, p.127. Many paintings of gaunt mothers with children date from this period. In his austere use of color and sometimes doleful subject matterâprostitutes and beggars are frequent subjectsâPicasso was influenced by a trip through Spain and by the suicide of his friend Carlos Casagemas. Starting in autumn of 1901 he painted several posthumous portraits of Casagemas, culminating in the gloomy allegorical painting La Vie (1903), now in the Cleveland Museum of Art. Wattenmaker, Distel, et al.,1993, p. 304.
The same mood pervades the well-known etching The Frugal Repast (1904), which depicts a blind man and a sighted woman, both emaciated, seated at a nearly bare table. Blindness is a recurrent theme in Picassoâs works of this period, also represented in The Blindmanâs Meal (1903, the Metropolitan Museum of Art) and in the portrait of Celestina (1903). Other works include Portrait of Soler and Portrait of Suzanne Blochâ.
Pablo Picasso, Garçon à la pipe, (Boy with a Pipe), 1905, Rose Period
The Rose Period (1904â1906) Wattenmaker, Distel, et al.,1993, p. 194. is characterized by a more cheery style with orange and pink colors, and featuring many circus people, acrobats and harlequins known in France as saltimbanques. The harlequin, a comedic character usually depicted in checkered patterned clothing, became a personal symbol for Picasso. Picasso met Fernande Olivier, a model for sculptors and artists, in Paris in 1904, and many of these paintings are influenced by his warm relationship with her, in addition to his increased exposure to French painting. The generally upbeat and optimistic mood of paintings in this period is reminiscent of the 1899â1901 period (i.e. just prior to the Blue Period) and 1904 can be considered a transition year between the two periods.
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), Museum of Modern Art, New York
Picassoâs African-influenced Period (1907â1909) begins with the two figures on the right in his painting, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, which were inspired by African artifacts. Formal ideas developed during this period lead directly into the Cubist period that follows.
Three Musicians (1921), Museum of Modern Art
Analytic cubism (1909â1912) is a style of painting Picasso developed along with Georges Braque using monochrome brownish and neutral colors. Both artists took apart objects and âanalyzedâ them in terms of their shapes. Picasso and Braqueâs paintings at this time have many similarities. Synthetic cubism (1912â1919) was a further development of the genre, in which cut paper fragmentsâoften wallpaper or portions of newspaper pagesâwere pasted into compositions, marking the first use of collage in fine art.
In the period following the upheaval of World War I, Picasso produced work in a neoclassical style. This âreturn to orderâ is evident in the work of many European artists in the 1920s, including André Derain, Giorgio de Chirico, and the artists of the New Objectivity movement. Picassoâs paintings and drawings from this period frequently recall the work of Ingres.
During the 1930s, the minotaur replaced the harlequin as a common motif in his work. His use of the minotaur came partly from his contact with the surrealists, who often used it as their symbol, and it appears in Picassoâs Guernica.
Guernica, 1937, Museo Reina Sofia
Arguably Picassoâs most famous work is his depiction of the German bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil WarâGuernica. This large canvas embodies for many the inhumanity, brutality and hopelessness of war. Asked to explain its symbolism, Picasso said, âIt isnât up to the painter to define the symbols. Otherwise it would be better if he wrote them out in so many words! The public who look at the picture must interpret the symbols as they understand them.â
Guernica hung in New Yorkâs Museum of Modern Art for many years. In 1981 Guernica was returned to Spain and exhibited at the Casón del Buen Retiro. In 1992 the painting hung in Madridâs Reina SofÃa Museum when it opened.
Picasso sculpture in Chicago
Picasso was one of 250 sculptors who exhibited in the 3rd Sculpture International held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the summer of 1949. In the 1950s, Picassoâs style changed once again, as he took to producing reinterpretations of the art of the great masters. He made a series of works based on Velazquezâs painting of Las Meninas. He also based paintings on works by Goya, Poussin, Manet, Courbet and Delacroix.
Nude Woman with a Necklace (1968), Tate
He was commissioned to make a maquette for a huge -high public sculpture to be built in Chicago, known usually as the Chicago Picasso. He approached the project with a great deal of enthusiasm, designing a sculpture which was ambiguous and somewhat controversial. What the figure represents is not known; it could be a bird, a horse, a woman or a totally abstract shape. The sculpture, one of the most recognizable landmarks in downtown Chicago, was unveiled in 1967. Picasso refused to be paid $100,000 for it, donating it to the people of the city.
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Picassoâs final works were a mixture of styles, his means of expression in constant flux until the end of his life. Devoting his full energies to his work, Picasso became more daring, his works more colorful and expressive, and from 1968 through 1971 he produced a torrent of paintings and hundreds of copperplate etchings. At the time these works were dismissed by most as pornographic fantasies of an impotent old man or the slapdash works of an artist who was past his prime. Only later, after Picassoâs death, when the rest of the art world had moved on from abstract expressionism, did the critical community come to see that Picasso had already discovered neo-expressionism and was, as so often before, ahead of his time.
Picasso was exceptionally prolific throughout his long lifetime. The total number of artworks he produced has been estimated at 50,000, comprising 1,885 paintings; 1,228 sculptures; 2,880 ceramics, roughly 12,000 drawings, many thousands of prints, and numerous tapestries and rugs. On-line Picasso Project, citing Selfridge, John, 1994. At the time of his death many of his paintings were in his possession, as he had kept off the art market what he didnât need to sell. In addition, Picasso had a considerable collection of the work of other famous artists, some his contemporaries, such as Henri Matisse, with whom he had exchanged works. Since Picasso left no will, his death duties (estate tax) to the French state were paid in the form of his works and others from his collection. These works form the core of the immense and representative collection of the Musée Picasso in Paris. In 2003, relatives of Picasso inaugurated a museum dedicated to him in his birthplace, Málaga, Spain, the Museo Picasso Málaga.
Picasso sculpture in Halmstad
The Museu Picasso in Barcelona features many of Picassoâs early works, created while he was living in Spain, including many rarely seen works which reveal Picassoâs firm grounding in classical techniques. The museum also holds many precise and detailed figure studies done in his youth under his fatherâs tutelage, as well as the extensive collection of Jaime Sabartés, Picassoâs close friend and personal secretary.
Several paintings by Picasso rank among the most expensive paintings in the world. Garçon à la pipe sold for USD $104 million at Sotheby's on 4 May 2004, establishing a new price record. Dora Maar au Chat sold for USD $95.2 million at Sothebyâs on 3 May 2006.
As of 2004, Picasso remains the top ranked artist (based on sales of his works at auctions) according to the Art Market Trends report. (pdf) More of his paintings have been stolen than those by any other artist. S. Goodenough, 1500 Fascinating Facts, Treasure Press, London, 1987, p 241.
The Picasso Administration functions as his official Estate. The U.S. copyright representative for the Picasso Administration is the Artists Rights Society. | Most frequently requested artists list of the Artists Rights Society
Upon Picasso's death in 1973, actor Dustin Hoffman was having dinner with former Beatle Paul McCartney and told him about Picasso's last words. McCartney started creating and singing a song around those words and included the song on his 1973 album, Band on the Run.
In the 1996 movie Surviving Picasso Picasso is played by actor Anthony Hopkins.
*Becht-Jördens, Gereon; Wehmeier, Peter M. (2003). Picasso und die christliche Ikonographie. Mutterbeziehung und künstlerische Position. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag. ISBN 9783496012726
* Berger, John (1965). The Success and Failure of Picasso. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
* Cirlot, Juan-Eduardo (1972). Picasso: birth of a genius. New York and Washington: Praeger.
* Cowling, Elizabeth; Mundy, Jennifer (1990). On Classic Ground: Picasso, Léger, de Chirico and the New Classicism 1910â1930. London: Tate Gallery. ISBN 1-85437-043-X
* Daix, Pierre (1993). Picasso: Life And Art. Harper Collins. ISBN 9780064309769
* FitzGerald, Michael C. Making Modernism: Picasso and the Creation of the Market for Twentieth-Century Art. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.
*Eugenio Granell, Picassoâs Guernica : the end of a Spanish era (Ann Arbor, Mich. : UMI Research Press, 1981) ISBN 0835712060 9780835712064 9780835712064 0835712060
* Krauss, Rosalind (1998). The Picasso Papers. London: Thames and Hudson. ISBN 0500237611
* Mallen, Enrique (2003). The Visual Grammar of Pablo Picasso. Berkeley Insights in Linguistics & Semiotics Series. New York: Peter Lang.
* Mallen, Enrique (2005). La Sintaxis de la Carne: Pablo Picasso y Marie-Thérèse Walter. Santiago de Chile: Red Internacional del Libro.
* Mallen, Enrique (2009). A Concordance of Pablo Picasso's Spanish Writings. New York: Edwin Mellen Press.
* Nill, Raymond M. âA Visual Guide to Pablo Picassoâs Worksâ. New York: B&H Publishers, 1987.
* Picasso, Olivier Widmaier. (2004). Picasso: The Real Family Story. Prestel Publ. ISBN 3-7913-3149-3
* Rubin, William, ed. (1980) Pablo Picasso, a retrospective. Chronology by Jane Fluegel. New York: The Museum of Modern Art. ISBN 0-87070-519-9
* Wattenmaker, Richard J.; Distel, Anne, et al. (1993). Great French Paintings from the Barnes Foundation. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0-679-40963-7
* Wertenbaker, Lael (1967). The World of Picasso. TimeâLife Library of Art. Alexandria, Virginia: Time-Life Books.
* Over 17,671 catalogued artworks available on the On-Line Picasso Project
* Official website
* On-Line Picasso Project: Comprehensive summary of his life and his work.
* Biography and works of Pablo Picasso
* Pablo Picasso â Biography, Quotes & Paintings, retrieved 14 June 2007.
* Poems by Picasso in English translation from Samizdat (poetry magazine)
* Cubism, The Big Picture
* Artists Rights Society, Picasso's U.S. Copyright Representatives
* Union List of Artist Names, Getty Vocabularies. ULAN Full Record Display for Pablo Picasso. Getty Vocabulary Program, Getty Research Institute. Los Angeles, California.
Picasso Museum, Paris, (Hotel Salé, 1659)
* Guggenheim Museum Biography
* Hilo Art Museum, (Hilo Hawaii, USA)
* Honolulu Academy of Arts
* Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
* Musée National Picasso (Paris, France)
* Musée Picasso (Antibes, France)
* Museo Picasso Málaga (Málaga, Spain)
* Museu Picasso (Barcelona, Spain)
* Museum Berggruen (Berlin, Germany)
* Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
* National Gallery of Art list of paintings
* Graphikmuseum Pablo Picasso Münster (Münster, Germany)
* Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles, California
* Power and Tenderness in Men and in Picassoâs âMinotauromachyâ by Chaim Koppelman
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Pablo_Picasso | Is he best known for co-founding the Cubist movement and for the wide variety of styles embodied in his work? | Yes. | data/set6/a1 | Pablo_Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno MarÃa de los Remedios Cipriano de la SantÃsima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso (25 October 1881 â 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, draughtsman, and sculptor. He is one of the most recognized figures in 20th-century art. He is best known for co-founding the Cubist movement and for the wide variety of styles embodied in his work. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907) and Guernica (1937), his portrayal of the German bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War.
Picasso demonstrated uncanny artistic talent in his early years, painting in a realistic manner through his childhood and adolescence; during the first decade of the twentieth century his style changed as he experimented with different theories, techniques, and ideas. Picassoâs creativity manifested itself in numerous mediums, including painting, sculpture, drawing, and architecture. His revolutionary artistic accomplishments brought him universal renown and immense fortunes throughout his life, making him the best-known figure in twentieth century art.
Picasso was baptized Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno MarÃa de los Remedios Crispiniano de la SantÃsima Trinidad, a series of names honouring various saints and relatives. The name on his baptismal certificate differs slightly from the name on his birth record. On-line Picasso Project Added to these were Ruiz and Picasso, for his father and mother, respectively, as per Spanish custom. Born in the city of Málaga in the Andalusian region of Spain, he was the first child of Don José Ruiz y Blasco (1838â1913) and MarÃa Picasso y López. Picassoâs family was middle-class; his father was also a painter who specialized in naturalistic depictions of birds and other game. For most of his life Ruiz was a professor of art at the School of Crafts and a curator of a local museum. Ruizâs ancestors were minor aristocrats.
The house where Picasso was born, in Málaga
Picasso showed a passion and a skill for drawing from an early age; according to his mother, --> his first words were âpiz, pizâ, a shortening of lápiz, the Spanish word for âpencilâ. Wertenbaker, 9. --> From the age of seven, Picasso received formal artistic training from his father in figure drawing and oil painting. Ruiz was a traditional, academic artist and instructor who believed that proper training required disciplined copying of the masters, and drawing the human body from plaster casts and live models. His son became preoccupied with art to the detriment of his classwork.
The family moved to La Coruña in 1891 where his father became a professor at the School of Fine Arts. They stayed almost four years. On one occasion the father found his son painting over his unfinished sketch of a pigeon. Observing the precision of his sonâs technique, Ruiz felt that the thirteen-year-old Picasso had surpassed him, and vowed to give up painting. Wertenbaker, 11.
In 1895, Picasso's seven-year old sister, Conchita, died of diphtheriaâa traumatic event in his life. After her death, the family moved to Barcelona, with Ruiz transferring to its School of Fine Arts. Picasso thrived in the city, regarding it in times of sadness or nostalgia as his true home. Wertenbaker, 13. Ruiz persuaded the officials at the academy to allow his son to take an entrance exam for the advanced class. This process often took students a month, but Picasso completed it in a week, and the impressed jury admitted Picasso, who was 13. The student lacked discipline but made friendships that would affect him in later life. His father rented him a small room close to home so Picasso could work alone, yet Ruiz checked up on him numerous times a day, judging his sonâs drawings. The two argued frequently.
Picassoâs father and uncle decided to send the young artist to Madridâs Royal Academy of San Fernando, the country's foremost art school. In 1897, Picasso, age 16, set off for the first time on his own, but he disliked formal instruction and quit attending classes soon after enrollment. Madrid, however, held many other attractions: the Prado housed paintings by the venerable Diego Velázquez, Francisco Goya, and Francisco Zurbarán. Picasso especially admired the works of El Greco; their elements, the elongated limbs, arresting colors, and mystical visages, are echoed in Picassoâs Åuvre.
[[Image:GertrudeStein.JPG|thumb|left|upright|Portrait of Gertrude Stein, 1906, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. When someone commented that Stein did not look like her portrait, Picasso replied, "She will". Portrait of Gertrude Stein Metropolitan Museum, Retrieved November 26, 2008 ]]
After studying art in Madrid, Picasso made his first trip to Paris in 1900, then the art capital of Europe. There, he met his first Parisian friend, the journalist and poet Max Jacob, who helped Picasso learn the language and its literature. Soon they shared an apartment; Max slept at night while Picasso slept during the day and worked at night. These were times of severe poverty, cold, and desperation. Much of his work was burned to keep the small room warm. During the first five months of 1901, Picasso lived in Madrid, where he and his anarchist friend Francisco de AsÃs Soler founded the magazine Arte Joven (Young Art), which published five issues. Soler solicited articles and Picasso illustrated the journal, mostly contributing grim cartoons depicting and sympathizing with the state of the poor. The first issue was published on 31 March 1901, by which time the artist had started to sign his work simply Picasso, while before he had signed Pablo Ruiz y Picasso. Cirlot, 1972, p. 125.
By 1905 Picasso became a favorite of the American art collectors Leo and Gertrude Stein. Their older brother Michael Stein and his wife Sarah also became collectors of his work. Picasso painted portraits of both Gertrude Stein and her nephew Allan Stein. Pablo Picasso, Portrait of Allan Stein, 1906, retrieved November 27, 2008 Gertrude Stein became Picasso's principal patron, acquiring his drawings and paintings and exhibiting them in her informal Salon at her home in Paris. Special Exhibit Examines Dynamic Relationship Between the Art of Pablo Picasso and Writing Yale University Art Gallery, Retrieved October 8, 2009 At one of her gatherings in 1905, he met Henri Matisse, who was to become a lifelong friend and rival. The Steins introduced him to Claribel Cone and her sister Etta who were American art collectors; they also began to acquire Picasso and Matisse's paintings. Eventually Leo Stein moved to Italy, and Michael and Sarah Stein became patrons of Matisse; while Gertrude Stein continued to collect Picasso. James R. Mellow, Charmed Circle: Gertrude Stein and Company, Retrieved November 27, 2008
Portrait of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, 1910, The Art Institute of Chicago. Picasso wrote of Kahnweiler What would have become of us if Kahnweiler hadn't had a business sense?
In 1907 Picasso joined the art gallery that had recently been opened in Paris by Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler. Kahnweiler was a German art historian, art collector who became one of the premier French Art dealers of the 20th century. He became prominent in Paris beginning in 1907 for being among the first champions of Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and Cubism. Kahnweiler championed burgeoning artists such as André Derain, Kees Van Dongen, Fernand Léger, Juan Gris, Maurice de Vlaminck and several others who had come from all over the globe to live and work in Montparnasse at the time. Cubism and its Legacy, Tate Liverpool, retrieved November 27, 2008
In Paris, Picasso entertained a distinguished coterie of friends in the Montmartre and Montparnasse quarters, including André Breton, poet Guillaume Apollinaire, writer Alfred Jarry, and Gertrude Stein. Apollinaire was arrested on suspicion of stealing the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in 1911. Apollonaire pointed to his friend Picasso, who was also brought in for questioning, but both were later exonerated. Time Magazine, Stealing the Mona Lisa, 1911. Consulted on 15 August 2007.
Portrait of Igor Stravinsky, c. 1920
In the early 20th century, Picasso divided his time between Barcelona and Paris. In 1904, in the middle of a storm, he met Fernande Olivier, a Bohemian artist who became his mistress. Olivier appears in many of his Rose period paintings. After acquiring fame and some fortune, Picasso left Olivier for Marcelle Humbert, whom he called Eva Gouel. Picasso included declarations of his love for Eva in many Cubist works. Picasso was devastated by her premature death from illness at the age of 30 in 1915. Charles Harrison, Francis Frascina, Gillian Perry, Primitivism, Cubism, Abstraction, retrieved November 27, 2008
After World War I, Picasso made a number of important associations and relationships with figures associated with Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. Among his friends during this period were Jean Cocteau, Jean Hugo, Juan Gris and others. In the summer of 1918, Picasso married Olga Khokhlova, a ballerina with Sergei Diaghilevâs troupe, for whom Picasso was designing a ballet, Parade, in Rome; and they spent their honeymoon in the villa near Biarritz of the glamorous Chilean art patron Eugenia Errázuriz. Khokhlova introduced Picasso to high society, formal dinner parties, and all the social niceties attendant on the life of the rich in 1920s Paris. The two had a son, Paulo, who would grow up to be a dissolute motorcycle racer and chauffeur to his father. Khokhlovaâs insistence on social propriety clashed with Picassoâs bohemian tendencies and the two lived in a state of constant conflict. During the same period that Picasso collaborated with Diaghilevâs troup, he and Igor Stravinsky collaborated on Pulcinella in 1920. Picasso took the opportunity to make several sketches of the composer.
In 1927 Picasso met 17-year-old Marie-Thérèse Walter and began a secret affair with her. Picassoâs marriage to Khokhlova soon ended in separation rather than divorce, as French law required an even division of property in the case of divorce, and Picasso did not want Khokhlova to have half his wealth. The two remained legally married until Khokhlovaâs death in 1955. Picasso carried on a long-standing affair with Marie-Thérèse Walter and fathered a daughter, Maia, with her. Marie-Thérèse lived in the vain hope that Picasso would one day marry her, and hanged herself four years after Picassoâs death. Throughout his life Picasso maintained a number of mistresses in addition to his wife or primary partner. Picasso was married twice and had four children by three women.
Dora Maar au Chat, 1941
The photographer and painter Dora Maar was also a constant companion and lover of Picasso. The two were closest in the late 1930s and early 1940s and it was Maar who documented the painting of Guernica.
During the Second World War, Picasso remained in Paris while the Germans occupied the city. Picassoâs artistic style did not fit the Nazi views of art, so he was not able to show his works during this time. Retreating to his studio, he continued to paint all the while. Although the Germans outlawed bronze casting in Paris, Picasso continued regardless, using bronze smuggled to him by the French resistance.
After the liberation of Paris in 1944, Picasso began to keep company with a young art student, Françoise Gilot. The two eventually became lovers, and had two children together, Claude and Paloma. Unique among Picassoâs women, Gilot left Picasso in 1953, allegedly because of abusive treatment and infidelities. This was a severe blow to Picasso.
He went through a difficult period after Gilotâs departure, coming to terms with his advancing age and his perception that, now in his 70s, he was no longer attractive, but rather grotesque to young women. A number of ink drawings from this period explore this theme of the hideous old dwarf as buffoonish counterpoint to the beautiful young girl, including several from a six-week affair with Geneviève Laporte, who in June 2005 auctioned off the drawings Picasso made of her.
Picasso was not long in finding another lover, Jacqueline Roque. She worked at the Madoura Pottery in Vallauris on the French Riviera, where Picasso made and painted ceramics. The two remained together for the rest of Picassoâs life, marrying in 1961. Their marriage was also the means of one last act of revenge against Gilot. Gilot had been seeking a legal means to legitimize her children with Picasso, Claude and Paloma. With Picassoâs encouragement, she had arranged to divorce her then husband, Luc Simon, and marry Picasso to secure her childrenâs rights. Picasso then secretly married Roque after Gilot had filed for divorce in order to exact his revenge for her leaving him.
Picasso had constructed a huge gothic structure and could afford large villas in the south of France, at Notre-dame-de-vie on the outskirts of Mougins, in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur. By this time he was a celebrity, and there was often as much interest in his personal life as his art.
In addition to his manifold artistic accomplishments, Picasso had a film career, including a cameo appearance in Jean Cocteauâs Testament of Orpheus. Picasso always played himself in his film appearances. In 1955 he helped make the film Le Mystère Picasso (The Mystery of Picasso) directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot.
Pablo Picasso died on 8 April 1973 in Mougins, France, while he and his wife Jacqueline entertained friends for dinner. His final words were âDrink to me, drink to my health, you know I canât drink any more.â accessed online 15 August 2007 He was interred at the Chateau of Vauvenargues near Aix-en-Provence, a property he had acquired in 1958 and occupied with Jacqueline between 1959 and 1962. Jacqueline Roque prevented his children Claude and Paloma from attending the funeral. The Rich Die Richer and You Can too, by William D. Zabel, Published 1996 John Wiley and Sons, p.11. ISBN 0471155322 Accessed online 15 August 2007 Devastated and lonely after the death of Picasso, Jacqueline Roque took her own life by gunshot in 1986 when she was 60 years old. Picasso's Family Album, Michael Kimmelman, New York Times, retrieved November 28, 2008
* Paulo (4 February 1921 â 5 June 1975) (Born Paul Joseph Picasso) â with Olga Khokhlova
* Maya (5 September 1935 â ) (Born Maria de la Concepcion Picasso) â with Marie-Thérèse Walter
* Claude (15 May 1947 â) (Born Claude Pierre Pablo Picasso) â with Françoise Gilot
* Paloma (19 April 1949 â ) (Born Anne Paloma Picasso) â with Françoise Gilot
Pablo Picasso, Massacre in Korea, 1951
Picasso remained neutral during World War I, the Spanish Civil War, and World War II, refusing to fight for any side or country. Some of his contemporaries felt that his pacifism had more to do with cowardice than principle. An article in The New Yorker called him âa coward, who sat out two world wars while his friends were suffering and dyingâ. As a Spanish citizen living in France, Picasso was under no compulsion to fight against the invading Germans in either World War. In the Spanish Civil War, service for Spaniards living abroad was optional and would have involved a voluntary return to the country to join either side. While Picasso expressed anger and condemnation of Francisco Franco and fascists through his art, he did not take up arms against them.
He also remained aloof from the Catalan independence movement during his youth despite expressing general support and being friendly with activists within it.
In 1944 Picasso joined the French Communist Party, attended an international peace conference in Poland, and in 1950 received the Lenin Peace Prize from the Soviet government. Picassoâs Party Line, ARTnews Retrieved 31 May 2007. But party criticism of a portrait of Stalin as insufficiently realistic cooled Picassoâs interest in communist politics, though he remained a loyal member of the Communist Party until his death. In a 1945 interview with Jerome Seckler, Picasso stated: âI am a Communist and my painting is Communist painting. ... But if I were a shoemaker, Royalist or Communist or anything else, I would not necessarily hammer my shoes in a special way to show my politics.â His Communist militancy, not uncommon among intellectuals and artists at the time although it was officially banned in Francoist Spain, has long been the subject of some controversy; a notable source or demonstration thereof was a sarcastic quote commonly attributed to Salvador Dalà (with whom Picasso had a rather strained relationship Failed attempts at correspondence between Dalà and Picasso ), ostensibly casting doubt on the true honesty of his political allegiances:
: Picasso es pintor, yo también; [...] Picasso es español, yo también; Picasso es comunista, yo tampoco.
:(Picasso is a painter, so am I; [...] Picasso is a Spaniard, so am I; Picasso is a communist, neither am I.) Picasso by Dalà Study on Salvador Dalà Salvador Dalà quotes Dalà "sympathetic"? De El Greco a Salvador DalÃ, Pasando por Picasso Article on Dalà in El Mundo
He was against the intervention of the United Nations and the United States Picasso A Retrospective, Museum of Modern Art, edited by William Rubin, copyright MoMA 1980, p.383 in the Korean War and he depicted it in Massacre in Korea. In 1962, he received the International Lenin Peace Prize.
Picassoâs work is often categorized into periods. While the names of many of his later periods are debated, the most commonly accepted periods in his work are the Blue Period (1901â1904), the Rose Period (1905â1907), the African-influenced Period (1908â1909), Analytic Cubism (1909â1912), and Synthetic Cubism (1912â1919).
In 1939â40 the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, under its director Alfred Barr, a Picasso enthusiast, held a major and highly successful retrospective of his principal works up until that time. This exhibition lionized the artist, brought into full public view in America the scope of his artistry, and resulted in a reinterpretation of his work by contemporary art historians and scholars. The MoMA retrospective of 1939â40 â see Michael C. FitzGerald, Making Modernism: Picasso and the Creation of the Market for Twentieth-Century Art (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), pp. 243â262.
Picassoâs training under his father began before 1890. His progress can be traced in the collection of early works now held by the Museu Picasso in Barcelona, which provides one of the most comprehensive records extant of any major artistâs beginnings. Cirlot,1972, p.6. During 1893 the juvenile quality of his earliest work falls away, and by 1894 his career as a painter can be said to have begun. Cirlot, 1972, p. 14. The academic realism apparent in the works of the mid-1890s is well displayed in The First Communion (1896), a large composition that depicts his sister, Lola. In the same year, at the age of 14, he painted Portrait of Aunt Pepa, a vigorous and dramatic portrait that Juan-Eduardo Cirlot has called âwithout a doubt one of the greatest in the whole history of Spanish painting.â Cirlot, 1972, p.37.
In 1897 his realism became tinged with Symbolist influence, in a series of landscape paintings rendered in non naturalistic violet and green tones. What some call his Modernist period (1899â1900) followed. His exposure to the work of Rossetti, Steinlen, Toulouse-Lautrec and Edvard Munch, combined with his admiration for favorite old masters such as El Greco, led Picasso to a personal version of modernism in his works of this period. Cirlot, 1972, p. 87â108.
Femme aux Bras Croisés, 1902
Picassoâs Blue Period (1901â1904) consists of somber paintings rendered in shades of blue and blue-green, only occasionally warmed by other colors. This periodâs starting point is uncertain; it may have begun in Spain in the spring of 1901, or in Paris in the second half of the year. Cirlot, 1972, p.127. Many paintings of gaunt mothers with children date from this period. In his austere use of color and sometimes doleful subject matterâprostitutes and beggars are frequent subjectsâPicasso was influenced by a trip through Spain and by the suicide of his friend Carlos Casagemas. Starting in autumn of 1901 he painted several posthumous portraits of Casagemas, culminating in the gloomy allegorical painting La Vie (1903), now in the Cleveland Museum of Art. Wattenmaker, Distel, et al.,1993, p. 304.
The same mood pervades the well-known etching The Frugal Repast (1904), which depicts a blind man and a sighted woman, both emaciated, seated at a nearly bare table. Blindness is a recurrent theme in Picassoâs works of this period, also represented in The Blindmanâs Meal (1903, the Metropolitan Museum of Art) and in the portrait of Celestina (1903). Other works include Portrait of Soler and Portrait of Suzanne Blochâ.
Pablo Picasso, Garçon à la pipe, (Boy with a Pipe), 1905, Rose Period
The Rose Period (1904â1906) Wattenmaker, Distel, et al.,1993, p. 194. is characterized by a more cheery style with orange and pink colors, and featuring many circus people, acrobats and harlequins known in France as saltimbanques. The harlequin, a comedic character usually depicted in checkered patterned clothing, became a personal symbol for Picasso. Picasso met Fernande Olivier, a model for sculptors and artists, in Paris in 1904, and many of these paintings are influenced by his warm relationship with her, in addition to his increased exposure to French painting. The generally upbeat and optimistic mood of paintings in this period is reminiscent of the 1899â1901 period (i.e. just prior to the Blue Period) and 1904 can be considered a transition year between the two periods.
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), Museum of Modern Art, New York
Picassoâs African-influenced Period (1907â1909) begins with the two figures on the right in his painting, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, which were inspired by African artifacts. Formal ideas developed during this period lead directly into the Cubist period that follows.
Three Musicians (1921), Museum of Modern Art
Analytic cubism (1909â1912) is a style of painting Picasso developed along with Georges Braque using monochrome brownish and neutral colors. Both artists took apart objects and âanalyzedâ them in terms of their shapes. Picasso and Braqueâs paintings at this time have many similarities. Synthetic cubism (1912â1919) was a further development of the genre, in which cut paper fragmentsâoften wallpaper or portions of newspaper pagesâwere pasted into compositions, marking the first use of collage in fine art.
In the period following the upheaval of World War I, Picasso produced work in a neoclassical style. This âreturn to orderâ is evident in the work of many European artists in the 1920s, including André Derain, Giorgio de Chirico, and the artists of the New Objectivity movement. Picassoâs paintings and drawings from this period frequently recall the work of Ingres.
During the 1930s, the minotaur replaced the harlequin as a common motif in his work. His use of the minotaur came partly from his contact with the surrealists, who often used it as their symbol, and it appears in Picassoâs Guernica.
Guernica, 1937, Museo Reina Sofia
Arguably Picassoâs most famous work is his depiction of the German bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil WarâGuernica. This large canvas embodies for many the inhumanity, brutality and hopelessness of war. Asked to explain its symbolism, Picasso said, âIt isnât up to the painter to define the symbols. Otherwise it would be better if he wrote them out in so many words! The public who look at the picture must interpret the symbols as they understand them.â
Guernica hung in New Yorkâs Museum of Modern Art for many years. In 1981 Guernica was returned to Spain and exhibited at the Casón del Buen Retiro. In 1992 the painting hung in Madridâs Reina SofÃa Museum when it opened.
Picasso sculpture in Chicago
Picasso was one of 250 sculptors who exhibited in the 3rd Sculpture International held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the summer of 1949. In the 1950s, Picassoâs style changed once again, as he took to producing reinterpretations of the art of the great masters. He made a series of works based on Velazquezâs painting of Las Meninas. He also based paintings on works by Goya, Poussin, Manet, Courbet and Delacroix.
Nude Woman with a Necklace (1968), Tate
He was commissioned to make a maquette for a huge -high public sculpture to be built in Chicago, known usually as the Chicago Picasso. He approached the project with a great deal of enthusiasm, designing a sculpture which was ambiguous and somewhat controversial. What the figure represents is not known; it could be a bird, a horse, a woman or a totally abstract shape. The sculpture, one of the most recognizable landmarks in downtown Chicago, was unveiled in 1967. Picasso refused to be paid $100,000 for it, donating it to the people of the city.
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Picassoâs final works were a mixture of styles, his means of expression in constant flux until the end of his life. Devoting his full energies to his work, Picasso became more daring, his works more colorful and expressive, and from 1968 through 1971 he produced a torrent of paintings and hundreds of copperplate etchings. At the time these works were dismissed by most as pornographic fantasies of an impotent old man or the slapdash works of an artist who was past his prime. Only later, after Picassoâs death, when the rest of the art world had moved on from abstract expressionism, did the critical community come to see that Picasso had already discovered neo-expressionism and was, as so often before, ahead of his time.
Picasso was exceptionally prolific throughout his long lifetime. The total number of artworks he produced has been estimated at 50,000, comprising 1,885 paintings; 1,228 sculptures; 2,880 ceramics, roughly 12,000 drawings, many thousands of prints, and numerous tapestries and rugs. On-line Picasso Project, citing Selfridge, John, 1994. At the time of his death many of his paintings were in his possession, as he had kept off the art market what he didnât need to sell. In addition, Picasso had a considerable collection of the work of other famous artists, some his contemporaries, such as Henri Matisse, with whom he had exchanged works. Since Picasso left no will, his death duties (estate tax) to the French state were paid in the form of his works and others from his collection. These works form the core of the immense and representative collection of the Musée Picasso in Paris. In 2003, relatives of Picasso inaugurated a museum dedicated to him in his birthplace, Málaga, Spain, the Museo Picasso Málaga.
Picasso sculpture in Halmstad
The Museu Picasso in Barcelona features many of Picassoâs early works, created while he was living in Spain, including many rarely seen works which reveal Picassoâs firm grounding in classical techniques. The museum also holds many precise and detailed figure studies done in his youth under his fatherâs tutelage, as well as the extensive collection of Jaime Sabartés, Picassoâs close friend and personal secretary.
Several paintings by Picasso rank among the most expensive paintings in the world. Garçon à la pipe sold for USD $104 million at Sotheby's on 4 May 2004, establishing a new price record. Dora Maar au Chat sold for USD $95.2 million at Sothebyâs on 3 May 2006.
As of 2004, Picasso remains the top ranked artist (based on sales of his works at auctions) according to the Art Market Trends report. (pdf) More of his paintings have been stolen than those by any other artist. S. Goodenough, 1500 Fascinating Facts, Treasure Press, London, 1987, p 241.
The Picasso Administration functions as his official Estate. The U.S. copyright representative for the Picasso Administration is the Artists Rights Society. | Most frequently requested artists list of the Artists Rights Society
Upon Picasso's death in 1973, actor Dustin Hoffman was having dinner with former Beatle Paul McCartney and told him about Picasso's last words. McCartney started creating and singing a song around those words and included the song on his 1973 album, Band on the Run.
In the 1996 movie Surviving Picasso Picasso is played by actor Anthony Hopkins.
*Becht-Jördens, Gereon; Wehmeier, Peter M. (2003). Picasso und die christliche Ikonographie. Mutterbeziehung und künstlerische Position. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag. ISBN 9783496012726
* Berger, John (1965). The Success and Failure of Picasso. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
* Cirlot, Juan-Eduardo (1972). Picasso: birth of a genius. New York and Washington: Praeger.
* Cowling, Elizabeth; Mundy, Jennifer (1990). On Classic Ground: Picasso, Léger, de Chirico and the New Classicism 1910â1930. London: Tate Gallery. ISBN 1-85437-043-X
* Daix, Pierre (1993). Picasso: Life And Art. Harper Collins. ISBN 9780064309769
* FitzGerald, Michael C. Making Modernism: Picasso and the Creation of the Market for Twentieth-Century Art. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.
*Eugenio Granell, Picassoâs Guernica : the end of a Spanish era (Ann Arbor, Mich. : UMI Research Press, 1981) ISBN 0835712060 9780835712064 9780835712064 0835712060
* Krauss, Rosalind (1998). The Picasso Papers. London: Thames and Hudson. ISBN 0500237611
* Mallen, Enrique (2003). The Visual Grammar of Pablo Picasso. Berkeley Insights in Linguistics & Semiotics Series. New York: Peter Lang.
* Mallen, Enrique (2005). La Sintaxis de la Carne: Pablo Picasso y Marie-Thérèse Walter. Santiago de Chile: Red Internacional del Libro.
* Mallen, Enrique (2009). A Concordance of Pablo Picasso's Spanish Writings. New York: Edwin Mellen Press.
* Nill, Raymond M. âA Visual Guide to Pablo Picassoâs Worksâ. New York: B&H Publishers, 1987.
* Picasso, Olivier Widmaier. (2004). Picasso: The Real Family Story. Prestel Publ. ISBN 3-7913-3149-3
* Rubin, William, ed. (1980) Pablo Picasso, a retrospective. Chronology by Jane Fluegel. New York: The Museum of Modern Art. ISBN 0-87070-519-9
* Wattenmaker, Richard J.; Distel, Anne, et al. (1993). Great French Paintings from the Barnes Foundation. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0-679-40963-7
* Wertenbaker, Lael (1967). The World of Picasso. TimeâLife Library of Art. Alexandria, Virginia: Time-Life Books.
* Over 17,671 catalogued artworks available on the On-Line Picasso Project
* Official website
* On-Line Picasso Project: Comprehensive summary of his life and his work.
* Biography and works of Pablo Picasso
* Pablo Picasso â Biography, Quotes & Paintings, retrieved 14 June 2007.
* Poems by Picasso in English translation from Samizdat (poetry magazine)
* Cubism, The Big Picture
* Artists Rights Society, Picasso's U.S. Copyright Representatives
* Union List of Artist Names, Getty Vocabularies. ULAN Full Record Display for Pablo Picasso. Getty Vocabulary Program, Getty Research Institute. Los Angeles, California.
Picasso Museum, Paris, (Hotel Salé, 1659)
* Guggenheim Museum Biography
* Hilo Art Museum, (Hilo Hawaii, USA)
* Honolulu Academy of Arts
* Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
* Musée National Picasso (Paris, France)
* Musée Picasso (Antibes, France)
* Museo Picasso Málaga (Málaga, Spain)
* Museu Picasso (Barcelona, Spain)
* Museum Berggruen (Berlin, Germany)
* Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
* National Gallery of Art list of paintings
* Graphikmuseum Pablo Picasso Münster (Münster, Germany)
* Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles, California
* Power and Tenderness in Men and in Picassoâs âMinotauromachyâ by Chaim Koppelman
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Pablo_Picasso | Are among his most famous works the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907) and Guernica (1937), his portrayal of the German bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War? | Yes. | data/set6/a1 | Pablo_Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno MarÃa de los Remedios Cipriano de la SantÃsima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso (25 October 1881 â 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, draughtsman, and sculptor. He is one of the most recognized figures in 20th-century art. He is best known for co-founding the Cubist movement and for the wide variety of styles embodied in his work. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907) and Guernica (1937), his portrayal of the German bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War.
Picasso demonstrated uncanny artistic talent in his early years, painting in a realistic manner through his childhood and adolescence; during the first decade of the twentieth century his style changed as he experimented with different theories, techniques, and ideas. Picassoâs creativity manifested itself in numerous mediums, including painting, sculpture, drawing, and architecture. His revolutionary artistic accomplishments brought him universal renown and immense fortunes throughout his life, making him the best-known figure in twentieth century art.
Picasso was baptized Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno MarÃa de los Remedios Crispiniano de la SantÃsima Trinidad, a series of names honouring various saints and relatives. The name on his baptismal certificate differs slightly from the name on his birth record. On-line Picasso Project Added to these were Ruiz and Picasso, for his father and mother, respectively, as per Spanish custom. Born in the city of Málaga in the Andalusian region of Spain, he was the first child of Don José Ruiz y Blasco (1838â1913) and MarÃa Picasso y López. Picassoâs family was middle-class; his father was also a painter who specialized in naturalistic depictions of birds and other game. For most of his life Ruiz was a professor of art at the School of Crafts and a curator of a local museum. Ruizâs ancestors were minor aristocrats.
The house where Picasso was born, in Málaga
Picasso showed a passion and a skill for drawing from an early age; according to his mother, --> his first words were âpiz, pizâ, a shortening of lápiz, the Spanish word for âpencilâ. Wertenbaker, 9. --> From the age of seven, Picasso received formal artistic training from his father in figure drawing and oil painting. Ruiz was a traditional, academic artist and instructor who believed that proper training required disciplined copying of the masters, and drawing the human body from plaster casts and live models. His son became preoccupied with art to the detriment of his classwork.
The family moved to La Coruña in 1891 where his father became a professor at the School of Fine Arts. They stayed almost four years. On one occasion the father found his son painting over his unfinished sketch of a pigeon. Observing the precision of his sonâs technique, Ruiz felt that the thirteen-year-old Picasso had surpassed him, and vowed to give up painting. Wertenbaker, 11.
In 1895, Picasso's seven-year old sister, Conchita, died of diphtheriaâa traumatic event in his life. After her death, the family moved to Barcelona, with Ruiz transferring to its School of Fine Arts. Picasso thrived in the city, regarding it in times of sadness or nostalgia as his true home. Wertenbaker, 13. Ruiz persuaded the officials at the academy to allow his son to take an entrance exam for the advanced class. This process often took students a month, but Picasso completed it in a week, and the impressed jury admitted Picasso, who was 13. The student lacked discipline but made friendships that would affect him in later life. His father rented him a small room close to home so Picasso could work alone, yet Ruiz checked up on him numerous times a day, judging his sonâs drawings. The two argued frequently.
Picassoâs father and uncle decided to send the young artist to Madridâs Royal Academy of San Fernando, the country's foremost art school. In 1897, Picasso, age 16, set off for the first time on his own, but he disliked formal instruction and quit attending classes soon after enrollment. Madrid, however, held many other attractions: the Prado housed paintings by the venerable Diego Velázquez, Francisco Goya, and Francisco Zurbarán. Picasso especially admired the works of El Greco; their elements, the elongated limbs, arresting colors, and mystical visages, are echoed in Picassoâs Åuvre.
[[Image:GertrudeStein.JPG|thumb|left|upright|Portrait of Gertrude Stein, 1906, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. When someone commented that Stein did not look like her portrait, Picasso replied, "She will". Portrait of Gertrude Stein Metropolitan Museum, Retrieved November 26, 2008 ]]
After studying art in Madrid, Picasso made his first trip to Paris in 1900, then the art capital of Europe. There, he met his first Parisian friend, the journalist and poet Max Jacob, who helped Picasso learn the language and its literature. Soon they shared an apartment; Max slept at night while Picasso slept during the day and worked at night. These were times of severe poverty, cold, and desperation. Much of his work was burned to keep the small room warm. During the first five months of 1901, Picasso lived in Madrid, where he and his anarchist friend Francisco de AsÃs Soler founded the magazine Arte Joven (Young Art), which published five issues. Soler solicited articles and Picasso illustrated the journal, mostly contributing grim cartoons depicting and sympathizing with the state of the poor. The first issue was published on 31 March 1901, by which time the artist had started to sign his work simply Picasso, while before he had signed Pablo Ruiz y Picasso. Cirlot, 1972, p. 125.
By 1905 Picasso became a favorite of the American art collectors Leo and Gertrude Stein. Their older brother Michael Stein and his wife Sarah also became collectors of his work. Picasso painted portraits of both Gertrude Stein and her nephew Allan Stein. Pablo Picasso, Portrait of Allan Stein, 1906, retrieved November 27, 2008 Gertrude Stein became Picasso's principal patron, acquiring his drawings and paintings and exhibiting them in her informal Salon at her home in Paris. Special Exhibit Examines Dynamic Relationship Between the Art of Pablo Picasso and Writing Yale University Art Gallery, Retrieved October 8, 2009 At one of her gatherings in 1905, he met Henri Matisse, who was to become a lifelong friend and rival. The Steins introduced him to Claribel Cone and her sister Etta who were American art collectors; they also began to acquire Picasso and Matisse's paintings. Eventually Leo Stein moved to Italy, and Michael and Sarah Stein became patrons of Matisse; while Gertrude Stein continued to collect Picasso. James R. Mellow, Charmed Circle: Gertrude Stein and Company, Retrieved November 27, 2008
Portrait of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, 1910, The Art Institute of Chicago. Picasso wrote of Kahnweiler What would have become of us if Kahnweiler hadn't had a business sense?
In 1907 Picasso joined the art gallery that had recently been opened in Paris by Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler. Kahnweiler was a German art historian, art collector who became one of the premier French Art dealers of the 20th century. He became prominent in Paris beginning in 1907 for being among the first champions of Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and Cubism. Kahnweiler championed burgeoning artists such as André Derain, Kees Van Dongen, Fernand Léger, Juan Gris, Maurice de Vlaminck and several others who had come from all over the globe to live and work in Montparnasse at the time. Cubism and its Legacy, Tate Liverpool, retrieved November 27, 2008
In Paris, Picasso entertained a distinguished coterie of friends in the Montmartre and Montparnasse quarters, including André Breton, poet Guillaume Apollinaire, writer Alfred Jarry, and Gertrude Stein. Apollinaire was arrested on suspicion of stealing the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in 1911. Apollonaire pointed to his friend Picasso, who was also brought in for questioning, but both were later exonerated. Time Magazine, Stealing the Mona Lisa, 1911. Consulted on 15 August 2007.
Portrait of Igor Stravinsky, c. 1920
In the early 20th century, Picasso divided his time between Barcelona and Paris. In 1904, in the middle of a storm, he met Fernande Olivier, a Bohemian artist who became his mistress. Olivier appears in many of his Rose period paintings. After acquiring fame and some fortune, Picasso left Olivier for Marcelle Humbert, whom he called Eva Gouel. Picasso included declarations of his love for Eva in many Cubist works. Picasso was devastated by her premature death from illness at the age of 30 in 1915. Charles Harrison, Francis Frascina, Gillian Perry, Primitivism, Cubism, Abstraction, retrieved November 27, 2008
After World War I, Picasso made a number of important associations and relationships with figures associated with Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. Among his friends during this period were Jean Cocteau, Jean Hugo, Juan Gris and others. In the summer of 1918, Picasso married Olga Khokhlova, a ballerina with Sergei Diaghilevâs troupe, for whom Picasso was designing a ballet, Parade, in Rome; and they spent their honeymoon in the villa near Biarritz of the glamorous Chilean art patron Eugenia Errázuriz. Khokhlova introduced Picasso to high society, formal dinner parties, and all the social niceties attendant on the life of the rich in 1920s Paris. The two had a son, Paulo, who would grow up to be a dissolute motorcycle racer and chauffeur to his father. Khokhlovaâs insistence on social propriety clashed with Picassoâs bohemian tendencies and the two lived in a state of constant conflict. During the same period that Picasso collaborated with Diaghilevâs troup, he and Igor Stravinsky collaborated on Pulcinella in 1920. Picasso took the opportunity to make several sketches of the composer.
In 1927 Picasso met 17-year-old Marie-Thérèse Walter and began a secret affair with her. Picassoâs marriage to Khokhlova soon ended in separation rather than divorce, as French law required an even division of property in the case of divorce, and Picasso did not want Khokhlova to have half his wealth. The two remained legally married until Khokhlovaâs death in 1955. Picasso carried on a long-standing affair with Marie-Thérèse Walter and fathered a daughter, Maia, with her. Marie-Thérèse lived in the vain hope that Picasso would one day marry her, and hanged herself four years after Picassoâs death. Throughout his life Picasso maintained a number of mistresses in addition to his wife or primary partner. Picasso was married twice and had four children by three women.
Dora Maar au Chat, 1941
The photographer and painter Dora Maar was also a constant companion and lover of Picasso. The two were closest in the late 1930s and early 1940s and it was Maar who documented the painting of Guernica.
During the Second World War, Picasso remained in Paris while the Germans occupied the city. Picassoâs artistic style did not fit the Nazi views of art, so he was not able to show his works during this time. Retreating to his studio, he continued to paint all the while. Although the Germans outlawed bronze casting in Paris, Picasso continued regardless, using bronze smuggled to him by the French resistance.
After the liberation of Paris in 1944, Picasso began to keep company with a young art student, Françoise Gilot. The two eventually became lovers, and had two children together, Claude and Paloma. Unique among Picassoâs women, Gilot left Picasso in 1953, allegedly because of abusive treatment and infidelities. This was a severe blow to Picasso.
He went through a difficult period after Gilotâs departure, coming to terms with his advancing age and his perception that, now in his 70s, he was no longer attractive, but rather grotesque to young women. A number of ink drawings from this period explore this theme of the hideous old dwarf as buffoonish counterpoint to the beautiful young girl, including several from a six-week affair with Geneviève Laporte, who in June 2005 auctioned off the drawings Picasso made of her.
Picasso was not long in finding another lover, Jacqueline Roque. She worked at the Madoura Pottery in Vallauris on the French Riviera, where Picasso made and painted ceramics. The two remained together for the rest of Picassoâs life, marrying in 1961. Their marriage was also the means of one last act of revenge against Gilot. Gilot had been seeking a legal means to legitimize her children with Picasso, Claude and Paloma. With Picassoâs encouragement, she had arranged to divorce her then husband, Luc Simon, and marry Picasso to secure her childrenâs rights. Picasso then secretly married Roque after Gilot had filed for divorce in order to exact his revenge for her leaving him.
Picasso had constructed a huge gothic structure and could afford large villas in the south of France, at Notre-dame-de-vie on the outskirts of Mougins, in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur. By this time he was a celebrity, and there was often as much interest in his personal life as his art.
In addition to his manifold artistic accomplishments, Picasso had a film career, including a cameo appearance in Jean Cocteauâs Testament of Orpheus. Picasso always played himself in his film appearances. In 1955 he helped make the film Le Mystère Picasso (The Mystery of Picasso) directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot.
Pablo Picasso died on 8 April 1973 in Mougins, France, while he and his wife Jacqueline entertained friends for dinner. His final words were âDrink to me, drink to my health, you know I canât drink any more.â accessed online 15 August 2007 He was interred at the Chateau of Vauvenargues near Aix-en-Provence, a property he had acquired in 1958 and occupied with Jacqueline between 1959 and 1962. Jacqueline Roque prevented his children Claude and Paloma from attending the funeral. The Rich Die Richer and You Can too, by William D. Zabel, Published 1996 John Wiley and Sons, p.11. ISBN 0471155322 Accessed online 15 August 2007 Devastated and lonely after the death of Picasso, Jacqueline Roque took her own life by gunshot in 1986 when she was 60 years old. Picasso's Family Album, Michael Kimmelman, New York Times, retrieved November 28, 2008
* Paulo (4 February 1921 â 5 June 1975) (Born Paul Joseph Picasso) â with Olga Khokhlova
* Maya (5 September 1935 â ) (Born Maria de la Concepcion Picasso) â with Marie-Thérèse Walter
* Claude (15 May 1947 â) (Born Claude Pierre Pablo Picasso) â with Françoise Gilot
* Paloma (19 April 1949 â ) (Born Anne Paloma Picasso) â with Françoise Gilot
Pablo Picasso, Massacre in Korea, 1951
Picasso remained neutral during World War I, the Spanish Civil War, and World War II, refusing to fight for any side or country. Some of his contemporaries felt that his pacifism had more to do with cowardice than principle. An article in The New Yorker called him âa coward, who sat out two world wars while his friends were suffering and dyingâ. As a Spanish citizen living in France, Picasso was under no compulsion to fight against the invading Germans in either World War. In the Spanish Civil War, service for Spaniards living abroad was optional and would have involved a voluntary return to the country to join either side. While Picasso expressed anger and condemnation of Francisco Franco and fascists through his art, he did not take up arms against them.
He also remained aloof from the Catalan independence movement during his youth despite expressing general support and being friendly with activists within it.
In 1944 Picasso joined the French Communist Party, attended an international peace conference in Poland, and in 1950 received the Lenin Peace Prize from the Soviet government. Picassoâs Party Line, ARTnews Retrieved 31 May 2007. But party criticism of a portrait of Stalin as insufficiently realistic cooled Picassoâs interest in communist politics, though he remained a loyal member of the Communist Party until his death. In a 1945 interview with Jerome Seckler, Picasso stated: âI am a Communist and my painting is Communist painting. ... But if I were a shoemaker, Royalist or Communist or anything else, I would not necessarily hammer my shoes in a special way to show my politics.â His Communist militancy, not uncommon among intellectuals and artists at the time although it was officially banned in Francoist Spain, has long been the subject of some controversy; a notable source or demonstration thereof was a sarcastic quote commonly attributed to Salvador Dalà (with whom Picasso had a rather strained relationship Failed attempts at correspondence between Dalà and Picasso ), ostensibly casting doubt on the true honesty of his political allegiances:
: Picasso es pintor, yo también; [...] Picasso es español, yo también; Picasso es comunista, yo tampoco.
:(Picasso is a painter, so am I; [...] Picasso is a Spaniard, so am I; Picasso is a communist, neither am I.) Picasso by Dalà Study on Salvador Dalà Salvador Dalà quotes Dalà "sympathetic"? De El Greco a Salvador DalÃ, Pasando por Picasso Article on Dalà in El Mundo
He was against the intervention of the United Nations and the United States Picasso A Retrospective, Museum of Modern Art, edited by William Rubin, copyright MoMA 1980, p.383 in the Korean War and he depicted it in Massacre in Korea. In 1962, he received the International Lenin Peace Prize.
Picassoâs work is often categorized into periods. While the names of many of his later periods are debated, the most commonly accepted periods in his work are the Blue Period (1901â1904), the Rose Period (1905â1907), the African-influenced Period (1908â1909), Analytic Cubism (1909â1912), and Synthetic Cubism (1912â1919).
In 1939â40 the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, under its director Alfred Barr, a Picasso enthusiast, held a major and highly successful retrospective of his principal works up until that time. This exhibition lionized the artist, brought into full public view in America the scope of his artistry, and resulted in a reinterpretation of his work by contemporary art historians and scholars. The MoMA retrospective of 1939â40 â see Michael C. FitzGerald, Making Modernism: Picasso and the Creation of the Market for Twentieth-Century Art (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), pp. 243â262.
Picassoâs training under his father began before 1890. His progress can be traced in the collection of early works now held by the Museu Picasso in Barcelona, which provides one of the most comprehensive records extant of any major artistâs beginnings. Cirlot,1972, p.6. During 1893 the juvenile quality of his earliest work falls away, and by 1894 his career as a painter can be said to have begun. Cirlot, 1972, p. 14. The academic realism apparent in the works of the mid-1890s is well displayed in The First Communion (1896), a large composition that depicts his sister, Lola. In the same year, at the age of 14, he painted Portrait of Aunt Pepa, a vigorous and dramatic portrait that Juan-Eduardo Cirlot has called âwithout a doubt one of the greatest in the whole history of Spanish painting.â Cirlot, 1972, p.37.
In 1897 his realism became tinged with Symbolist influence, in a series of landscape paintings rendered in non naturalistic violet and green tones. What some call his Modernist period (1899â1900) followed. His exposure to the work of Rossetti, Steinlen, Toulouse-Lautrec and Edvard Munch, combined with his admiration for favorite old masters such as El Greco, led Picasso to a personal version of modernism in his works of this period. Cirlot, 1972, p. 87â108.
Femme aux Bras Croisés, 1902
Picassoâs Blue Period (1901â1904) consists of somber paintings rendered in shades of blue and blue-green, only occasionally warmed by other colors. This periodâs starting point is uncertain; it may have begun in Spain in the spring of 1901, or in Paris in the second half of the year. Cirlot, 1972, p.127. Many paintings of gaunt mothers with children date from this period. In his austere use of color and sometimes doleful subject matterâprostitutes and beggars are frequent subjectsâPicasso was influenced by a trip through Spain and by the suicide of his friend Carlos Casagemas. Starting in autumn of 1901 he painted several posthumous portraits of Casagemas, culminating in the gloomy allegorical painting La Vie (1903), now in the Cleveland Museum of Art. Wattenmaker, Distel, et al.,1993, p. 304.
The same mood pervades the well-known etching The Frugal Repast (1904), which depicts a blind man and a sighted woman, both emaciated, seated at a nearly bare table. Blindness is a recurrent theme in Picassoâs works of this period, also represented in The Blindmanâs Meal (1903, the Metropolitan Museum of Art) and in the portrait of Celestina (1903). Other works include Portrait of Soler and Portrait of Suzanne Blochâ.
Pablo Picasso, Garçon à la pipe, (Boy with a Pipe), 1905, Rose Period
The Rose Period (1904â1906) Wattenmaker, Distel, et al.,1993, p. 194. is characterized by a more cheery style with orange and pink colors, and featuring many circus people, acrobats and harlequins known in France as saltimbanques. The harlequin, a comedic character usually depicted in checkered patterned clothing, became a personal symbol for Picasso. Picasso met Fernande Olivier, a model for sculptors and artists, in Paris in 1904, and many of these paintings are influenced by his warm relationship with her, in addition to his increased exposure to French painting. The generally upbeat and optimistic mood of paintings in this period is reminiscent of the 1899â1901 period (i.e. just prior to the Blue Period) and 1904 can be considered a transition year between the two periods.
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), Museum of Modern Art, New York
Picassoâs African-influenced Period (1907â1909) begins with the two figures on the right in his painting, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, which were inspired by African artifacts. Formal ideas developed during this period lead directly into the Cubist period that follows.
Three Musicians (1921), Museum of Modern Art
Analytic cubism (1909â1912) is a style of painting Picasso developed along with Georges Braque using monochrome brownish and neutral colors. Both artists took apart objects and âanalyzedâ them in terms of their shapes. Picasso and Braqueâs paintings at this time have many similarities. Synthetic cubism (1912â1919) was a further development of the genre, in which cut paper fragmentsâoften wallpaper or portions of newspaper pagesâwere pasted into compositions, marking the first use of collage in fine art.
In the period following the upheaval of World War I, Picasso produced work in a neoclassical style. This âreturn to orderâ is evident in the work of many European artists in the 1920s, including André Derain, Giorgio de Chirico, and the artists of the New Objectivity movement. Picassoâs paintings and drawings from this period frequently recall the work of Ingres.
During the 1930s, the minotaur replaced the harlequin as a common motif in his work. His use of the minotaur came partly from his contact with the surrealists, who often used it as their symbol, and it appears in Picassoâs Guernica.
Guernica, 1937, Museo Reina Sofia
Arguably Picassoâs most famous work is his depiction of the German bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil WarâGuernica. This large canvas embodies for many the inhumanity, brutality and hopelessness of war. Asked to explain its symbolism, Picasso said, âIt isnât up to the painter to define the symbols. Otherwise it would be better if he wrote them out in so many words! The public who look at the picture must interpret the symbols as they understand them.â
Guernica hung in New Yorkâs Museum of Modern Art for many years. In 1981 Guernica was returned to Spain and exhibited at the Casón del Buen Retiro. In 1992 the painting hung in Madridâs Reina SofÃa Museum when it opened.
Picasso sculpture in Chicago
Picasso was one of 250 sculptors who exhibited in the 3rd Sculpture International held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the summer of 1949. In the 1950s, Picassoâs style changed once again, as he took to producing reinterpretations of the art of the great masters. He made a series of works based on Velazquezâs painting of Las Meninas. He also based paintings on works by Goya, Poussin, Manet, Courbet and Delacroix.
Nude Woman with a Necklace (1968), Tate
He was commissioned to make a maquette for a huge -high public sculpture to be built in Chicago, known usually as the Chicago Picasso. He approached the project with a great deal of enthusiasm, designing a sculpture which was ambiguous and somewhat controversial. What the figure represents is not known; it could be a bird, a horse, a woman or a totally abstract shape. The sculpture, one of the most recognizable landmarks in downtown Chicago, was unveiled in 1967. Picasso refused to be paid $100,000 for it, donating it to the people of the city.
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Picassoâs final works were a mixture of styles, his means of expression in constant flux until the end of his life. Devoting his full energies to his work, Picasso became more daring, his works more colorful and expressive, and from 1968 through 1971 he produced a torrent of paintings and hundreds of copperplate etchings. At the time these works were dismissed by most as pornographic fantasies of an impotent old man or the slapdash works of an artist who was past his prime. Only later, after Picassoâs death, when the rest of the art world had moved on from abstract expressionism, did the critical community come to see that Picasso had already discovered neo-expressionism and was, as so often before, ahead of his time.
Picasso was exceptionally prolific throughout his long lifetime. The total number of artworks he produced has been estimated at 50,000, comprising 1,885 paintings; 1,228 sculptures; 2,880 ceramics, roughly 12,000 drawings, many thousands of prints, and numerous tapestries and rugs. On-line Picasso Project, citing Selfridge, John, 1994. At the time of his death many of his paintings were in his possession, as he had kept off the art market what he didnât need to sell. In addition, Picasso had a considerable collection of the work of other famous artists, some his contemporaries, such as Henri Matisse, with whom he had exchanged works. Since Picasso left no will, his death duties (estate tax) to the French state were paid in the form of his works and others from his collection. These works form the core of the immense and representative collection of the Musée Picasso in Paris. In 2003, relatives of Picasso inaugurated a museum dedicated to him in his birthplace, Málaga, Spain, the Museo Picasso Málaga.
Picasso sculpture in Halmstad
The Museu Picasso in Barcelona features many of Picassoâs early works, created while he was living in Spain, including many rarely seen works which reveal Picassoâs firm grounding in classical techniques. The museum also holds many precise and detailed figure studies done in his youth under his fatherâs tutelage, as well as the extensive collection of Jaime Sabartés, Picassoâs close friend and personal secretary.
Several paintings by Picasso rank among the most expensive paintings in the world. Garçon à la pipe sold for USD $104 million at Sotheby's on 4 May 2004, establishing a new price record. Dora Maar au Chat sold for USD $95.2 million at Sothebyâs on 3 May 2006.
As of 2004, Picasso remains the top ranked artist (based on sales of his works at auctions) according to the Art Market Trends report. (pdf) More of his paintings have been stolen than those by any other artist. S. Goodenough, 1500 Fascinating Facts, Treasure Press, London, 1987, p 241.
The Picasso Administration functions as his official Estate. The U.S. copyright representative for the Picasso Administration is the Artists Rights Society. | Most frequently requested artists list of the Artists Rights Society
Upon Picasso's death in 1973, actor Dustin Hoffman was having dinner with former Beatle Paul McCartney and told him about Picasso's last words. McCartney started creating and singing a song around those words and included the song on his 1973 album, Band on the Run.
In the 1996 movie Surviving Picasso Picasso is played by actor Anthony Hopkins.
*Becht-Jördens, Gereon; Wehmeier, Peter M. (2003). Picasso und die christliche Ikonographie. Mutterbeziehung und künstlerische Position. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag. ISBN 9783496012726
* Berger, John (1965). The Success and Failure of Picasso. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
* Cirlot, Juan-Eduardo (1972). Picasso: birth of a genius. New York and Washington: Praeger.
* Cowling, Elizabeth; Mundy, Jennifer (1990). On Classic Ground: Picasso, Léger, de Chirico and the New Classicism 1910â1930. London: Tate Gallery. ISBN 1-85437-043-X
* Daix, Pierre (1993). Picasso: Life And Art. Harper Collins. ISBN 9780064309769
* FitzGerald, Michael C. Making Modernism: Picasso and the Creation of the Market for Twentieth-Century Art. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.
*Eugenio Granell, Picassoâs Guernica : the end of a Spanish era (Ann Arbor, Mich. : UMI Research Press, 1981) ISBN 0835712060 9780835712064 9780835712064 0835712060
* Krauss, Rosalind (1998). The Picasso Papers. London: Thames and Hudson. ISBN 0500237611
* Mallen, Enrique (2003). The Visual Grammar of Pablo Picasso. Berkeley Insights in Linguistics & Semiotics Series. New York: Peter Lang.
* Mallen, Enrique (2005). La Sintaxis de la Carne: Pablo Picasso y Marie-Thérèse Walter. Santiago de Chile: Red Internacional del Libro.
* Mallen, Enrique (2009). A Concordance of Pablo Picasso's Spanish Writings. New York: Edwin Mellen Press.
* Nill, Raymond M. âA Visual Guide to Pablo Picassoâs Worksâ. New York: B&H Publishers, 1987.
* Picasso, Olivier Widmaier. (2004). Picasso: The Real Family Story. Prestel Publ. ISBN 3-7913-3149-3
* Rubin, William, ed. (1980) Pablo Picasso, a retrospective. Chronology by Jane Fluegel. New York: The Museum of Modern Art. ISBN 0-87070-519-9
* Wattenmaker, Richard J.; Distel, Anne, et al. (1993). Great French Paintings from the Barnes Foundation. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0-679-40963-7
* Wertenbaker, Lael (1967). The World of Picasso. TimeâLife Library of Art. Alexandria, Virginia: Time-Life Books.
* Over 17,671 catalogued artworks available on the On-Line Picasso Project
* Official website
* On-Line Picasso Project: Comprehensive summary of his life and his work.
* Biography and works of Pablo Picasso
* Pablo Picasso â Biography, Quotes & Paintings, retrieved 14 June 2007.
* Poems by Picasso in English translation from Samizdat (poetry magazine)
* Cubism, The Big Picture
* Artists Rights Society, Picasso's U.S. Copyright Representatives
* Union List of Artist Names, Getty Vocabularies. ULAN Full Record Display for Pablo Picasso. Getty Vocabulary Program, Getty Research Institute. Los Angeles, California.
Picasso Museum, Paris, (Hotel Salé, 1659)
* Guggenheim Museum Biography
* Hilo Art Museum, (Hilo Hawaii, USA)
* Honolulu Academy of Arts
* Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
* Musée National Picasso (Paris, France)
* Musée Picasso (Antibes, France)
* Museo Picasso Málaga (Málaga, Spain)
* Museu Picasso (Barcelona, Spain)
* Museum Berggruen (Berlin, Germany)
* Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
* National Gallery of Art list of paintings
* Graphikmuseum Pablo Picasso Münster (Münster, Germany)
* Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles, California
* Power and Tenderness in Men and in Picassoâs âMinotauromachyâ by Chaim Koppelman
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Piano | Are pianos used in Western music? | Yes. | data/set2/a1 | Piano
Baby Grand Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard that produces sound by striking steel strings with felt covered hammers. The hammers immediately rebound, allowing the strings to continue vibrating at their resonant frequency. " Hammer Time" by John Kiehl, Wolfram Demonstrations Project. These vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a soundboard that couples the acoustic energy to the air so that it can be heard as sound.
The piano is widely used in Western music for solo performance, ensemble use, chamber music, and accompaniment. It is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal. Although not portable and often expensive, the piano's versatility and ubiquity have made it one of the most familiar musical instruments. It is sometimes classified as both a percussion and a stringed instrument. According to the Hornbostel-Sachs method of music classification, it is grouped with Chordophones.
The word piano is a shortened form of the word pianoforte, which is seldom used except in formal language and derived from the original Italian name for the instrument, clavicembalo [or gravicembalo] col piano e forte (literally harpsichord with soft and loud). This refers to the instrument's responsiveness to keyboard touch, which allows the pianist to produce notes at different dynamic levels by controlling the speed with which the hammers hit the strings.
Early piano replica by the modern builder Paul McNulty, after Walter & Sohn, 1805
The piano was originally founded on earlier technological innovations. The first string instruments with struck strings were the hammered dulcimers originating from the Persian traditional musical instrument santur. David R. Peterson (1994), "Acoustics of the hammered dulcimer, its history, and recent developments", Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 95 (5), p. 3002. During the Middle Ages, there were several attempts at creating stringed keyboard instruments with struck strings, Pollens, 1995. chp. 1 the earliest being the hurdy gurdy which has uncertain origins. By the 17th century, 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.
Grand piano by Louis Bas of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, France, 1781. Earliest French grand piano known to survive; includes an inverted wrestplank and action derived from the work of Bartolomeo Cristofiori (ca. 1700) with ornately decorated soundboard.
The invention of the modern piano is credited to Bartolomeo Cristofori of Padua, Italy, who was employed by Prince Ferdinand de Medici as the Keeper of the Instruments. He was an expert harpsichord maker and was well acquainted with the previous body of knowledge on stringed keyboard instruments. It is not known exactly when Cristofori first built a piano. An inventory made by his employers, the Medici family, indicates the existence of a piano by the year 1700; another document of doubtful authenticity indicates a date of 1698. The three Cristofori pianos that survive today date from the 1720s.
Cristofori's great success was in solving, without any prior example, the fundamental mechanical problem of piano design: the hammer must strike the string, but not remain in contact with it (as a tangent remains in contact with a clavichord string) because this would damp the sound. Moreover, the hammer must return to its rest position without bouncing violently, and it must be possible to repeat a note rapidly. Cristofori's piano action served as a model for the many different approaches to piano actions that followed. While Cristofori's early instruments were made with thin strings and were much quieter than the modern piano, compared to the clavichord (the only previous keyboard instrument capable of minutely controlled dynamic nuance through the keyboard) they were considerably louder and had more sustaining power.
Cristofori's new instrument remained relatively unknown until an Italian writer, Scipione Maffei, wrote an enthusiastic article about it (1711), including a diagram of the mechanism. This article was widely distributed, and most of the next generation of piano builders started their work because of reading it. One of these builders was Gottfried Silbermann, better known as an organ builder. Silbermann's pianos were virtually direct copies of Cristofori's, with one important addition: Silbermann invented the forerunner of the modern damper pedal, which lifts all the dampers from the strings at once.
Silbermann showed Johann Sebastian Bach one of his early instruments in the 1730s, but Bach did not like it at that time, claiming that the higher notes were too soft to allow a full dynamic range. Although this earned him some animosity from Silbermann, the criticism was apparently heeded. Bach did approve of a later instrument he saw in 1747, and even served as an agent in selling Silbermann's pianos.
Piano making flourished during the late 18th century in the Viennese school, which included Johann Andreas Stein (who worked in Augsburg, Germany) and the Viennese makers Nannette Streicher (daughter of Johann Andreas Stein) and Anton Walter. Viennese-style pianos were built with wood frames, two strings per note, and had leather-covered hammers. Some of these Viennese pianos had the opposite coloring of modern-day pianos; the natural keys were black and the accidental keys white. It was for such instruments that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed his concertos and sonatas, and replicas of them are built today for use in authentic-instrument performance of his music. The pianos of Mozart's day had a softer, clearer tone than today's pianos or English pianos, with less sustaining power. The term fortepiano is nowadays often used to distinguish the 18th-century instrument from later pianos.
In the period lasting from about 1790 to 1860, the Mozart-era piano underwent tremendous changes that led to the modern form of the instrument. This revolution was in response to a consistent preference by composers and pianists for a more powerful, sustained piano sound, and made possible by the ongoing Industrial Revolution with technological resources such as high-quality steel, called piano wire, for strings, and precision casting for the production of iron frames. Over time, the tonal range of the piano was also increased from the five octaves of Mozart's day to the 7â
or more octaves found on modern pianos.
Broadwood square action
Early technological progress owed much to the English firm of Broadwood, who already had a reputation for the splendour and powerful tone of its harpsichords. Broadwood constructed instruments that were progressively larger, louder, and more robustly constructed. They sent pianos to both Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven, and were the first firm to build pianos with a range of more than five octaves: five octaves and a fifth during the 1790s, six octaves by 1810 (Beethoven used the extra notes in his later works), and seven octaves by 1820. The Viennese makers similarly followed these trends, however the two schools used different piano actions: Broadwoods were more robust, Viennese instruments were more sensitive.
Erard square action
By the 1820s, the center of innovation had shifted to Paris, where the Pleyel firm manufactured pianos used by Frédéric Chopin and the Ãrard firm manufactured those used by Franz Liszt. In 1821, Sébastien Ãrard invented the double escapement action, which permitted a note to be repeated even if the key had not yet risen to its maximum vertical position. This facilitated rapid playing of repeated notes - and this musical device was pioneered by Liszt. When the invention became public, as revised by Henri Herz, the double escapement action gradually became standard in grand pianos, and is still incorporated into all grand pianos currently produced.
One of the major technical innovations that helped to create the sound of the modern piano was the use of a strong iron frame. Also called the "plate", the iron frame sits atop the soundboard, and serves as the primary bulwark against the force of string tension. The increased structural integrity of the iron frame allowed the use of thicker, tenser, and more numerous strings. In a modern grand the total string tension can exceed 20 tons. The single piece cast iron frame was patented in 1825 in Boston by Alpheus Babcock, combining the metal hitch pin plate (1821, claimed by Broadwood on behalf of Samuel Hervé) and resisting bars (Thom and Allen, 1820, but also claimed by Broadwood and Ãrard). Babcock later worked for the Chickering & Mackays firm who patented the first full iron frame for grand pianos in 1843. Composite forged metal frames were preferred by many European makers until the American system was fully adopted by the early 20th century.
Other innovations for the mechanism included the use of felt hammer coverings instead of layered leather hammers. Felt hammers, which were first introduced by Henri Pape in 1826, were a more consistent material, permitting wider dynamic ranges as hammer weights and string tension increased. The sostenuto pedal (see below), invented in 1844 by Jean Louis Boisselot and improved by the Steinway firm in 1874, allowed a wider range of effects.
Other important technical innovations of this era included changes to the way the piano was strung, such as the use of a "choir" of three strings rather than two for all but the lower notes, and the use of different stringing methods. With the over strung scale, also called "cross-stringing", the strings are placed in a vertically overlapping slanted arrangement, with two heights of bridges on the soundboard instead of just one. This permits larger, but not necessarily longer, strings to fit within the case of the piano. Over stringing was invented by Jean-Henri Pape during the 1820s, and first patented for use in grand pianos in the United States by Henry Steinway Jr. in 1859.
Duplex scaling: Treble strings of a 182 cm. grand piano. From lower left to upper right: dampers, main sounding length of strings, treble bridge, duplex string length, duplex bridge (long bar perpendicular to strings), hitchpins. With duplexes or aliquot scales, which was patented in 1872 by Theodore Steinway, the different components of string vibrations are controlled by tuning their secondary parts in octave relationships with the sounding lengths. Similar systems developed by Blüthner (1872), as well as Taskin (1788), and Collard (1821) used more distinctly ringing undamped vibrations to modify tone.
Some early pianos had shapes and designs that are no longer in use. The square piano had horizontal strings arranged diagonally across the rectangular case above the hammers and with the keyboard set in the long side. This design is attributed to Gottfried Silbermann or Christian Ernst Friderici on the continent, and Johannes Zumpe or Harman Vietor in England and it was improved by changes first introduced by Guillaume-Lebrecht Petzold in France and Alpheus Babcock in the United States. Square pianos were built in great numbers through the 1840s in Europe and the 1890s in America, and saw the most visible changes of any type of piano: the celebrated iron framed over strung squares manufactured by Steinway & Sons were more than two and a half times the size of Zumpe's wood framed instruments from a century before. Their overwhelming popularity was due to inexpensive construction and price, although their performance and tone were often limited by simple actions and closely spaced strings.
The mechanism in upright pianos is perpendicular to the keys.
The tall, vertically strung upright grand was arranged like a grand set on end, with the soundboard and bridges above the keys, and tuning pins below them. The term was later revived by many manufacturers for advertising purposes. Giraffe, pyramid and lyre pianos were arranged in a somewhat similar fashion in evocatively shaped cases.
The very tall cabinet piano was introduced about 1805 and was built through the 1840s. It had strings arranged vertically on a continuous frame with bridges extended nearly to the floor, behind the keyboard and very large sticker action. The short cottage upright or pianino with vertical stringing, made popular by Robert Wornum around 1815, was built into the 20th century. They are informally called birdcage pianos because of their prominent damper mechanism. Pianinos were distinguished from the oblique, or diagonally strung upright made popular in France by Roller & Blanchet during the late 1820s. The tiny spinet upright was manufactured from the mid-1930s until recent times. The low position of the hammers required the use of a "drop action" to preserve a reasonable keyboard height.
Modern upright and grand pianos attained their present forms by the end of the 19th century. Improvements have been made in manufacturing processes, and many individual details of the instrument continue to receive attention.
Much of the most widely admired piano repertoire, for example, that of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, was composed for a type of instrument that is rather different from the modern instruments on which this music is normally performed today. Even the music of the Romantics, including Liszt, Chopin, Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn and Johannes Brahms, was written for pianos substantially different from ours.
A schematic depiction of the construction of a pianoforte.
Modern pianos come in two basic configurations (with subcategories): the grand piano and the upright piano.
Grand piano
In grand pianos, the frame and strings are horizontal, with the strings extending away from the keyboard. There are several sizes of grand piano. A rough generalization distinguishes the "concert grand" (between about and long) from the "parlor grand" or "boudoir grand" (about to ) and the smaller "baby grand".
All else being equal, longer pianos with longer strings have better sound and lower inharmonicity of the strings. Inharmonicity is the degree to which the frequencies of overtones (known as partials, partial tones, or harmonics) depart from whole multiples of the fundamental frequency. Pianos with shorter, thicker, and stiffer strings (e.g., baby grands) have more inharmonicity. The longer strings on a concert grand can vibrate more freely than the shorter, thicker strings on a baby grand, which means that a concert grand's strings will have truer overtones. This is partly because the strings will be tuned closer to equal temperament in relation to the standard pitch with less "stretching" in the piano tuning (See: Piano tuning). Full-size grands are usually used for public concerts, whereas smaller grands, introduced by Sohmer & Co. in 1884, are often chosen for domestic use where space and cost are considerations.
Upright piano
Upright pianos, also called vertical pianos, are more compact because the frame and strings are vertical. It is considered harder to produce a sensitive piano action when the hammers move horizontally, as the vertical hammer return is dependent on springs which are prone to wear and tear. However, a well-regulated vertical piano will probably play more smoothly than a poorly regulated grand piano, and the very best upright pianos approach the level of some grand pianos of the same size in tone quality and responsiveness.
One noticeable advantage that the grand piano action has over the vertical action is that all grand pianos have a special repetition lever in the playing action that is absent in all verticals. This repetition lever, a separate one for every key, catches the hammer close to the strings as long as the keys are played repeatedly and fairly quickly. In this position, with the hammer resting on the lever, a pianist can play repeated notes, staccato, and trills with much more speed and control than is possible on a vertical piano.
Upright pianos with unusually tall frames and long strings are sometimes called "upright grand" pianos.
Some authors classify modern pianos according to their height and, to modifications of the action that are necessary to accomodate the height.
* Studio pianos are around 42 to 45 inches tall. This is the shortest cabinet that can accomodate a 'full-sized' action located above the keyboard.
* Console pianos have a compact action (shorter hammers), and are a few inches shorter than studio models.
* The top of a Spinet model barely rises above the keyboard. The action is located below, operated by vertical wires that are attached to the backs of the keys.
* Anything taller than a studio piano is called an upright.
Player piano
Toy pianos began to be manufactured in the 19th century. In 1863, Henri Fourneaux invented the player piano, which "plays itself" from a piano roll without the need for a pianist. The player piano is a piano that records a performance using rolls of paper with perforations, and then replays the performance using pneumatic devices. A modern equivalent for the player piano is the Yamaha Disklavier system, which uses solenoids and midi instead of pneumatics and rolls. Silent pianos, which allow a regular piano to be used converted to a digital instrument, are a recent innovation and are becoming more popular.
Irving Berlin played a special piano called the transposing piano, which was invented in 1801 by Edward Ryley. It had a lever under the keyboard used to alter the music to any key. One of Berlin's pianos is in the Smithsonian Museum. For much of his career, Berlin only knew how to play the black keys. But with his 'trick piano' he was no longer limited to the key of F-sharp.
A relatively recent development is the prepared piano, which is used in contemporary art music. A prepared piano is a standard grand piano which has had objects placed inside it before a performance in order to alter its sound, or which has had its mechanism changed in some way. The scores for music for prepared piano often instruct the pianist to insert pieces of rubber or small pieces of metal (screws or washers) in between the strings. These added items either mute the strings or create unusual vibrating sounds.
Since the 1980s, digital pianos have been available, which use digital sampling technology to reproduce the sound of each piano note. The best digital pianos are sophisticated, with features including working pedals, weighted keys, multiple voices, and MIDI interfaces. However, with such technology, it is difficult to duplicate one particular aspect of acoustic pianos, namely that when the damper pedal (see below) is depressed, the strings not struck vibrate sympathetically when other strings are struck, as well as the unique instrument-specific mathematical non-linearity of partials on any given unison. Since this sympathetic vibration is considered central to piano tone, many digital pianos do not sound the same as the best acoustic pianos. Progress is being made in this area by including physical models of sympathetic vibration in the synthesis software. Some higher end digital pianos, such as the Yamaha Clavinova series, or the KAWAI MP8 series, produced in the last few years incorporate string resonance technology to overcome this limitation.
With the advent of powerful desktop computers, highly realistic sampled digital grand pianos have become available as affordable software modules. Some use multi-gigabyte piano sample sets with as many as 90 recordings, each lasting many seconds, for each of the 88 keys under different conditions, augmented by additional samples to emulate sympathetic resonance, key release, the drop of the dampers, and simulations of piano techniques like re-pedaling.
Keyboard
Almost every modern piano has 36 black keys and 52 white keys for a total of 88 keys (seven octaves plus a minor third, from A0 to C8). Many older pianos only have 85 keys (seven octaves from A0 to A7), while some manufacturers extend the range further in one or both directions.
Some Bösendorfer pianos extend the normal range downwards to F0, with one other model going as far as a bottom C0, making a full eight octave range. These extra keys are sometimes hidden under a small hinged lid that can be flipped down to cover the keys in order to avoid visual disorientation in a pianist unfamiliar with the extended keyboard. On others, the colours of the extra white keys are reversed (black instead of white).
The extra keys are added primarily for increased resonance from the associated strings; that is, they vibrate sympathetically with other strings whenever the damper pedal is depressed and thus give a fuller tone. Only a very small number of works composed for piano actually use these notes. More recently, the Stuart and Sons company has also manufactured extended-range pianos. On their instruments, the range is extended both down the bass to F0 and up the treble to F8 for a full eight octaves. The extra keys are the same as the other keys in appearance.
Small studio upright acoustical pianos with only 65 keys have been manufactured for use by roving pianists. Known as "gig" pianos and still containing a cast iron harp, these are comparatively lightweight and can be easily transported to and from engagements by only two men. As their harp is longer than that of a spinet or console piano, they have a stronger bass sound that to some pianists is well worth the trade-off in range that a reduced key-set offers.
Piano pedals from left to right: una corda, sostenuto, and damper.
Pianos have had pedals, or some close equivalent, since the earliest days. (In the 18th century, some pianos used levers pressed upward by the player's knee instead of pedals.) Most grand pianos have three pedals: soft pedal (una corda), sostenuto, and sustain pedal (from left to right, respectively). Most modern upright pianos have three pedals: soft pedal, practice pedal and sustain pedal, though older or cheaper models may lack the practice pedal.
The sustain pedal (or, damper pedal) is often simply called "the pedal", since it is the most frequently used. It is placed as the rightmost pedal in the group. It lifts the dampers from all keys, sustaining all played notes, and altering the overall tone.
The soft pedal or una corda pedal is placed leftmost in the row of pedals. In grand pianos, it shifts the entire action, including the keyboard, to the right, so that the hammers hit only one of the three strings for each note (hence the name una corda, or 'one string'). The effect is to soften the note as well as to change the tone. In uprights, this action is not possible, and so the pedal moves the hammers closer to the strings, allowing the hammers to hit the strings with less kinetic energy to produce a softer sound.
On grand pianos, the middle pedal is a sostenuto pedal. This pedal keeps raised any damper that was already raised at the moment the pedal is depressed. This makes it possible to sustain some notes (by depressing the sostenuto pedal before notes to be sustained are released) while the player's hands are free to play other notes. This can be useful for musical passages with pedal points and other otherwise tricky or impossible situations.
On many upright pianos, there is a middle pedal called the 'practice' or celeste pedal. This drops a piece of felt between the hammers and strings, greatly muting the sounds.
There are also non-standard variants. On vertical pianos, the middle pedal can be a bass sustain pedal: that is, when it is depressed, the dampers lift off the strings only in the bass section. This pedal would be used only when a pianist needs to sustain a single bass note or chord over many measures, while playing the melody in the treble section. On the largest Fazioli piano, there is a fourth pedal to the left of the principal three. This fourth pedal works in the same way as the soft pedal of an upright piano, moving the hammers closer to the strings.
An upright pedal piano
The rare transposing piano, of which Irving Berlin possessed an example, had a middle pedal that functioned as a clutch which disengages the keyboard from the mechanism, enabling the keyboard to be moved to the left or right with a lever. The entire action of the piano is thus shifted to allow the pianist to play music written in one key so that it sounds in a different key. The pedalier piano, or pedal piano, is a rare type of piano that includes a pedalboard, enabling bass register notes to be played with the feet, as is standard on the organ. There are two types of pedal piano: the pedal board may be an integral part of the instrument, using the same strings and mechanism as the manual keyboard, or, less frequently, it may consist of two independent pianos (each with its separate mechanics and strings) which are placed one above the other, a regular piano played by the hands and a bass-register piano played by the feet.
Many parts of a piano are made of materials selected for sturdiness. In quality pianos, the outer rim of the piano is made of a hardwood, normally maple or beech. According to Harold A. Conklin, the purpose of a sturdy rim is so that "the vibrational energy will stay as much as possible in the soundboard instead of dissipating uselessly in the case parts, which are inefficient radiators of sound."
View from below of a 182-cm grand piano. In order of distance from viewer: softwood braces, tapered soundboard ribs, soundboard. The metal rod at lower right is a humidity control device.
The rim is normally made by laminating flexible strips of hardwood to the desired shape, a system that was developed by Theodore Steinway in 1880. The thick wooden braces at the bottom (grands) or back (uprights) of the piano are not as acoustically important as the rim, and are often made of a softwood, even in top-quality pianos, in order to save weight. The requirement of structural strength, fulfilled with stout hardwood and thick metal, makes a piano heavy; even a small upright can weigh 136 kg (300 lb), and the Steinway concert grand (Model D) weighs 480 kg (990 lb). The largest piano built, the Fazioli F308, weighs 691 kg (1520 lb).
The pinblock, which holds the tuning pins in place, is another area of the piano where toughness is important. It is made of hardwood, (often maple) and generally is laminated (built of multiple layers) for additional strength and gripping power. Piano strings (also called piano wire), which must endure years of extreme tension and hard blows, are made of high quality steel. They are manufactured to vary as little as possible in diameter, since all deviations from uniformity introduce tonal distortion. The bass strings of a piano are made of a steel core wrapped with copper wire, to increase their mass whilst retaining flexibility.
The plate, or metal frame, of a piano is usually made of cast iron. It is advantageous for the plate to be quite massive. Since the strings are attached to the plate at one end, any vibrations transmitted to the plate will result in loss of energy to the desired (efficient) channel of sound transmission, namely the bridge and the soundboard. Some manufacturers now use cast steel in their plates, for greater strength. The casting of the plate is a delicate art, since the dimensions are crucial and the iron shrinks by about one percent during cooling.
The inclusion in a piano of an extremely large piece of metal is potentially an aesthetic handicap, which piano makers overcome by polishing, painting and decorating the plate. Plates often include the manufacturer's ornamental medallion and can be strikingly attractive. In an effort to make pianos lighter, Alcoa worked with Winter and Company piano manufacturers to make pianos using an aluminum plate during the 1940s. The use of aluminum for piano plates, however, did not become widely accepted and was discontinued.
The numerous grand parts and upright parts of a piano action are generally hardwood (e.g. maple, beech. hornbeam). However, since World War II, plastics have become available. Early plastics were incorporated into some pianos in the late 1940s and 1950s, but proved disastrous because they crystallized and lost their strength after only a few decades of use. The Steinway firm once incorporated Teflon, a synthetic material developed by DuPont, for some grand action parts in place of cloth, but ultimately abandoned the experiment due to an inherent "clicking" which invariably developed over time. (Also Teflon is "humidity stable" whereas the wood adjacent to the Teflon will swell and shrink with humidity changes, causing problems.) More recently, the Kawai firm has built pianos with action parts made of more modern and effective plastics such as carbon fiber; these parts have held up better and have generally received the respect of piano technicians .
Ivorite and ebony keys on a modern Steinway & Sons concert grand piano.
The part of the piano where materials probably matter more than anywhere else is the soundboard. In quality pianos, this is made of solid spruce (that is, spruce boards glued together at their edges). Spruce is chosen for its high ratio of strength to weight. The best piano makers use close-grained, quarter-sawn, defect-free spruce, and make sure that it has been carefully dried over a long period of time before making it into soundboards. In cheap pianos, the soundboard is often made of plywood.
Piano keys are generally made of spruce or basswood, for lightness. Spruce is normally used in high-quality pianos. Traditionally, the black keys were made from ebony and the white keys were covered with strips of ivory, but since ivory-yielding species are now endangered and protected by treaty, plastics are now almost exclusively used. Also, ivory tends to chip more easily than plastic. Legal ivory can still be obtained in limited quantities. At one time, the Yamaha firm innovated a plastic called "Ivorine" or "Ivorite", since imitated by other makers, that mimics the look and feel of ivory.
A piano tuner
Pianos need regular tuning to keep them up to pitch, which is usually the internationally recognized standard concert pitch of A4 = 440 Hz. The hammers of pianos are voiced to compensate for gradual hardening, and other parts also need periodic regulation. Aged and worn pianos can be rebuilt or reconditioned. Often, by replacing a great number of their parts, they can be made to perform as well as new pianos. Older pianos are often more settled and produce a warmer tone.
Piano moving should be done by trained piano movers using adequate manpower and the correct equipment for any particular piano's size and weight. Pianos are heavy yet delicate instruments. Over the years, professional piano movers have developed special techniques for transporting both grands and uprights which prevent damage to the case and to the piano's mechanics.
The piano at the social center in the 19th century (Moritz von Schwind, 1868). The man at the piano is Franz Schubert.
The piano is a crucial instrument in Western classical music, jazz, film, television, and most other complex western musical genres. Since a large number of composers are proficient pianists â and because the piano keyboard offers an easy means of complex melodic and harmonic interplay â the piano is often used as a tool for composition.
Pianos were, and still are, popular instruments for private household ownership. Hence, pianos have gained a place in the popular consciousness, and are sometimes referred to by nicknames including: "the ivories", "the joanna", "the eighty-eight", and "the black(s) and white(s)", "the little joe(s)". Playing the piano is sometimes referred to as "tickling the ivories".
;General
* Innovations in the piano
* Jazz piano
* Piano acoustics
* Piano key frequencies (in equal temperament)
* Piano trio
* String piano
;Related lists
* List of films about pianists
* Lists of solo piano pieces
* List of piano makers
* List of piano brand names
* List of classical pianists (recorded)
;Related instruments
* Hammered dulcimer
* Harp
* Clavichord
* Harpsichord
* Organ and Pipe organ
* Electric piano
* Electronic piano
* The authoritative New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (available online by subscription), contains a wealth of information. Main article: "Pianoforte".
* The Encyclopædia Britannica (available online by subscription) also includes much information on the piano. In the 1988 edition, the primary article can be found in "Musical Instruments".
* The Piano Book by Larry Fine (4th ed. Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts: Brookside Press, 2001; ISBN 1-929145-01-2) gives the basics of how pianos work, and a thorough evaluative survey of current pianos and their manufacturers. It also includes advice on buying and owning pianos.
*Giraffes, black dragons, and other pianos: a technological history from Cristofori to the modern concert grand by Edwin M. Good (1982, second ed., 2001, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press) is a standard reference on the history of the piano.
*The Early Pianoforte by Stewart Pollens (1995, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) is an authoritative work covering the ancestry of the piano, its invention by Cristofori, and the early stages of its subsequent evolution.
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;Information
* Yamaha Musician - Yamaha piano reviews and enthusiast site
* Grand Piano information and images
* The Piano Page Lots of information from the Piano Technicians Guild
* WikiRecording's Guide to Recording Pianos
;History
* History of the Piano Forte, Association of Blind Piano Tuners, UK
* The Frederick Historical Piano Collection
;Piano Technique
* Principles of Piano Technique
;Sheet music for Piano
* All Piano Scores Free printable classical sheet music for piano + audio
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Piano | Are pianos used in Western music? | Yes | data/set2/a1 | Piano
Baby Grand Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard that produces sound by striking steel strings with felt covered hammers. The hammers immediately rebound, allowing the strings to continue vibrating at their resonant frequency. " Hammer Time" by John Kiehl, Wolfram Demonstrations Project. These vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a soundboard that couples the acoustic energy to the air so that it can be heard as sound.
The piano is widely used in Western music for solo performance, ensemble use, chamber music, and accompaniment. It is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal. Although not portable and often expensive, the piano's versatility and ubiquity have made it one of the most familiar musical instruments. It is sometimes classified as both a percussion and a stringed instrument. According to the Hornbostel-Sachs method of music classification, it is grouped with Chordophones.
The word piano is a shortened form of the word pianoforte, which is seldom used except in formal language and derived from the original Italian name for the instrument, clavicembalo [or gravicembalo] col piano e forte (literally harpsichord with soft and loud). This refers to the instrument's responsiveness to keyboard touch, which allows the pianist to produce notes at different dynamic levels by controlling the speed with which the hammers hit the strings.
Early piano replica by the modern builder Paul McNulty, after Walter & Sohn, 1805
The piano was originally founded on earlier technological innovations. The first string instruments with struck strings were the hammered dulcimers originating from the Persian traditional musical instrument santur. David R. Peterson (1994), "Acoustics of the hammered dulcimer, its history, and recent developments", Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 95 (5), p. 3002. During the Middle Ages, there were several attempts at creating stringed keyboard instruments with struck strings, Pollens, 1995. chp. 1 the earliest being the hurdy gurdy which has uncertain origins. By the 17th century, 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.
Grand piano by Louis Bas of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, France, 1781. Earliest French grand piano known to survive; includes an inverted wrestplank and action derived from the work of Bartolomeo Cristofiori (ca. 1700) with ornately decorated soundboard.
The invention of the modern piano is credited to Bartolomeo Cristofori of Padua, Italy, who was employed by Prince Ferdinand de Medici as the Keeper of the Instruments. He was an expert harpsichord maker and was well acquainted with the previous body of knowledge on stringed keyboard instruments. It is not known exactly when Cristofori first built a piano. An inventory made by his employers, the Medici family, indicates the existence of a piano by the year 1700; another document of doubtful authenticity indicates a date of 1698. The three Cristofori pianos that survive today date from the 1720s.
Cristofori's great success was in solving, without any prior example, the fundamental mechanical problem of piano design: the hammer must strike the string, but not remain in contact with it (as a tangent remains in contact with a clavichord string) because this would damp the sound. Moreover, the hammer must return to its rest position without bouncing violently, and it must be possible to repeat a note rapidly. Cristofori's piano action served as a model for the many different approaches to piano actions that followed. While Cristofori's early instruments were made with thin strings and were much quieter than the modern piano, compared to the clavichord (the only previous keyboard instrument capable of minutely controlled dynamic nuance through the keyboard) they were considerably louder and had more sustaining power.
Cristofori's new instrument remained relatively unknown until an Italian writer, Scipione Maffei, wrote an enthusiastic article about it (1711), including a diagram of the mechanism. This article was widely distributed, and most of the next generation of piano builders started their work because of reading it. One of these builders was Gottfried Silbermann, better known as an organ builder. Silbermann's pianos were virtually direct copies of Cristofori's, with one important addition: Silbermann invented the forerunner of the modern damper pedal, which lifts all the dampers from the strings at once.
Silbermann showed Johann Sebastian Bach one of his early instruments in the 1730s, but Bach did not like it at that time, claiming that the higher notes were too soft to allow a full dynamic range. Although this earned him some animosity from Silbermann, the criticism was apparently heeded. Bach did approve of a later instrument he saw in 1747, and even served as an agent in selling Silbermann's pianos.
Piano making flourished during the late 18th century in the Viennese school, which included Johann Andreas Stein (who worked in Augsburg, Germany) and the Viennese makers Nannette Streicher (daughter of Johann Andreas Stein) and Anton Walter. Viennese-style pianos were built with wood frames, two strings per note, and had leather-covered hammers. Some of these Viennese pianos had the opposite coloring of modern-day pianos; the natural keys were black and the accidental keys white. It was for such instruments that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed his concertos and sonatas, and replicas of them are built today for use in authentic-instrument performance of his music. The pianos of Mozart's day had a softer, clearer tone than today's pianos or English pianos, with less sustaining power. The term fortepiano is nowadays often used to distinguish the 18th-century instrument from later pianos.
In the period lasting from about 1790 to 1860, the Mozart-era piano underwent tremendous changes that led to the modern form of the instrument. This revolution was in response to a consistent preference by composers and pianists for a more powerful, sustained piano sound, and made possible by the ongoing Industrial Revolution with technological resources such as high-quality steel, called piano wire, for strings, and precision casting for the production of iron frames. Over time, the tonal range of the piano was also increased from the five octaves of Mozart's day to the 7â
or more octaves found on modern pianos.
Broadwood square action
Early technological progress owed much to the English firm of Broadwood, who already had a reputation for the splendour and powerful tone of its harpsichords. Broadwood constructed instruments that were progressively larger, louder, and more robustly constructed. They sent pianos to both Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven, and were the first firm to build pianos with a range of more than five octaves: five octaves and a fifth during the 1790s, six octaves by 1810 (Beethoven used the extra notes in his later works), and seven octaves by 1820. The Viennese makers similarly followed these trends, however the two schools used different piano actions: Broadwoods were more robust, Viennese instruments were more sensitive.
Erard square action
By the 1820s, the center of innovation had shifted to Paris, where the Pleyel firm manufactured pianos used by Frédéric Chopin and the Ãrard firm manufactured those used by Franz Liszt. In 1821, Sébastien Ãrard invented the double escapement action, which permitted a note to be repeated even if the key had not yet risen to its maximum vertical position. This facilitated rapid playing of repeated notes - and this musical device was pioneered by Liszt. When the invention became public, as revised by Henri Herz, the double escapement action gradually became standard in grand pianos, and is still incorporated into all grand pianos currently produced.
One of the major technical innovations that helped to create the sound of the modern piano was the use of a strong iron frame. Also called the "plate", the iron frame sits atop the soundboard, and serves as the primary bulwark against the force of string tension. The increased structural integrity of the iron frame allowed the use of thicker, tenser, and more numerous strings. In a modern grand the total string tension can exceed 20 tons. The single piece cast iron frame was patented in 1825 in Boston by Alpheus Babcock, combining the metal hitch pin plate (1821, claimed by Broadwood on behalf of Samuel Hervé) and resisting bars (Thom and Allen, 1820, but also claimed by Broadwood and Ãrard). Babcock later worked for the Chickering & Mackays firm who patented the first full iron frame for grand pianos in 1843. Composite forged metal frames were preferred by many European makers until the American system was fully adopted by the early 20th century.
Other innovations for the mechanism included the use of felt hammer coverings instead of layered leather hammers. Felt hammers, which were first introduced by Henri Pape in 1826, were a more consistent material, permitting wider dynamic ranges as hammer weights and string tension increased. The sostenuto pedal (see below), invented in 1844 by Jean Louis Boisselot and improved by the Steinway firm in 1874, allowed a wider range of effects.
Other important technical innovations of this era included changes to the way the piano was strung, such as the use of a "choir" of three strings rather than two for all but the lower notes, and the use of different stringing methods. With the over strung scale, also called "cross-stringing", the strings are placed in a vertically overlapping slanted arrangement, with two heights of bridges on the soundboard instead of just one. This permits larger, but not necessarily longer, strings to fit within the case of the piano. Over stringing was invented by Jean-Henri Pape during the 1820s, and first patented for use in grand pianos in the United States by Henry Steinway Jr. in 1859.
Duplex scaling: Treble strings of a 182 cm. grand piano. From lower left to upper right: dampers, main sounding length of strings, treble bridge, duplex string length, duplex bridge (long bar perpendicular to strings), hitchpins. With duplexes or aliquot scales, which was patented in 1872 by Theodore Steinway, the different components of string vibrations are controlled by tuning their secondary parts in octave relationships with the sounding lengths. Similar systems developed by Blüthner (1872), as well as Taskin (1788), and Collard (1821) used more distinctly ringing undamped vibrations to modify tone.
Some early pianos had shapes and designs that are no longer in use. The square piano had horizontal strings arranged diagonally across the rectangular case above the hammers and with the keyboard set in the long side. This design is attributed to Gottfried Silbermann or Christian Ernst Friderici on the continent, and Johannes Zumpe or Harman Vietor in England and it was improved by changes first introduced by Guillaume-Lebrecht Petzold in France and Alpheus Babcock in the United States. Square pianos were built in great numbers through the 1840s in Europe and the 1890s in America, and saw the most visible changes of any type of piano: the celebrated iron framed over strung squares manufactured by Steinway & Sons were more than two and a half times the size of Zumpe's wood framed instruments from a century before. Their overwhelming popularity was due to inexpensive construction and price, although their performance and tone were often limited by simple actions and closely spaced strings.
The mechanism in upright pianos is perpendicular to the keys.
The tall, vertically strung upright grand was arranged like a grand set on end, with the soundboard and bridges above the keys, and tuning pins below them. The term was later revived by many manufacturers for advertising purposes. Giraffe, pyramid and lyre pianos were arranged in a somewhat similar fashion in evocatively shaped cases.
The very tall cabinet piano was introduced about 1805 and was built through the 1840s. It had strings arranged vertically on a continuous frame with bridges extended nearly to the floor, behind the keyboard and very large sticker action. The short cottage upright or pianino with vertical stringing, made popular by Robert Wornum around 1815, was built into the 20th century. They are informally called birdcage pianos because of their prominent damper mechanism. Pianinos were distinguished from the oblique, or diagonally strung upright made popular in France by Roller & Blanchet during the late 1820s. The tiny spinet upright was manufactured from the mid-1930s until recent times. The low position of the hammers required the use of a "drop action" to preserve a reasonable keyboard height.
Modern upright and grand pianos attained their present forms by the end of the 19th century. Improvements have been made in manufacturing processes, and many individual details of the instrument continue to receive attention.
Much of the most widely admired piano repertoire, for example, that of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, was composed for a type of instrument that is rather different from the modern instruments on which this music is normally performed today. Even the music of the Romantics, including Liszt, Chopin, Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn and Johannes Brahms, was written for pianos substantially different from ours.
A schematic depiction of the construction of a pianoforte.
Modern pianos come in two basic configurations (with subcategories): the grand piano and the upright piano.
Grand piano
In grand pianos, the frame and strings are horizontal, with the strings extending away from the keyboard. There are several sizes of grand piano. A rough generalization distinguishes the "concert grand" (between about and long) from the "parlor grand" or "boudoir grand" (about to ) and the smaller "baby grand".
All else being equal, longer pianos with longer strings have better sound and lower inharmonicity of the strings. Inharmonicity is the degree to which the frequencies of overtones (known as partials, partial tones, or harmonics) depart from whole multiples of the fundamental frequency. Pianos with shorter, thicker, and stiffer strings (e.g., baby grands) have more inharmonicity. The longer strings on a concert grand can vibrate more freely than the shorter, thicker strings on a baby grand, which means that a concert grand's strings will have truer overtones. This is partly because the strings will be tuned closer to equal temperament in relation to the standard pitch with less "stretching" in the piano tuning (See: Piano tuning). Full-size grands are usually used for public concerts, whereas smaller grands, introduced by Sohmer & Co. in 1884, are often chosen for domestic use where space and cost are considerations.
Upright piano
Upright pianos, also called vertical pianos, are more compact because the frame and strings are vertical. It is considered harder to produce a sensitive piano action when the hammers move horizontally, as the vertical hammer return is dependent on springs which are prone to wear and tear. However, a well-regulated vertical piano will probably play more smoothly than a poorly regulated grand piano, and the very best upright pianos approach the level of some grand pianos of the same size in tone quality and responsiveness.
One noticeable advantage that the grand piano action has over the vertical action is that all grand pianos have a special repetition lever in the playing action that is absent in all verticals. This repetition lever, a separate one for every key, catches the hammer close to the strings as long as the keys are played repeatedly and fairly quickly. In this position, with the hammer resting on the lever, a pianist can play repeated notes, staccato, and trills with much more speed and control than is possible on a vertical piano.
Upright pianos with unusually tall frames and long strings are sometimes called "upright grand" pianos.
Some authors classify modern pianos according to their height and, to modifications of the action that are necessary to accomodate the height.
* Studio pianos are around 42 to 45 inches tall. This is the shortest cabinet that can accomodate a 'full-sized' action located above the keyboard.
* Console pianos have a compact action (shorter hammers), and are a few inches shorter than studio models.
* The top of a Spinet model barely rises above the keyboard. The action is located below, operated by vertical wires that are attached to the backs of the keys.
* Anything taller than a studio piano is called an upright.
Player piano
Toy pianos began to be manufactured in the 19th century. In 1863, Henri Fourneaux invented the player piano, which "plays itself" from a piano roll without the need for a pianist. The player piano is a piano that records a performance using rolls of paper with perforations, and then replays the performance using pneumatic devices. A modern equivalent for the player piano is the Yamaha Disklavier system, which uses solenoids and midi instead of pneumatics and rolls. Silent pianos, which allow a regular piano to be used converted to a digital instrument, are a recent innovation and are becoming more popular.
Irving Berlin played a special piano called the transposing piano, which was invented in 1801 by Edward Ryley. It had a lever under the keyboard used to alter the music to any key. One of Berlin's pianos is in the Smithsonian Museum. For much of his career, Berlin only knew how to play the black keys. But with his 'trick piano' he was no longer limited to the key of F-sharp.
A relatively recent development is the prepared piano, which is used in contemporary art music. A prepared piano is a standard grand piano which has had objects placed inside it before a performance in order to alter its sound, or which has had its mechanism changed in some way. The scores for music for prepared piano often instruct the pianist to insert pieces of rubber or small pieces of metal (screws or washers) in between the strings. These added items either mute the strings or create unusual vibrating sounds.
Since the 1980s, digital pianos have been available, which use digital sampling technology to reproduce the sound of each piano note. The best digital pianos are sophisticated, with features including working pedals, weighted keys, multiple voices, and MIDI interfaces. However, with such technology, it is difficult to duplicate one particular aspect of acoustic pianos, namely that when the damper pedal (see below) is depressed, the strings not struck vibrate sympathetically when other strings are struck, as well as the unique instrument-specific mathematical non-linearity of partials on any given unison. Since this sympathetic vibration is considered central to piano tone, many digital pianos do not sound the same as the best acoustic pianos. Progress is being made in this area by including physical models of sympathetic vibration in the synthesis software. Some higher end digital pianos, such as the Yamaha Clavinova series, or the KAWAI MP8 series, produced in the last few years incorporate string resonance technology to overcome this limitation.
With the advent of powerful desktop computers, highly realistic sampled digital grand pianos have become available as affordable software modules. Some use multi-gigabyte piano sample sets with as many as 90 recordings, each lasting many seconds, for each of the 88 keys under different conditions, augmented by additional samples to emulate sympathetic resonance, key release, the drop of the dampers, and simulations of piano techniques like re-pedaling.
Keyboard
Almost every modern piano has 36 black keys and 52 white keys for a total of 88 keys (seven octaves plus a minor third, from A0 to C8). Many older pianos only have 85 keys (seven octaves from A0 to A7), while some manufacturers extend the range further in one or both directions.
Some Bösendorfer pianos extend the normal range downwards to F0, with one other model going as far as a bottom C0, making a full eight octave range. These extra keys are sometimes hidden under a small hinged lid that can be flipped down to cover the keys in order to avoid visual disorientation in a pianist unfamiliar with the extended keyboard. On others, the colours of the extra white keys are reversed (black instead of white).
The extra keys are added primarily for increased resonance from the associated strings; that is, they vibrate sympathetically with other strings whenever the damper pedal is depressed and thus give a fuller tone. Only a very small number of works composed for piano actually use these notes. More recently, the Stuart and Sons company has also manufactured extended-range pianos. On their instruments, the range is extended both down the bass to F0 and up the treble to F8 for a full eight octaves. The extra keys are the same as the other keys in appearance.
Small studio upright acoustical pianos with only 65 keys have been manufactured for use by roving pianists. Known as "gig" pianos and still containing a cast iron harp, these are comparatively lightweight and can be easily transported to and from engagements by only two men. As their harp is longer than that of a spinet or console piano, they have a stronger bass sound that to some pianists is well worth the trade-off in range that a reduced key-set offers.
Piano pedals from left to right: una corda, sostenuto, and damper.
Pianos have had pedals, or some close equivalent, since the earliest days. (In the 18th century, some pianos used levers pressed upward by the player's knee instead of pedals.) Most grand pianos have three pedals: soft pedal (una corda), sostenuto, and sustain pedal (from left to right, respectively). Most modern upright pianos have three pedals: soft pedal, practice pedal and sustain pedal, though older or cheaper models may lack the practice pedal.
The sustain pedal (or, damper pedal) is often simply called "the pedal", since it is the most frequently used. It is placed as the rightmost pedal in the group. It lifts the dampers from all keys, sustaining all played notes, and altering the overall tone.
The soft pedal or una corda pedal is placed leftmost in the row of pedals. In grand pianos, it shifts the entire action, including the keyboard, to the right, so that the hammers hit only one of the three strings for each note (hence the name una corda, or 'one string'). The effect is to soften the note as well as to change the tone. In uprights, this action is not possible, and so the pedal moves the hammers closer to the strings, allowing the hammers to hit the strings with less kinetic energy to produce a softer sound.
On grand pianos, the middle pedal is a sostenuto pedal. This pedal keeps raised any damper that was already raised at the moment the pedal is depressed. This makes it possible to sustain some notes (by depressing the sostenuto pedal before notes to be sustained are released) while the player's hands are free to play other notes. This can be useful for musical passages with pedal points and other otherwise tricky or impossible situations.
On many upright pianos, there is a middle pedal called the 'practice' or celeste pedal. This drops a piece of felt between the hammers and strings, greatly muting the sounds.
There are also non-standard variants. On vertical pianos, the middle pedal can be a bass sustain pedal: that is, when it is depressed, the dampers lift off the strings only in the bass section. This pedal would be used only when a pianist needs to sustain a single bass note or chord over many measures, while playing the melody in the treble section. On the largest Fazioli piano, there is a fourth pedal to the left of the principal three. This fourth pedal works in the same way as the soft pedal of an upright piano, moving the hammers closer to the strings.
An upright pedal piano
The rare transposing piano, of which Irving Berlin possessed an example, had a middle pedal that functioned as a clutch which disengages the keyboard from the mechanism, enabling the keyboard to be moved to the left or right with a lever. The entire action of the piano is thus shifted to allow the pianist to play music written in one key so that it sounds in a different key. The pedalier piano, or pedal piano, is a rare type of piano that includes a pedalboard, enabling bass register notes to be played with the feet, as is standard on the organ. There are two types of pedal piano: the pedal board may be an integral part of the instrument, using the same strings and mechanism as the manual keyboard, or, less frequently, it may consist of two independent pianos (each with its separate mechanics and strings) which are placed one above the other, a regular piano played by the hands and a bass-register piano played by the feet.
Many parts of a piano are made of materials selected for sturdiness. In quality pianos, the outer rim of the piano is made of a hardwood, normally maple or beech. According to Harold A. Conklin, the purpose of a sturdy rim is so that "the vibrational energy will stay as much as possible in the soundboard instead of dissipating uselessly in the case parts, which are inefficient radiators of sound."
View from below of a 182-cm grand piano. In order of distance from viewer: softwood braces, tapered soundboard ribs, soundboard. The metal rod at lower right is a humidity control device.
The rim is normally made by laminating flexible strips of hardwood to the desired shape, a system that was developed by Theodore Steinway in 1880. The thick wooden braces at the bottom (grands) or back (uprights) of the piano are not as acoustically important as the rim, and are often made of a softwood, even in top-quality pianos, in order to save weight. The requirement of structural strength, fulfilled with stout hardwood and thick metal, makes a piano heavy; even a small upright can weigh 136 kg (300 lb), and the Steinway concert grand (Model D) weighs 480 kg (990 lb). The largest piano built, the Fazioli F308, weighs 691 kg (1520 lb).
The pinblock, which holds the tuning pins in place, is another area of the piano where toughness is important. It is made of hardwood, (often maple) and generally is laminated (built of multiple layers) for additional strength and gripping power. Piano strings (also called piano wire), which must endure years of extreme tension and hard blows, are made of high quality steel. They are manufactured to vary as little as possible in diameter, since all deviations from uniformity introduce tonal distortion. The bass strings of a piano are made of a steel core wrapped with copper wire, to increase their mass whilst retaining flexibility.
The plate, or metal frame, of a piano is usually made of cast iron. It is advantageous for the plate to be quite massive. Since the strings are attached to the plate at one end, any vibrations transmitted to the plate will result in loss of energy to the desired (efficient) channel of sound transmission, namely the bridge and the soundboard. Some manufacturers now use cast steel in their plates, for greater strength. The casting of the plate is a delicate art, since the dimensions are crucial and the iron shrinks by about one percent during cooling.
The inclusion in a piano of an extremely large piece of metal is potentially an aesthetic handicap, which piano makers overcome by polishing, painting and decorating the plate. Plates often include the manufacturer's ornamental medallion and can be strikingly attractive. In an effort to make pianos lighter, Alcoa worked with Winter and Company piano manufacturers to make pianos using an aluminum plate during the 1940s. The use of aluminum for piano plates, however, did not become widely accepted and was discontinued.
The numerous grand parts and upright parts of a piano action are generally hardwood (e.g. maple, beech. hornbeam). However, since World War II, plastics have become available. Early plastics were incorporated into some pianos in the late 1940s and 1950s, but proved disastrous because they crystallized and lost their strength after only a few decades of use. The Steinway firm once incorporated Teflon, a synthetic material developed by DuPont, for some grand action parts in place of cloth, but ultimately abandoned the experiment due to an inherent "clicking" which invariably developed over time. (Also Teflon is "humidity stable" whereas the wood adjacent to the Teflon will swell and shrink with humidity changes, causing problems.) More recently, the Kawai firm has built pianos with action parts made of more modern and effective plastics such as carbon fiber; these parts have held up better and have generally received the respect of piano technicians .
Ivorite and ebony keys on a modern Steinway & Sons concert grand piano.
The part of the piano where materials probably matter more than anywhere else is the soundboard. In quality pianos, this is made of solid spruce (that is, spruce boards glued together at their edges). Spruce is chosen for its high ratio of strength to weight. The best piano makers use close-grained, quarter-sawn, defect-free spruce, and make sure that it has been carefully dried over a long period of time before making it into soundboards. In cheap pianos, the soundboard is often made of plywood.
Piano keys are generally made of spruce or basswood, for lightness. Spruce is normally used in high-quality pianos. Traditionally, the black keys were made from ebony and the white keys were covered with strips of ivory, but since ivory-yielding species are now endangered and protected by treaty, plastics are now almost exclusively used. Also, ivory tends to chip more easily than plastic. Legal ivory can still be obtained in limited quantities. At one time, the Yamaha firm innovated a plastic called "Ivorine" or "Ivorite", since imitated by other makers, that mimics the look and feel of ivory.
A piano tuner
Pianos need regular tuning to keep them up to pitch, which is usually the internationally recognized standard concert pitch of A4 = 440 Hz. The hammers of pianos are voiced to compensate for gradual hardening, and other parts also need periodic regulation. Aged and worn pianos can be rebuilt or reconditioned. Often, by replacing a great number of their parts, they can be made to perform as well as new pianos. Older pianos are often more settled and produce a warmer tone.
Piano moving should be done by trained piano movers using adequate manpower and the correct equipment for any particular piano's size and weight. Pianos are heavy yet delicate instruments. Over the years, professional piano movers have developed special techniques for transporting both grands and uprights which prevent damage to the case and to the piano's mechanics.
The piano at the social center in the 19th century (Moritz von Schwind, 1868). The man at the piano is Franz Schubert.
The piano is a crucial instrument in Western classical music, jazz, film, television, and most other complex western musical genres. Since a large number of composers are proficient pianists â and because the piano keyboard offers an easy means of complex melodic and harmonic interplay â the piano is often used as a tool for composition.
Pianos were, and still are, popular instruments for private household ownership. Hence, pianos have gained a place in the popular consciousness, and are sometimes referred to by nicknames including: "the ivories", "the joanna", "the eighty-eight", and "the black(s) and white(s)", "the little joe(s)". Playing the piano is sometimes referred to as "tickling the ivories".
;General
* Innovations in the piano
* Jazz piano
* Piano acoustics
* Piano key frequencies (in equal temperament)
* Piano trio
* String piano
;Related lists
* List of films about pianists
* Lists of solo piano pieces
* List of piano makers
* List of piano brand names
* List of classical pianists (recorded)
;Related instruments
* Hammered dulcimer
* Harp
* Clavichord
* Harpsichord
* Organ and Pipe organ
* Electric piano
* Electronic piano
* The authoritative New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (available online by subscription), contains a wealth of information. Main article: "Pianoforte".
* The Encyclopædia Britannica (available online by subscription) also includes much information on the piano. In the 1988 edition, the primary article can be found in "Musical Instruments".
* The Piano Book by Larry Fine (4th ed. Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts: Brookside Press, 2001; ISBN 1-929145-01-2) gives the basics of how pianos work, and a thorough evaluative survey of current pianos and their manufacturers. It also includes advice on buying and owning pianos.
*Giraffes, black dragons, and other pianos: a technological history from Cristofori to the modern concert grand by Edwin M. Good (1982, second ed., 2001, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press) is a standard reference on the history of the piano.
*The Early Pianoforte by Stewart Pollens (1995, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) is an authoritative work covering the ancestry of the piano, its invention by Cristofori, and the early stages of its subsequent evolution.
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;Information
* Yamaha Musician - Yamaha piano reviews and enthusiast site
* Grand Piano information and images
* The Piano Page Lots of information from the Piano Technicians Guild
* WikiRecording's Guide to Recording Pianos
;History
* History of the Piano Forte, Association of Blind Piano Tuners, UK
* The Frederick Historical Piano Collection
;Piano Technique
* Principles of Piano Technique
;Sheet music for Piano
* All Piano Scores Free printable classical sheet music for piano + audio
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Piano | Are "upright pianos" called "vertical pianos"? | Yes. | data/set2/a1 | Piano
Baby Grand Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard that produces sound by striking steel strings with felt covered hammers. The hammers immediately rebound, allowing the strings to continue vibrating at their resonant frequency. " Hammer Time" by John Kiehl, Wolfram Demonstrations Project. These vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a soundboard that couples the acoustic energy to the air so that it can be heard as sound.
The piano is widely used in Western music for solo performance, ensemble use, chamber music, and accompaniment. It is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal. Although not portable and often expensive, the piano's versatility and ubiquity have made it one of the most familiar musical instruments. It is sometimes classified as both a percussion and a stringed instrument. According to the Hornbostel-Sachs method of music classification, it is grouped with Chordophones.
The word piano is a shortened form of the word pianoforte, which is seldom used except in formal language and derived from the original Italian name for the instrument, clavicembalo [or gravicembalo] col piano e forte (literally harpsichord with soft and loud). This refers to the instrument's responsiveness to keyboard touch, which allows the pianist to produce notes at different dynamic levels by controlling the speed with which the hammers hit the strings.
Early piano replica by the modern builder Paul McNulty, after Walter & Sohn, 1805
The piano was originally founded on earlier technological innovations. The first string instruments with struck strings were the hammered dulcimers originating from the Persian traditional musical instrument santur. David R. Peterson (1994), "Acoustics of the hammered dulcimer, its history, and recent developments", Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 95 (5), p. 3002. During the Middle Ages, there were several attempts at creating stringed keyboard instruments with struck strings, Pollens, 1995. chp. 1 the earliest being the hurdy gurdy which has uncertain origins. By the 17th century, 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.
Grand piano by Louis Bas of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, France, 1781. Earliest French grand piano known to survive; includes an inverted wrestplank and action derived from the work of Bartolomeo Cristofiori (ca. 1700) with ornately decorated soundboard.
The invention of the modern piano is credited to Bartolomeo Cristofori of Padua, Italy, who was employed by Prince Ferdinand de Medici as the Keeper of the Instruments. He was an expert harpsichord maker and was well acquainted with the previous body of knowledge on stringed keyboard instruments. It is not known exactly when Cristofori first built a piano. An inventory made by his employers, the Medici family, indicates the existence of a piano by the year 1700; another document of doubtful authenticity indicates a date of 1698. The three Cristofori pianos that survive today date from the 1720s.
Cristofori's great success was in solving, without any prior example, the fundamental mechanical problem of piano design: the hammer must strike the string, but not remain in contact with it (as a tangent remains in contact with a clavichord string) because this would damp the sound. Moreover, the hammer must return to its rest position without bouncing violently, and it must be possible to repeat a note rapidly. Cristofori's piano action served as a model for the many different approaches to piano actions that followed. While Cristofori's early instruments were made with thin strings and were much quieter than the modern piano, compared to the clavichord (the only previous keyboard instrument capable of minutely controlled dynamic nuance through the keyboard) they were considerably louder and had more sustaining power.
Cristofori's new instrument remained relatively unknown until an Italian writer, Scipione Maffei, wrote an enthusiastic article about it (1711), including a diagram of the mechanism. This article was widely distributed, and most of the next generation of piano builders started their work because of reading it. One of these builders was Gottfried Silbermann, better known as an organ builder. Silbermann's pianos were virtually direct copies of Cristofori's, with one important addition: Silbermann invented the forerunner of the modern damper pedal, which lifts all the dampers from the strings at once.
Silbermann showed Johann Sebastian Bach one of his early instruments in the 1730s, but Bach did not like it at that time, claiming that the higher notes were too soft to allow a full dynamic range. Although this earned him some animosity from Silbermann, the criticism was apparently heeded. Bach did approve of a later instrument he saw in 1747, and even served as an agent in selling Silbermann's pianos.
Piano making flourished during the late 18th century in the Viennese school, which included Johann Andreas Stein (who worked in Augsburg, Germany) and the Viennese makers Nannette Streicher (daughter of Johann Andreas Stein) and Anton Walter. Viennese-style pianos were built with wood frames, two strings per note, and had leather-covered hammers. Some of these Viennese pianos had the opposite coloring of modern-day pianos; the natural keys were black and the accidental keys white. It was for such instruments that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed his concertos and sonatas, and replicas of them are built today for use in authentic-instrument performance of his music. The pianos of Mozart's day had a softer, clearer tone than today's pianos or English pianos, with less sustaining power. The term fortepiano is nowadays often used to distinguish the 18th-century instrument from later pianos.
In the period lasting from about 1790 to 1860, the Mozart-era piano underwent tremendous changes that led to the modern form of the instrument. This revolution was in response to a consistent preference by composers and pianists for a more powerful, sustained piano sound, and made possible by the ongoing Industrial Revolution with technological resources such as high-quality steel, called piano wire, for strings, and precision casting for the production of iron frames. Over time, the tonal range of the piano was also increased from the five octaves of Mozart's day to the 7â
or more octaves found on modern pianos.
Broadwood square action
Early technological progress owed much to the English firm of Broadwood, who already had a reputation for the splendour and powerful tone of its harpsichords. Broadwood constructed instruments that were progressively larger, louder, and more robustly constructed. They sent pianos to both Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven, and were the first firm to build pianos with a range of more than five octaves: five octaves and a fifth during the 1790s, six octaves by 1810 (Beethoven used the extra notes in his later works), and seven octaves by 1820. The Viennese makers similarly followed these trends, however the two schools used different piano actions: Broadwoods were more robust, Viennese instruments were more sensitive.
Erard square action
By the 1820s, the center of innovation had shifted to Paris, where the Pleyel firm manufactured pianos used by Frédéric Chopin and the Ãrard firm manufactured those used by Franz Liszt. In 1821, Sébastien Ãrard invented the double escapement action, which permitted a note to be repeated even if the key had not yet risen to its maximum vertical position. This facilitated rapid playing of repeated notes - and this musical device was pioneered by Liszt. When the invention became public, as revised by Henri Herz, the double escapement action gradually became standard in grand pianos, and is still incorporated into all grand pianos currently produced.
One of the major technical innovations that helped to create the sound of the modern piano was the use of a strong iron frame. Also called the "plate", the iron frame sits atop the soundboard, and serves as the primary bulwark against the force of string tension. The increased structural integrity of the iron frame allowed the use of thicker, tenser, and more numerous strings. In a modern grand the total string tension can exceed 20 tons. The single piece cast iron frame was patented in 1825 in Boston by Alpheus Babcock, combining the metal hitch pin plate (1821, claimed by Broadwood on behalf of Samuel Hervé) and resisting bars (Thom and Allen, 1820, but also claimed by Broadwood and Ãrard). Babcock later worked for the Chickering & Mackays firm who patented the first full iron frame for grand pianos in 1843. Composite forged metal frames were preferred by many European makers until the American system was fully adopted by the early 20th century.
Other innovations for the mechanism included the use of felt hammer coverings instead of layered leather hammers. Felt hammers, which were first introduced by Henri Pape in 1826, were a more consistent material, permitting wider dynamic ranges as hammer weights and string tension increased. The sostenuto pedal (see below), invented in 1844 by Jean Louis Boisselot and improved by the Steinway firm in 1874, allowed a wider range of effects.
Other important technical innovations of this era included changes to the way the piano was strung, such as the use of a "choir" of three strings rather than two for all but the lower notes, and the use of different stringing methods. With the over strung scale, also called "cross-stringing", the strings are placed in a vertically overlapping slanted arrangement, with two heights of bridges on the soundboard instead of just one. This permits larger, but not necessarily longer, strings to fit within the case of the piano. Over stringing was invented by Jean-Henri Pape during the 1820s, and first patented for use in grand pianos in the United States by Henry Steinway Jr. in 1859.
Duplex scaling: Treble strings of a 182 cm. grand piano. From lower left to upper right: dampers, main sounding length of strings, treble bridge, duplex string length, duplex bridge (long bar perpendicular to strings), hitchpins. With duplexes or aliquot scales, which was patented in 1872 by Theodore Steinway, the different components of string vibrations are controlled by tuning their secondary parts in octave relationships with the sounding lengths. Similar systems developed by Blüthner (1872), as well as Taskin (1788), and Collard (1821) used more distinctly ringing undamped vibrations to modify tone.
Some early pianos had shapes and designs that are no longer in use. The square piano had horizontal strings arranged diagonally across the rectangular case above the hammers and with the keyboard set in the long side. This design is attributed to Gottfried Silbermann or Christian Ernst Friderici on the continent, and Johannes Zumpe or Harman Vietor in England and it was improved by changes first introduced by Guillaume-Lebrecht Petzold in France and Alpheus Babcock in the United States. Square pianos were built in great numbers through the 1840s in Europe and the 1890s in America, and saw the most visible changes of any type of piano: the celebrated iron framed over strung squares manufactured by Steinway & Sons were more than two and a half times the size of Zumpe's wood framed instruments from a century before. Their overwhelming popularity was due to inexpensive construction and price, although their performance and tone were often limited by simple actions and closely spaced strings.
The mechanism in upright pianos is perpendicular to the keys.
The tall, vertically strung upright grand was arranged like a grand set on end, with the soundboard and bridges above the keys, and tuning pins below them. The term was later revived by many manufacturers for advertising purposes. Giraffe, pyramid and lyre pianos were arranged in a somewhat similar fashion in evocatively shaped cases.
The very tall cabinet piano was introduced about 1805 and was built through the 1840s. It had strings arranged vertically on a continuous frame with bridges extended nearly to the floor, behind the keyboard and very large sticker action. The short cottage upright or pianino with vertical stringing, made popular by Robert Wornum around 1815, was built into the 20th century. They are informally called birdcage pianos because of their prominent damper mechanism. Pianinos were distinguished from the oblique, or diagonally strung upright made popular in France by Roller & Blanchet during the late 1820s. The tiny spinet upright was manufactured from the mid-1930s until recent times. The low position of the hammers required the use of a "drop action" to preserve a reasonable keyboard height.
Modern upright and grand pianos attained their present forms by the end of the 19th century. Improvements have been made in manufacturing processes, and many individual details of the instrument continue to receive attention.
Much of the most widely admired piano repertoire, for example, that of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, was composed for a type of instrument that is rather different from the modern instruments on which this music is normally performed today. Even the music of the Romantics, including Liszt, Chopin, Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn and Johannes Brahms, was written for pianos substantially different from ours.
A schematic depiction of the construction of a pianoforte.
Modern pianos come in two basic configurations (with subcategories): the grand piano and the upright piano.
Grand piano
In grand pianos, the frame and strings are horizontal, with the strings extending away from the keyboard. There are several sizes of grand piano. A rough generalization distinguishes the "concert grand" (between about and long) from the "parlor grand" or "boudoir grand" (about to ) and the smaller "baby grand".
All else being equal, longer pianos with longer strings have better sound and lower inharmonicity of the strings. Inharmonicity is the degree to which the frequencies of overtones (known as partials, partial tones, or harmonics) depart from whole multiples of the fundamental frequency. Pianos with shorter, thicker, and stiffer strings (e.g., baby grands) have more inharmonicity. The longer strings on a concert grand can vibrate more freely than the shorter, thicker strings on a baby grand, which means that a concert grand's strings will have truer overtones. This is partly because the strings will be tuned closer to equal temperament in relation to the standard pitch with less "stretching" in the piano tuning (See: Piano tuning). Full-size grands are usually used for public concerts, whereas smaller grands, introduced by Sohmer & Co. in 1884, are often chosen for domestic use where space and cost are considerations.
Upright piano
Upright pianos, also called vertical pianos, are more compact because the frame and strings are vertical. It is considered harder to produce a sensitive piano action when the hammers move horizontally, as the vertical hammer return is dependent on springs which are prone to wear and tear. However, a well-regulated vertical piano will probably play more smoothly than a poorly regulated grand piano, and the very best upright pianos approach the level of some grand pianos of the same size in tone quality and responsiveness.
One noticeable advantage that the grand piano action has over the vertical action is that all grand pianos have a special repetition lever in the playing action that is absent in all verticals. This repetition lever, a separate one for every key, catches the hammer close to the strings as long as the keys are played repeatedly and fairly quickly. In this position, with the hammer resting on the lever, a pianist can play repeated notes, staccato, and trills with much more speed and control than is possible on a vertical piano.
Upright pianos with unusually tall frames and long strings are sometimes called "upright grand" pianos.
Some authors classify modern pianos according to their height and, to modifications of the action that are necessary to accomodate the height.
* Studio pianos are around 42 to 45 inches tall. This is the shortest cabinet that can accomodate a 'full-sized' action located above the keyboard.
* Console pianos have a compact action (shorter hammers), and are a few inches shorter than studio models.
* The top of a Spinet model barely rises above the keyboard. The action is located below, operated by vertical wires that are attached to the backs of the keys.
* Anything taller than a studio piano is called an upright.
Player piano
Toy pianos began to be manufactured in the 19th century. In 1863, Henri Fourneaux invented the player piano, which "plays itself" from a piano roll without the need for a pianist. The player piano is a piano that records a performance using rolls of paper with perforations, and then replays the performance using pneumatic devices. A modern equivalent for the player piano is the Yamaha Disklavier system, which uses solenoids and midi instead of pneumatics and rolls. Silent pianos, which allow a regular piano to be used converted to a digital instrument, are a recent innovation and are becoming more popular.
Irving Berlin played a special piano called the transposing piano, which was invented in 1801 by Edward Ryley. It had a lever under the keyboard used to alter the music to any key. One of Berlin's pianos is in the Smithsonian Museum. For much of his career, Berlin only knew how to play the black keys. But with his 'trick piano' he was no longer limited to the key of F-sharp.
A relatively recent development is the prepared piano, which is used in contemporary art music. A prepared piano is a standard grand piano which has had objects placed inside it before a performance in order to alter its sound, or which has had its mechanism changed in some way. The scores for music for prepared piano often instruct the pianist to insert pieces of rubber or small pieces of metal (screws or washers) in between the strings. These added items either mute the strings or create unusual vibrating sounds.
Since the 1980s, digital pianos have been available, which use digital sampling technology to reproduce the sound of each piano note. The best digital pianos are sophisticated, with features including working pedals, weighted keys, multiple voices, and MIDI interfaces. However, with such technology, it is difficult to duplicate one particular aspect of acoustic pianos, namely that when the damper pedal (see below) is depressed, the strings not struck vibrate sympathetically when other strings are struck, as well as the unique instrument-specific mathematical non-linearity of partials on any given unison. Since this sympathetic vibration is considered central to piano tone, many digital pianos do not sound the same as the best acoustic pianos. Progress is being made in this area by including physical models of sympathetic vibration in the synthesis software. Some higher end digital pianos, such as the Yamaha Clavinova series, or the KAWAI MP8 series, produced in the last few years incorporate string resonance technology to overcome this limitation.
With the advent of powerful desktop computers, highly realistic sampled digital grand pianos have become available as affordable software modules. Some use multi-gigabyte piano sample sets with as many as 90 recordings, each lasting many seconds, for each of the 88 keys under different conditions, augmented by additional samples to emulate sympathetic resonance, key release, the drop of the dampers, and simulations of piano techniques like re-pedaling.
Keyboard
Almost every modern piano has 36 black keys and 52 white keys for a total of 88 keys (seven octaves plus a minor third, from A0 to C8). Many older pianos only have 85 keys (seven octaves from A0 to A7), while some manufacturers extend the range further in one or both directions.
Some Bösendorfer pianos extend the normal range downwards to F0, with one other model going as far as a bottom C0, making a full eight octave range. These extra keys are sometimes hidden under a small hinged lid that can be flipped down to cover the keys in order to avoid visual disorientation in a pianist unfamiliar with the extended keyboard. On others, the colours of the extra white keys are reversed (black instead of white).
The extra keys are added primarily for increased resonance from the associated strings; that is, they vibrate sympathetically with other strings whenever the damper pedal is depressed and thus give a fuller tone. Only a very small number of works composed for piano actually use these notes. More recently, the Stuart and Sons company has also manufactured extended-range pianos. On their instruments, the range is extended both down the bass to F0 and up the treble to F8 for a full eight octaves. The extra keys are the same as the other keys in appearance.
Small studio upright acoustical pianos with only 65 keys have been manufactured for use by roving pianists. Known as "gig" pianos and still containing a cast iron harp, these are comparatively lightweight and can be easily transported to and from engagements by only two men. As their harp is longer than that of a spinet or console piano, they have a stronger bass sound that to some pianists is well worth the trade-off in range that a reduced key-set offers.
Piano pedals from left to right: una corda, sostenuto, and damper.
Pianos have had pedals, or some close equivalent, since the earliest days. (In the 18th century, some pianos used levers pressed upward by the player's knee instead of pedals.) Most grand pianos have three pedals: soft pedal (una corda), sostenuto, and sustain pedal (from left to right, respectively). Most modern upright pianos have three pedals: soft pedal, practice pedal and sustain pedal, though older or cheaper models may lack the practice pedal.
The sustain pedal (or, damper pedal) is often simply called "the pedal", since it is the most frequently used. It is placed as the rightmost pedal in the group. It lifts the dampers from all keys, sustaining all played notes, and altering the overall tone.
The soft pedal or una corda pedal is placed leftmost in the row of pedals. In grand pianos, it shifts the entire action, including the keyboard, to the right, so that the hammers hit only one of the three strings for each note (hence the name una corda, or 'one string'). The effect is to soften the note as well as to change the tone. In uprights, this action is not possible, and so the pedal moves the hammers closer to the strings, allowing the hammers to hit the strings with less kinetic energy to produce a softer sound.
On grand pianos, the middle pedal is a sostenuto pedal. This pedal keeps raised any damper that was already raised at the moment the pedal is depressed. This makes it possible to sustain some notes (by depressing the sostenuto pedal before notes to be sustained are released) while the player's hands are free to play other notes. This can be useful for musical passages with pedal points and other otherwise tricky or impossible situations.
On many upright pianos, there is a middle pedal called the 'practice' or celeste pedal. This drops a piece of felt between the hammers and strings, greatly muting the sounds.
There are also non-standard variants. On vertical pianos, the middle pedal can be a bass sustain pedal: that is, when it is depressed, the dampers lift off the strings only in the bass section. This pedal would be used only when a pianist needs to sustain a single bass note or chord over many measures, while playing the melody in the treble section. On the largest Fazioli piano, there is a fourth pedal to the left of the principal three. This fourth pedal works in the same way as the soft pedal of an upright piano, moving the hammers closer to the strings.
An upright pedal piano
The rare transposing piano, of which Irving Berlin possessed an example, had a middle pedal that functioned as a clutch which disengages the keyboard from the mechanism, enabling the keyboard to be moved to the left or right with a lever. The entire action of the piano is thus shifted to allow the pianist to play music written in one key so that it sounds in a different key. The pedalier piano, or pedal piano, is a rare type of piano that includes a pedalboard, enabling bass register notes to be played with the feet, as is standard on the organ. There are two types of pedal piano: the pedal board may be an integral part of the instrument, using the same strings and mechanism as the manual keyboard, or, less frequently, it may consist of two independent pianos (each with its separate mechanics and strings) which are placed one above the other, a regular piano played by the hands and a bass-register piano played by the feet.
Many parts of a piano are made of materials selected for sturdiness. In quality pianos, the outer rim of the piano is made of a hardwood, normally maple or beech. According to Harold A. Conklin, the purpose of a sturdy rim is so that "the vibrational energy will stay as much as possible in the soundboard instead of dissipating uselessly in the case parts, which are inefficient radiators of sound."
View from below of a 182-cm grand piano. In order of distance from viewer: softwood braces, tapered soundboard ribs, soundboard. The metal rod at lower right is a humidity control device.
The rim is normally made by laminating flexible strips of hardwood to the desired shape, a system that was developed by Theodore Steinway in 1880. The thick wooden braces at the bottom (grands) or back (uprights) of the piano are not as acoustically important as the rim, and are often made of a softwood, even in top-quality pianos, in order to save weight. The requirement of structural strength, fulfilled with stout hardwood and thick metal, makes a piano heavy; even a small upright can weigh 136 kg (300 lb), and the Steinway concert grand (Model D) weighs 480 kg (990 lb). The largest piano built, the Fazioli F308, weighs 691 kg (1520 lb).
The pinblock, which holds the tuning pins in place, is another area of the piano where toughness is important. It is made of hardwood, (often maple) and generally is laminated (built of multiple layers) for additional strength and gripping power. Piano strings (also called piano wire), which must endure years of extreme tension and hard blows, are made of high quality steel. They are manufactured to vary as little as possible in diameter, since all deviations from uniformity introduce tonal distortion. The bass strings of a piano are made of a steel core wrapped with copper wire, to increase their mass whilst retaining flexibility.
The plate, or metal frame, of a piano is usually made of cast iron. It is advantageous for the plate to be quite massive. Since the strings are attached to the plate at one end, any vibrations transmitted to the plate will result in loss of energy to the desired (efficient) channel of sound transmission, namely the bridge and the soundboard. Some manufacturers now use cast steel in their plates, for greater strength. The casting of the plate is a delicate art, since the dimensions are crucial and the iron shrinks by about one percent during cooling.
The inclusion in a piano of an extremely large piece of metal is potentially an aesthetic handicap, which piano makers overcome by polishing, painting and decorating the plate. Plates often include the manufacturer's ornamental medallion and can be strikingly attractive. In an effort to make pianos lighter, Alcoa worked with Winter and Company piano manufacturers to make pianos using an aluminum plate during the 1940s. The use of aluminum for piano plates, however, did not become widely accepted and was discontinued.
The numerous grand parts and upright parts of a piano action are generally hardwood (e.g. maple, beech. hornbeam). However, since World War II, plastics have become available. Early plastics were incorporated into some pianos in the late 1940s and 1950s, but proved disastrous because they crystallized and lost their strength after only a few decades of use. The Steinway firm once incorporated Teflon, a synthetic material developed by DuPont, for some grand action parts in place of cloth, but ultimately abandoned the experiment due to an inherent "clicking" which invariably developed over time. (Also Teflon is "humidity stable" whereas the wood adjacent to the Teflon will swell and shrink with humidity changes, causing problems.) More recently, the Kawai firm has built pianos with action parts made of more modern and effective plastics such as carbon fiber; these parts have held up better and have generally received the respect of piano technicians .
Ivorite and ebony keys on a modern Steinway & Sons concert grand piano.
The part of the piano where materials probably matter more than anywhere else is the soundboard. In quality pianos, this is made of solid spruce (that is, spruce boards glued together at their edges). Spruce is chosen for its high ratio of strength to weight. The best piano makers use close-grained, quarter-sawn, defect-free spruce, and make sure that it has been carefully dried over a long period of time before making it into soundboards. In cheap pianos, the soundboard is often made of plywood.
Piano keys are generally made of spruce or basswood, for lightness. Spruce is normally used in high-quality pianos. Traditionally, the black keys were made from ebony and the white keys were covered with strips of ivory, but since ivory-yielding species are now endangered and protected by treaty, plastics are now almost exclusively used. Also, ivory tends to chip more easily than plastic. Legal ivory can still be obtained in limited quantities. At one time, the Yamaha firm innovated a plastic called "Ivorine" or "Ivorite", since imitated by other makers, that mimics the look and feel of ivory.
A piano tuner
Pianos need regular tuning to keep them up to pitch, which is usually the internationally recognized standard concert pitch of A4 = 440 Hz. The hammers of pianos are voiced to compensate for gradual hardening, and other parts also need periodic regulation. Aged and worn pianos can be rebuilt or reconditioned. Often, by replacing a great number of their parts, they can be made to perform as well as new pianos. Older pianos are often more settled and produce a warmer tone.
Piano moving should be done by trained piano movers using adequate manpower and the correct equipment for any particular piano's size and weight. Pianos are heavy yet delicate instruments. Over the years, professional piano movers have developed special techniques for transporting both grands and uprights which prevent damage to the case and to the piano's mechanics.
The piano at the social center in the 19th century (Moritz von Schwind, 1868). The man at the piano is Franz Schubert.
The piano is a crucial instrument in Western classical music, jazz, film, television, and most other complex western musical genres. Since a large number of composers are proficient pianists â and because the piano keyboard offers an easy means of complex melodic and harmonic interplay â the piano is often used as a tool for composition.
Pianos were, and still are, popular instruments for private household ownership. Hence, pianos have gained a place in the popular consciousness, and are sometimes referred to by nicknames including: "the ivories", "the joanna", "the eighty-eight", and "the black(s) and white(s)", "the little joe(s)". Playing the piano is sometimes referred to as "tickling the ivories".
;General
* Innovations in the piano
* Jazz piano
* Piano acoustics
* Piano key frequencies (in equal temperament)
* Piano trio
* String piano
;Related lists
* List of films about pianists
* Lists of solo piano pieces
* List of piano makers
* List of piano brand names
* List of classical pianists (recorded)
;Related instruments
* Hammered dulcimer
* Harp
* Clavichord
* Harpsichord
* Organ and Pipe organ
* Electric piano
* Electronic piano
* The authoritative New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (available online by subscription), contains a wealth of information. Main article: "Pianoforte".
* The Encyclopædia Britannica (available online by subscription) also includes much information on the piano. In the 1988 edition, the primary article can be found in "Musical Instruments".
* The Piano Book by Larry Fine (4th ed. Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts: Brookside Press, 2001; ISBN 1-929145-01-2) gives the basics of how pianos work, and a thorough evaluative survey of current pianos and their manufacturers. It also includes advice on buying and owning pianos.
*Giraffes, black dragons, and other pianos: a technological history from Cristofori to the modern concert grand by Edwin M. Good (1982, second ed., 2001, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press) is a standard reference on the history of the piano.
*The Early Pianoforte by Stewart Pollens (1995, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) is an authoritative work covering the ancestry of the piano, its invention by Cristofori, and the early stages of its subsequent evolution.
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;Information
* Yamaha Musician - Yamaha piano reviews and enthusiast site
* Grand Piano information and images
* The Piano Page Lots of information from the Piano Technicians Guild
* WikiRecording's Guide to Recording Pianos
;History
* History of the Piano Forte, Association of Blind Piano Tuners, UK
* The Frederick Historical Piano Collection
;Piano Technique
* Principles of Piano Technique
;Sheet music for Piano
* All Piano Scores Free printable classical sheet music for piano + audio
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Piano | Are "upright pianos" called "vertical pianos"? | Yes | data/set2/a1 | Piano
Baby Grand Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard that produces sound by striking steel strings with felt covered hammers. The hammers immediately rebound, allowing the strings to continue vibrating at their resonant frequency. " Hammer Time" by John Kiehl, Wolfram Demonstrations Project. These vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a soundboard that couples the acoustic energy to the air so that it can be heard as sound.
The piano is widely used in Western music for solo performance, ensemble use, chamber music, and accompaniment. It is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal. Although not portable and often expensive, the piano's versatility and ubiquity have made it one of the most familiar musical instruments. It is sometimes classified as both a percussion and a stringed instrument. According to the Hornbostel-Sachs method of music classification, it is grouped with Chordophones.
The word piano is a shortened form of the word pianoforte, which is seldom used except in formal language and derived from the original Italian name for the instrument, clavicembalo [or gravicembalo] col piano e forte (literally harpsichord with soft and loud). This refers to the instrument's responsiveness to keyboard touch, which allows the pianist to produce notes at different dynamic levels by controlling the speed with which the hammers hit the strings.
Early piano replica by the modern builder Paul McNulty, after Walter & Sohn, 1805
The piano was originally founded on earlier technological innovations. The first string instruments with struck strings were the hammered dulcimers originating from the Persian traditional musical instrument santur. David R. Peterson (1994), "Acoustics of the hammered dulcimer, its history, and recent developments", Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 95 (5), p. 3002. During the Middle Ages, there were several attempts at creating stringed keyboard instruments with struck strings, Pollens, 1995. chp. 1 the earliest being the hurdy gurdy which has uncertain origins. By the 17th century, 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.
Grand piano by Louis Bas of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, France, 1781. Earliest French grand piano known to survive; includes an inverted wrestplank and action derived from the work of Bartolomeo Cristofiori (ca. 1700) with ornately decorated soundboard.
The invention of the modern piano is credited to Bartolomeo Cristofori of Padua, Italy, who was employed by Prince Ferdinand de Medici as the Keeper of the Instruments. He was an expert harpsichord maker and was well acquainted with the previous body of knowledge on stringed keyboard instruments. It is not known exactly when Cristofori first built a piano. An inventory made by his employers, the Medici family, indicates the existence of a piano by the year 1700; another document of doubtful authenticity indicates a date of 1698. The three Cristofori pianos that survive today date from the 1720s.
Cristofori's great success was in solving, without any prior example, the fundamental mechanical problem of piano design: the hammer must strike the string, but not remain in contact with it (as a tangent remains in contact with a clavichord string) because this would damp the sound. Moreover, the hammer must return to its rest position without bouncing violently, and it must be possible to repeat a note rapidly. Cristofori's piano action served as a model for the many different approaches to piano actions that followed. While Cristofori's early instruments were made with thin strings and were much quieter than the modern piano, compared to the clavichord (the only previous keyboard instrument capable of minutely controlled dynamic nuance through the keyboard) they were considerably louder and had more sustaining power.
Cristofori's new instrument remained relatively unknown until an Italian writer, Scipione Maffei, wrote an enthusiastic article about it (1711), including a diagram of the mechanism. This article was widely distributed, and most of the next generation of piano builders started their work because of reading it. One of these builders was Gottfried Silbermann, better known as an organ builder. Silbermann's pianos were virtually direct copies of Cristofori's, with one important addition: Silbermann invented the forerunner of the modern damper pedal, which lifts all the dampers from the strings at once.
Silbermann showed Johann Sebastian Bach one of his early instruments in the 1730s, but Bach did not like it at that time, claiming that the higher notes were too soft to allow a full dynamic range. Although this earned him some animosity from Silbermann, the criticism was apparently heeded. Bach did approve of a later instrument he saw in 1747, and even served as an agent in selling Silbermann's pianos.
Piano making flourished during the late 18th century in the Viennese school, which included Johann Andreas Stein (who worked in Augsburg, Germany) and the Viennese makers Nannette Streicher (daughter of Johann Andreas Stein) and Anton Walter. Viennese-style pianos were built with wood frames, two strings per note, and had leather-covered hammers. Some of these Viennese pianos had the opposite coloring of modern-day pianos; the natural keys were black and the accidental keys white. It was for such instruments that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed his concertos and sonatas, and replicas of them are built today for use in authentic-instrument performance of his music. The pianos of Mozart's day had a softer, clearer tone than today's pianos or English pianos, with less sustaining power. The term fortepiano is nowadays often used to distinguish the 18th-century instrument from later pianos.
In the period lasting from about 1790 to 1860, the Mozart-era piano underwent tremendous changes that led to the modern form of the instrument. This revolution was in response to a consistent preference by composers and pianists for a more powerful, sustained piano sound, and made possible by the ongoing Industrial Revolution with technological resources such as high-quality steel, called piano wire, for strings, and precision casting for the production of iron frames. Over time, the tonal range of the piano was also increased from the five octaves of Mozart's day to the 7â
or more octaves found on modern pianos.
Broadwood square action
Early technological progress owed much to the English firm of Broadwood, who already had a reputation for the splendour and powerful tone of its harpsichords. Broadwood constructed instruments that were progressively larger, louder, and more robustly constructed. They sent pianos to both Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven, and were the first firm to build pianos with a range of more than five octaves: five octaves and a fifth during the 1790s, six octaves by 1810 (Beethoven used the extra notes in his later works), and seven octaves by 1820. The Viennese makers similarly followed these trends, however the two schools used different piano actions: Broadwoods were more robust, Viennese instruments were more sensitive.
Erard square action
By the 1820s, the center of innovation had shifted to Paris, where the Pleyel firm manufactured pianos used by Frédéric Chopin and the Ãrard firm manufactured those used by Franz Liszt. In 1821, Sébastien Ãrard invented the double escapement action, which permitted a note to be repeated even if the key had not yet risen to its maximum vertical position. This facilitated rapid playing of repeated notes - and this musical device was pioneered by Liszt. When the invention became public, as revised by Henri Herz, the double escapement action gradually became standard in grand pianos, and is still incorporated into all grand pianos currently produced.
One of the major technical innovations that helped to create the sound of the modern piano was the use of a strong iron frame. Also called the "plate", the iron frame sits atop the soundboard, and serves as the primary bulwark against the force of string tension. The increased structural integrity of the iron frame allowed the use of thicker, tenser, and more numerous strings. In a modern grand the total string tension can exceed 20 tons. The single piece cast iron frame was patented in 1825 in Boston by Alpheus Babcock, combining the metal hitch pin plate (1821, claimed by Broadwood on behalf of Samuel Hervé) and resisting bars (Thom and Allen, 1820, but also claimed by Broadwood and Ãrard). Babcock later worked for the Chickering & Mackays firm who patented the first full iron frame for grand pianos in 1843. Composite forged metal frames were preferred by many European makers until the American system was fully adopted by the early 20th century.
Other innovations for the mechanism included the use of felt hammer coverings instead of layered leather hammers. Felt hammers, which were first introduced by Henri Pape in 1826, were a more consistent material, permitting wider dynamic ranges as hammer weights and string tension increased. The sostenuto pedal (see below), invented in 1844 by Jean Louis Boisselot and improved by the Steinway firm in 1874, allowed a wider range of effects.
Other important technical innovations of this era included changes to the way the piano was strung, such as the use of a "choir" of three strings rather than two for all but the lower notes, and the use of different stringing methods. With the over strung scale, also called "cross-stringing", the strings are placed in a vertically overlapping slanted arrangement, with two heights of bridges on the soundboard instead of just one. This permits larger, but not necessarily longer, strings to fit within the case of the piano. Over stringing was invented by Jean-Henri Pape during the 1820s, and first patented for use in grand pianos in the United States by Henry Steinway Jr. in 1859.
Duplex scaling: Treble strings of a 182 cm. grand piano. From lower left to upper right: dampers, main sounding length of strings, treble bridge, duplex string length, duplex bridge (long bar perpendicular to strings), hitchpins. With duplexes or aliquot scales, which was patented in 1872 by Theodore Steinway, the different components of string vibrations are controlled by tuning their secondary parts in octave relationships with the sounding lengths. Similar systems developed by Blüthner (1872), as well as Taskin (1788), and Collard (1821) used more distinctly ringing undamped vibrations to modify tone.
Some early pianos had shapes and designs that are no longer in use. The square piano had horizontal strings arranged diagonally across the rectangular case above the hammers and with the keyboard set in the long side. This design is attributed to Gottfried Silbermann or Christian Ernst Friderici on the continent, and Johannes Zumpe or Harman Vietor in England and it was improved by changes first introduced by Guillaume-Lebrecht Petzold in France and Alpheus Babcock in the United States. Square pianos were built in great numbers through the 1840s in Europe and the 1890s in America, and saw the most visible changes of any type of piano: the celebrated iron framed over strung squares manufactured by Steinway & Sons were more than two and a half times the size of Zumpe's wood framed instruments from a century before. Their overwhelming popularity was due to inexpensive construction and price, although their performance and tone were often limited by simple actions and closely spaced strings.
The mechanism in upright pianos is perpendicular to the keys.
The tall, vertically strung upright grand was arranged like a grand set on end, with the soundboard and bridges above the keys, and tuning pins below them. The term was later revived by many manufacturers for advertising purposes. Giraffe, pyramid and lyre pianos were arranged in a somewhat similar fashion in evocatively shaped cases.
The very tall cabinet piano was introduced about 1805 and was built through the 1840s. It had strings arranged vertically on a continuous frame with bridges extended nearly to the floor, behind the keyboard and very large sticker action. The short cottage upright or pianino with vertical stringing, made popular by Robert Wornum around 1815, was built into the 20th century. They are informally called birdcage pianos because of their prominent damper mechanism. Pianinos were distinguished from the oblique, or diagonally strung upright made popular in France by Roller & Blanchet during the late 1820s. The tiny spinet upright was manufactured from the mid-1930s until recent times. The low position of the hammers required the use of a "drop action" to preserve a reasonable keyboard height.
Modern upright and grand pianos attained their present forms by the end of the 19th century. Improvements have been made in manufacturing processes, and many individual details of the instrument continue to receive attention.
Much of the most widely admired piano repertoire, for example, that of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, was composed for a type of instrument that is rather different from the modern instruments on which this music is normally performed today. Even the music of the Romantics, including Liszt, Chopin, Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn and Johannes Brahms, was written for pianos substantially different from ours.
A schematic depiction of the construction of a pianoforte.
Modern pianos come in two basic configurations (with subcategories): the grand piano and the upright piano.
Grand piano
In grand pianos, the frame and strings are horizontal, with the strings extending away from the keyboard. There are several sizes of grand piano. A rough generalization distinguishes the "concert grand" (between about and long) from the "parlor grand" or "boudoir grand" (about to ) and the smaller "baby grand".
All else being equal, longer pianos with longer strings have better sound and lower inharmonicity of the strings. Inharmonicity is the degree to which the frequencies of overtones (known as partials, partial tones, or harmonics) depart from whole multiples of the fundamental frequency. Pianos with shorter, thicker, and stiffer strings (e.g., baby grands) have more inharmonicity. The longer strings on a concert grand can vibrate more freely than the shorter, thicker strings on a baby grand, which means that a concert grand's strings will have truer overtones. This is partly because the strings will be tuned closer to equal temperament in relation to the standard pitch with less "stretching" in the piano tuning (See: Piano tuning). Full-size grands are usually used for public concerts, whereas smaller grands, introduced by Sohmer & Co. in 1884, are often chosen for domestic use where space and cost are considerations.
Upright piano
Upright pianos, also called vertical pianos, are more compact because the frame and strings are vertical. It is considered harder to produce a sensitive piano action when the hammers move horizontally, as the vertical hammer return is dependent on springs which are prone to wear and tear. However, a well-regulated vertical piano will probably play more smoothly than a poorly regulated grand piano, and the very best upright pianos approach the level of some grand pianos of the same size in tone quality and responsiveness.
One noticeable advantage that the grand piano action has over the vertical action is that all grand pianos have a special repetition lever in the playing action that is absent in all verticals. This repetition lever, a separate one for every key, catches the hammer close to the strings as long as the keys are played repeatedly and fairly quickly. In this position, with the hammer resting on the lever, a pianist can play repeated notes, staccato, and trills with much more speed and control than is possible on a vertical piano.
Upright pianos with unusually tall frames and long strings are sometimes called "upright grand" pianos.
Some authors classify modern pianos according to their height and, to modifications of the action that are necessary to accomodate the height.
* Studio pianos are around 42 to 45 inches tall. This is the shortest cabinet that can accomodate a 'full-sized' action located above the keyboard.
* Console pianos have a compact action (shorter hammers), and are a few inches shorter than studio models.
* The top of a Spinet model barely rises above the keyboard. The action is located below, operated by vertical wires that are attached to the backs of the keys.
* Anything taller than a studio piano is called an upright.
Player piano
Toy pianos began to be manufactured in the 19th century. In 1863, Henri Fourneaux invented the player piano, which "plays itself" from a piano roll without the need for a pianist. The player piano is a piano that records a performance using rolls of paper with perforations, and then replays the performance using pneumatic devices. A modern equivalent for the player piano is the Yamaha Disklavier system, which uses solenoids and midi instead of pneumatics and rolls. Silent pianos, which allow a regular piano to be used converted to a digital instrument, are a recent innovation and are becoming more popular.
Irving Berlin played a special piano called the transposing piano, which was invented in 1801 by Edward Ryley. It had a lever under the keyboard used to alter the music to any key. One of Berlin's pianos is in the Smithsonian Museum. For much of his career, Berlin only knew how to play the black keys. But with his 'trick piano' he was no longer limited to the key of F-sharp.
A relatively recent development is the prepared piano, which is used in contemporary art music. A prepared piano is a standard grand piano which has had objects placed inside it before a performance in order to alter its sound, or which has had its mechanism changed in some way. The scores for music for prepared piano often instruct the pianist to insert pieces of rubber or small pieces of metal (screws or washers) in between the strings. These added items either mute the strings or create unusual vibrating sounds.
Since the 1980s, digital pianos have been available, which use digital sampling technology to reproduce the sound of each piano note. The best digital pianos are sophisticated, with features including working pedals, weighted keys, multiple voices, and MIDI interfaces. However, with such technology, it is difficult to duplicate one particular aspect of acoustic pianos, namely that when the damper pedal (see below) is depressed, the strings not struck vibrate sympathetically when other strings are struck, as well as the unique instrument-specific mathematical non-linearity of partials on any given unison. Since this sympathetic vibration is considered central to piano tone, many digital pianos do not sound the same as the best acoustic pianos. Progress is being made in this area by including physical models of sympathetic vibration in the synthesis software. Some higher end digital pianos, such as the Yamaha Clavinova series, or the KAWAI MP8 series, produced in the last few years incorporate string resonance technology to overcome this limitation.
With the advent of powerful desktop computers, highly realistic sampled digital grand pianos have become available as affordable software modules. Some use multi-gigabyte piano sample sets with as many as 90 recordings, each lasting many seconds, for each of the 88 keys under different conditions, augmented by additional samples to emulate sympathetic resonance, key release, the drop of the dampers, and simulations of piano techniques like re-pedaling.
Keyboard
Almost every modern piano has 36 black keys and 52 white keys for a total of 88 keys (seven octaves plus a minor third, from A0 to C8). Many older pianos only have 85 keys (seven octaves from A0 to A7), while some manufacturers extend the range further in one or both directions.
Some Bösendorfer pianos extend the normal range downwards to F0, with one other model going as far as a bottom C0, making a full eight octave range. These extra keys are sometimes hidden under a small hinged lid that can be flipped down to cover the keys in order to avoid visual disorientation in a pianist unfamiliar with the extended keyboard. On others, the colours of the extra white keys are reversed (black instead of white).
The extra keys are added primarily for increased resonance from the associated strings; that is, they vibrate sympathetically with other strings whenever the damper pedal is depressed and thus give a fuller tone. Only a very small number of works composed for piano actually use these notes. More recently, the Stuart and Sons company has also manufactured extended-range pianos. On their instruments, the range is extended both down the bass to F0 and up the treble to F8 for a full eight octaves. The extra keys are the same as the other keys in appearance.
Small studio upright acoustical pianos with only 65 keys have been manufactured for use by roving pianists. Known as "gig" pianos and still containing a cast iron harp, these are comparatively lightweight and can be easily transported to and from engagements by only two men. As their harp is longer than that of a spinet or console piano, they have a stronger bass sound that to some pianists is well worth the trade-off in range that a reduced key-set offers.
Piano pedals from left to right: una corda, sostenuto, and damper.
Pianos have had pedals, or some close equivalent, since the earliest days. (In the 18th century, some pianos used levers pressed upward by the player's knee instead of pedals.) Most grand pianos have three pedals: soft pedal (una corda), sostenuto, and sustain pedal (from left to right, respectively). Most modern upright pianos have three pedals: soft pedal, practice pedal and sustain pedal, though older or cheaper models may lack the practice pedal.
The sustain pedal (or, damper pedal) is often simply called "the pedal", since it is the most frequently used. It is placed as the rightmost pedal in the group. It lifts the dampers from all keys, sustaining all played notes, and altering the overall tone.
The soft pedal or una corda pedal is placed leftmost in the row of pedals. In grand pianos, it shifts the entire action, including the keyboard, to the right, so that the hammers hit only one of the three strings for each note (hence the name una corda, or 'one string'). The effect is to soften the note as well as to change the tone. In uprights, this action is not possible, and so the pedal moves the hammers closer to the strings, allowing the hammers to hit the strings with less kinetic energy to produce a softer sound.
On grand pianos, the middle pedal is a sostenuto pedal. This pedal keeps raised any damper that was already raised at the moment the pedal is depressed. This makes it possible to sustain some notes (by depressing the sostenuto pedal before notes to be sustained are released) while the player's hands are free to play other notes. This can be useful for musical passages with pedal points and other otherwise tricky or impossible situations.
On many upright pianos, there is a middle pedal called the 'practice' or celeste pedal. This drops a piece of felt between the hammers and strings, greatly muting the sounds.
There are also non-standard variants. On vertical pianos, the middle pedal can be a bass sustain pedal: that is, when it is depressed, the dampers lift off the strings only in the bass section. This pedal would be used only when a pianist needs to sustain a single bass note or chord over many measures, while playing the melody in the treble section. On the largest Fazioli piano, there is a fourth pedal to the left of the principal three. This fourth pedal works in the same way as the soft pedal of an upright piano, moving the hammers closer to the strings.
An upright pedal piano
The rare transposing piano, of which Irving Berlin possessed an example, had a middle pedal that functioned as a clutch which disengages the keyboard from the mechanism, enabling the keyboard to be moved to the left or right with a lever. The entire action of the piano is thus shifted to allow the pianist to play music written in one key so that it sounds in a different key. The pedalier piano, or pedal piano, is a rare type of piano that includes a pedalboard, enabling bass register notes to be played with the feet, as is standard on the organ. There are two types of pedal piano: the pedal board may be an integral part of the instrument, using the same strings and mechanism as the manual keyboard, or, less frequently, it may consist of two independent pianos (each with its separate mechanics and strings) which are placed one above the other, a regular piano played by the hands and a bass-register piano played by the feet.
Many parts of a piano are made of materials selected for sturdiness. In quality pianos, the outer rim of the piano is made of a hardwood, normally maple or beech. According to Harold A. Conklin, the purpose of a sturdy rim is so that "the vibrational energy will stay as much as possible in the soundboard instead of dissipating uselessly in the case parts, which are inefficient radiators of sound."
View from below of a 182-cm grand piano. In order of distance from viewer: softwood braces, tapered soundboard ribs, soundboard. The metal rod at lower right is a humidity control device.
The rim is normally made by laminating flexible strips of hardwood to the desired shape, a system that was developed by Theodore Steinway in 1880. The thick wooden braces at the bottom (grands) or back (uprights) of the piano are not as acoustically important as the rim, and are often made of a softwood, even in top-quality pianos, in order to save weight. The requirement of structural strength, fulfilled with stout hardwood and thick metal, makes a piano heavy; even a small upright can weigh 136 kg (300 lb), and the Steinway concert grand (Model D) weighs 480 kg (990 lb). The largest piano built, the Fazioli F308, weighs 691 kg (1520 lb).
The pinblock, which holds the tuning pins in place, is another area of the piano where toughness is important. It is made of hardwood, (often maple) and generally is laminated (built of multiple layers) for additional strength and gripping power. Piano strings (also called piano wire), which must endure years of extreme tension and hard blows, are made of high quality steel. They are manufactured to vary as little as possible in diameter, since all deviations from uniformity introduce tonal distortion. The bass strings of a piano are made of a steel core wrapped with copper wire, to increase their mass whilst retaining flexibility.
The plate, or metal frame, of a piano is usually made of cast iron. It is advantageous for the plate to be quite massive. Since the strings are attached to the plate at one end, any vibrations transmitted to the plate will result in loss of energy to the desired (efficient) channel of sound transmission, namely the bridge and the soundboard. Some manufacturers now use cast steel in their plates, for greater strength. The casting of the plate is a delicate art, since the dimensions are crucial and the iron shrinks by about one percent during cooling.
The inclusion in a piano of an extremely large piece of metal is potentially an aesthetic handicap, which piano makers overcome by polishing, painting and decorating the plate. Plates often include the manufacturer's ornamental medallion and can be strikingly attractive. In an effort to make pianos lighter, Alcoa worked with Winter and Company piano manufacturers to make pianos using an aluminum plate during the 1940s. The use of aluminum for piano plates, however, did not become widely accepted and was discontinued.
The numerous grand parts and upright parts of a piano action are generally hardwood (e.g. maple, beech. hornbeam). However, since World War II, plastics have become available. Early plastics were incorporated into some pianos in the late 1940s and 1950s, but proved disastrous because they crystallized and lost their strength after only a few decades of use. The Steinway firm once incorporated Teflon, a synthetic material developed by DuPont, for some grand action parts in place of cloth, but ultimately abandoned the experiment due to an inherent "clicking" which invariably developed over time. (Also Teflon is "humidity stable" whereas the wood adjacent to the Teflon will swell and shrink with humidity changes, causing problems.) More recently, the Kawai firm has built pianos with action parts made of more modern and effective plastics such as carbon fiber; these parts have held up better and have generally received the respect of piano technicians .
Ivorite and ebony keys on a modern Steinway & Sons concert grand piano.
The part of the piano where materials probably matter more than anywhere else is the soundboard. In quality pianos, this is made of solid spruce (that is, spruce boards glued together at their edges). Spruce is chosen for its high ratio of strength to weight. The best piano makers use close-grained, quarter-sawn, defect-free spruce, and make sure that it has been carefully dried over a long period of time before making it into soundboards. In cheap pianos, the soundboard is often made of plywood.
Piano keys are generally made of spruce or basswood, for lightness. Spruce is normally used in high-quality pianos. Traditionally, the black keys were made from ebony and the white keys were covered with strips of ivory, but since ivory-yielding species are now endangered and protected by treaty, plastics are now almost exclusively used. Also, ivory tends to chip more easily than plastic. Legal ivory can still be obtained in limited quantities. At one time, the Yamaha firm innovated a plastic called "Ivorine" or "Ivorite", since imitated by other makers, that mimics the look and feel of ivory.
A piano tuner
Pianos need regular tuning to keep them up to pitch, which is usually the internationally recognized standard concert pitch of A4 = 440 Hz. The hammers of pianos are voiced to compensate for gradual hardening, and other parts also need periodic regulation. Aged and worn pianos can be rebuilt or reconditioned. Often, by replacing a great number of their parts, they can be made to perform as well as new pianos. Older pianos are often more settled and produce a warmer tone.
Piano moving should be done by trained piano movers using adequate manpower and the correct equipment for any particular piano's size and weight. Pianos are heavy yet delicate instruments. Over the years, professional piano movers have developed special techniques for transporting both grands and uprights which prevent damage to the case and to the piano's mechanics.
The piano at the social center in the 19th century (Moritz von Schwind, 1868). The man at the piano is Franz Schubert.
The piano is a crucial instrument in Western classical music, jazz, film, television, and most other complex western musical genres. Since a large number of composers are proficient pianists â and because the piano keyboard offers an easy means of complex melodic and harmonic interplay â the piano is often used as a tool for composition.
Pianos were, and still are, popular instruments for private household ownership. Hence, pianos have gained a place in the popular consciousness, and are sometimes referred to by nicknames including: "the ivories", "the joanna", "the eighty-eight", and "the black(s) and white(s)", "the little joe(s)". Playing the piano is sometimes referred to as "tickling the ivories".
;General
* Innovations in the piano
* Jazz piano
* Piano acoustics
* Piano key frequencies (in equal temperament)
* Piano trio
* String piano
;Related lists
* List of films about pianists
* Lists of solo piano pieces
* List of piano makers
* List of piano brand names
* List of classical pianists (recorded)
;Related instruments
* Hammered dulcimer
* Harp
* Clavichord
* Harpsichord
* Organ and Pipe organ
* Electric piano
* Electronic piano
* The authoritative New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (available online by subscription), contains a wealth of information. Main article: "Pianoforte".
* The Encyclopædia Britannica (available online by subscription) also includes much information on the piano. In the 1988 edition, the primary article can be found in "Musical Instruments".
* The Piano Book by Larry Fine (4th ed. Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts: Brookside Press, 2001; ISBN 1-929145-01-2) gives the basics of how pianos work, and a thorough evaluative survey of current pianos and their manufacturers. It also includes advice on buying and owning pianos.
*Giraffes, black dragons, and other pianos: a technological history from Cristofori to the modern concert grand by Edwin M. Good (1982, second ed., 2001, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press) is a standard reference on the history of the piano.
*The Early Pianoforte by Stewart Pollens (1995, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) is an authoritative work covering the ancestry of the piano, its invention by Cristofori, and the early stages of its subsequent evolution.
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;Information
* Yamaha Musician - Yamaha piano reviews and enthusiast site
* Grand Piano information and images
* The Piano Page Lots of information from the Piano Technicians Guild
* WikiRecording's Guide to Recording Pianos
;History
* History of the Piano Forte, Association of Blind Piano Tuners, UK
* The Frederick Historical Piano Collection
;Piano Technique
* Principles of Piano Technique
;Sheet music for Piano
* All Piano Scores Free printable classical sheet music for piano + audio
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Piano | Did Bartolomeo Cristofori invent the modern piano? | Yes. | data/set2/a1 | Piano
Baby Grand Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard that produces sound by striking steel strings with felt covered hammers. The hammers immediately rebound, allowing the strings to continue vibrating at their resonant frequency. " Hammer Time" by John Kiehl, Wolfram Demonstrations Project. These vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a soundboard that couples the acoustic energy to the air so that it can be heard as sound.
The piano is widely used in Western music for solo performance, ensemble use, chamber music, and accompaniment. It is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal. Although not portable and often expensive, the piano's versatility and ubiquity have made it one of the most familiar musical instruments. It is sometimes classified as both a percussion and a stringed instrument. According to the Hornbostel-Sachs method of music classification, it is grouped with Chordophones.
The word piano is a shortened form of the word pianoforte, which is seldom used except in formal language and derived from the original Italian name for the instrument, clavicembalo [or gravicembalo] col piano e forte (literally harpsichord with soft and loud). This refers to the instrument's responsiveness to keyboard touch, which allows the pianist to produce notes at different dynamic levels by controlling the speed with which the hammers hit the strings.
Early piano replica by the modern builder Paul McNulty, after Walter & Sohn, 1805
The piano was originally founded on earlier technological innovations. The first string instruments with struck strings were the hammered dulcimers originating from the Persian traditional musical instrument santur. David R. Peterson (1994), "Acoustics of the hammered dulcimer, its history, and recent developments", Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 95 (5), p. 3002. During the Middle Ages, there were several attempts at creating stringed keyboard instruments with struck strings, Pollens, 1995. chp. 1 the earliest being the hurdy gurdy which has uncertain origins. By the 17th century, 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.
Grand piano by Louis Bas of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, France, 1781. Earliest French grand piano known to survive; includes an inverted wrestplank and action derived from the work of Bartolomeo Cristofiori (ca. 1700) with ornately decorated soundboard.
The invention of the modern piano is credited to Bartolomeo Cristofori of Padua, Italy, who was employed by Prince Ferdinand de Medici as the Keeper of the Instruments. He was an expert harpsichord maker and was well acquainted with the previous body of knowledge on stringed keyboard instruments. It is not known exactly when Cristofori first built a piano. An inventory made by his employers, the Medici family, indicates the existence of a piano by the year 1700; another document of doubtful authenticity indicates a date of 1698. The three Cristofori pianos that survive today date from the 1720s.
Cristofori's great success was in solving, without any prior example, the fundamental mechanical problem of piano design: the hammer must strike the string, but not remain in contact with it (as a tangent remains in contact with a clavichord string) because this would damp the sound. Moreover, the hammer must return to its rest position without bouncing violently, and it must be possible to repeat a note rapidly. Cristofori's piano action served as a model for the many different approaches to piano actions that followed. While Cristofori's early instruments were made with thin strings and were much quieter than the modern piano, compared to the clavichord (the only previous keyboard instrument capable of minutely controlled dynamic nuance through the keyboard) they were considerably louder and had more sustaining power.
Cristofori's new instrument remained relatively unknown until an Italian writer, Scipione Maffei, wrote an enthusiastic article about it (1711), including a diagram of the mechanism. This article was widely distributed, and most of the next generation of piano builders started their work because of reading it. One of these builders was Gottfried Silbermann, better known as an organ builder. Silbermann's pianos were virtually direct copies of Cristofori's, with one important addition: Silbermann invented the forerunner of the modern damper pedal, which lifts all the dampers from the strings at once.
Silbermann showed Johann Sebastian Bach one of his early instruments in the 1730s, but Bach did not like it at that time, claiming that the higher notes were too soft to allow a full dynamic range. Although this earned him some animosity from Silbermann, the criticism was apparently heeded. Bach did approve of a later instrument he saw in 1747, and even served as an agent in selling Silbermann's pianos.
Piano making flourished during the late 18th century in the Viennese school, which included Johann Andreas Stein (who worked in Augsburg, Germany) and the Viennese makers Nannette Streicher (daughter of Johann Andreas Stein) and Anton Walter. Viennese-style pianos were built with wood frames, two strings per note, and had leather-covered hammers. Some of these Viennese pianos had the opposite coloring of modern-day pianos; the natural keys were black and the accidental keys white. It was for such instruments that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed his concertos and sonatas, and replicas of them are built today for use in authentic-instrument performance of his music. The pianos of Mozart's day had a softer, clearer tone than today's pianos or English pianos, with less sustaining power. The term fortepiano is nowadays often used to distinguish the 18th-century instrument from later pianos.
In the period lasting from about 1790 to 1860, the Mozart-era piano underwent tremendous changes that led to the modern form of the instrument. This revolution was in response to a consistent preference by composers and pianists for a more powerful, sustained piano sound, and made possible by the ongoing Industrial Revolution with technological resources such as high-quality steel, called piano wire, for strings, and precision casting for the production of iron frames. Over time, the tonal range of the piano was also increased from the five octaves of Mozart's day to the 7â
or more octaves found on modern pianos.
Broadwood square action
Early technological progress owed much to the English firm of Broadwood, who already had a reputation for the splendour and powerful tone of its harpsichords. Broadwood constructed instruments that were progressively larger, louder, and more robustly constructed. They sent pianos to both Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven, and were the first firm to build pianos with a range of more than five octaves: five octaves and a fifth during the 1790s, six octaves by 1810 (Beethoven used the extra notes in his later works), and seven octaves by 1820. The Viennese makers similarly followed these trends, however the two schools used different piano actions: Broadwoods were more robust, Viennese instruments were more sensitive.
Erard square action
By the 1820s, the center of innovation had shifted to Paris, where the Pleyel firm manufactured pianos used by Frédéric Chopin and the Ãrard firm manufactured those used by Franz Liszt. In 1821, Sébastien Ãrard invented the double escapement action, which permitted a note to be repeated even if the key had not yet risen to its maximum vertical position. This facilitated rapid playing of repeated notes - and this musical device was pioneered by Liszt. When the invention became public, as revised by Henri Herz, the double escapement action gradually became standard in grand pianos, and is still incorporated into all grand pianos currently produced.
One of the major technical innovations that helped to create the sound of the modern piano was the use of a strong iron frame. Also called the "plate", the iron frame sits atop the soundboard, and serves as the primary bulwark against the force of string tension. The increased structural integrity of the iron frame allowed the use of thicker, tenser, and more numerous strings. In a modern grand the total string tension can exceed 20 tons. The single piece cast iron frame was patented in 1825 in Boston by Alpheus Babcock, combining the metal hitch pin plate (1821, claimed by Broadwood on behalf of Samuel Hervé) and resisting bars (Thom and Allen, 1820, but also claimed by Broadwood and Ãrard). Babcock later worked for the Chickering & Mackays firm who patented the first full iron frame for grand pianos in 1843. Composite forged metal frames were preferred by many European makers until the American system was fully adopted by the early 20th century.
Other innovations for the mechanism included the use of felt hammer coverings instead of layered leather hammers. Felt hammers, which were first introduced by Henri Pape in 1826, were a more consistent material, permitting wider dynamic ranges as hammer weights and string tension increased. The sostenuto pedal (see below), invented in 1844 by Jean Louis Boisselot and improved by the Steinway firm in 1874, allowed a wider range of effects.
Other important technical innovations of this era included changes to the way the piano was strung, such as the use of a "choir" of three strings rather than two for all but the lower notes, and the use of different stringing methods. With the over strung scale, also called "cross-stringing", the strings are placed in a vertically overlapping slanted arrangement, with two heights of bridges on the soundboard instead of just one. This permits larger, but not necessarily longer, strings to fit within the case of the piano. Over stringing was invented by Jean-Henri Pape during the 1820s, and first patented for use in grand pianos in the United States by Henry Steinway Jr. in 1859.
Duplex scaling: Treble strings of a 182 cm. grand piano. From lower left to upper right: dampers, main sounding length of strings, treble bridge, duplex string length, duplex bridge (long bar perpendicular to strings), hitchpins. With duplexes or aliquot scales, which was patented in 1872 by Theodore Steinway, the different components of string vibrations are controlled by tuning their secondary parts in octave relationships with the sounding lengths. Similar systems developed by Blüthner (1872), as well as Taskin (1788), and Collard (1821) used more distinctly ringing undamped vibrations to modify tone.
Some early pianos had shapes and designs that are no longer in use. The square piano had horizontal strings arranged diagonally across the rectangular case above the hammers and with the keyboard set in the long side. This design is attributed to Gottfried Silbermann or Christian Ernst Friderici on the continent, and Johannes Zumpe or Harman Vietor in England and it was improved by changes first introduced by Guillaume-Lebrecht Petzold in France and Alpheus Babcock in the United States. Square pianos were built in great numbers through the 1840s in Europe and the 1890s in America, and saw the most visible changes of any type of piano: the celebrated iron framed over strung squares manufactured by Steinway & Sons were more than two and a half times the size of Zumpe's wood framed instruments from a century before. Their overwhelming popularity was due to inexpensive construction and price, although their performance and tone were often limited by simple actions and closely spaced strings.
The mechanism in upright pianos is perpendicular to the keys.
The tall, vertically strung upright grand was arranged like a grand set on end, with the soundboard and bridges above the keys, and tuning pins below them. The term was later revived by many manufacturers for advertising purposes. Giraffe, pyramid and lyre pianos were arranged in a somewhat similar fashion in evocatively shaped cases.
The very tall cabinet piano was introduced about 1805 and was built through the 1840s. It had strings arranged vertically on a continuous frame with bridges extended nearly to the floor, behind the keyboard and very large sticker action. The short cottage upright or pianino with vertical stringing, made popular by Robert Wornum around 1815, was built into the 20th century. They are informally called birdcage pianos because of their prominent damper mechanism. Pianinos were distinguished from the oblique, or diagonally strung upright made popular in France by Roller & Blanchet during the late 1820s. The tiny spinet upright was manufactured from the mid-1930s until recent times. The low position of the hammers required the use of a "drop action" to preserve a reasonable keyboard height.
Modern upright and grand pianos attained their present forms by the end of the 19th century. Improvements have been made in manufacturing processes, and many individual details of the instrument continue to receive attention.
Much of the most widely admired piano repertoire, for example, that of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, was composed for a type of instrument that is rather different from the modern instruments on which this music is normally performed today. Even the music of the Romantics, including Liszt, Chopin, Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn and Johannes Brahms, was written for pianos substantially different from ours.
A schematic depiction of the construction of a pianoforte.
Modern pianos come in two basic configurations (with subcategories): the grand piano and the upright piano.
Grand piano
In grand pianos, the frame and strings are horizontal, with the strings extending away from the keyboard. There are several sizes of grand piano. A rough generalization distinguishes the "concert grand" (between about and long) from the "parlor grand" or "boudoir grand" (about to ) and the smaller "baby grand".
All else being equal, longer pianos with longer strings have better sound and lower inharmonicity of the strings. Inharmonicity is the degree to which the frequencies of overtones (known as partials, partial tones, or harmonics) depart from whole multiples of the fundamental frequency. Pianos with shorter, thicker, and stiffer strings (e.g., baby grands) have more inharmonicity. The longer strings on a concert grand can vibrate more freely than the shorter, thicker strings on a baby grand, which means that a concert grand's strings will have truer overtones. This is partly because the strings will be tuned closer to equal temperament in relation to the standard pitch with less "stretching" in the piano tuning (See: Piano tuning). Full-size grands are usually used for public concerts, whereas smaller grands, introduced by Sohmer & Co. in 1884, are often chosen for domestic use where space and cost are considerations.
Upright piano
Upright pianos, also called vertical pianos, are more compact because the frame and strings are vertical. It is considered harder to produce a sensitive piano action when the hammers move horizontally, as the vertical hammer return is dependent on springs which are prone to wear and tear. However, a well-regulated vertical piano will probably play more smoothly than a poorly regulated grand piano, and the very best upright pianos approach the level of some grand pianos of the same size in tone quality and responsiveness.
One noticeable advantage that the grand piano action has over the vertical action is that all grand pianos have a special repetition lever in the playing action that is absent in all verticals. This repetition lever, a separate one for every key, catches the hammer close to the strings as long as the keys are played repeatedly and fairly quickly. In this position, with the hammer resting on the lever, a pianist can play repeated notes, staccato, and trills with much more speed and control than is possible on a vertical piano.
Upright pianos with unusually tall frames and long strings are sometimes called "upright grand" pianos.
Some authors classify modern pianos according to their height and, to modifications of the action that are necessary to accomodate the height.
* Studio pianos are around 42 to 45 inches tall. This is the shortest cabinet that can accomodate a 'full-sized' action located above the keyboard.
* Console pianos have a compact action (shorter hammers), and are a few inches shorter than studio models.
* The top of a Spinet model barely rises above the keyboard. The action is located below, operated by vertical wires that are attached to the backs of the keys.
* Anything taller than a studio piano is called an upright.
Player piano
Toy pianos began to be manufactured in the 19th century. In 1863, Henri Fourneaux invented the player piano, which "plays itself" from a piano roll without the need for a pianist. The player piano is a piano that records a performance using rolls of paper with perforations, and then replays the performance using pneumatic devices. A modern equivalent for the player piano is the Yamaha Disklavier system, which uses solenoids and midi instead of pneumatics and rolls. Silent pianos, which allow a regular piano to be used converted to a digital instrument, are a recent innovation and are becoming more popular.
Irving Berlin played a special piano called the transposing piano, which was invented in 1801 by Edward Ryley. It had a lever under the keyboard used to alter the music to any key. One of Berlin's pianos is in the Smithsonian Museum. For much of his career, Berlin only knew how to play the black keys. But with his 'trick piano' he was no longer limited to the key of F-sharp.
A relatively recent development is the prepared piano, which is used in contemporary art music. A prepared piano is a standard grand piano which has had objects placed inside it before a performance in order to alter its sound, or which has had its mechanism changed in some way. The scores for music for prepared piano often instruct the pianist to insert pieces of rubber or small pieces of metal (screws or washers) in between the strings. These added items either mute the strings or create unusual vibrating sounds.
Since the 1980s, digital pianos have been available, which use digital sampling technology to reproduce the sound of each piano note. The best digital pianos are sophisticated, with features including working pedals, weighted keys, multiple voices, and MIDI interfaces. However, with such technology, it is difficult to duplicate one particular aspect of acoustic pianos, namely that when the damper pedal (see below) is depressed, the strings not struck vibrate sympathetically when other strings are struck, as well as the unique instrument-specific mathematical non-linearity of partials on any given unison. Since this sympathetic vibration is considered central to piano tone, many digital pianos do not sound the same as the best acoustic pianos. Progress is being made in this area by including physical models of sympathetic vibration in the synthesis software. Some higher end digital pianos, such as the Yamaha Clavinova series, or the KAWAI MP8 series, produced in the last few years incorporate string resonance technology to overcome this limitation.
With the advent of powerful desktop computers, highly realistic sampled digital grand pianos have become available as affordable software modules. Some use multi-gigabyte piano sample sets with as many as 90 recordings, each lasting many seconds, for each of the 88 keys under different conditions, augmented by additional samples to emulate sympathetic resonance, key release, the drop of the dampers, and simulations of piano techniques like re-pedaling.
Keyboard
Almost every modern piano has 36 black keys and 52 white keys for a total of 88 keys (seven octaves plus a minor third, from A0 to C8). Many older pianos only have 85 keys (seven octaves from A0 to A7), while some manufacturers extend the range further in one or both directions.
Some Bösendorfer pianos extend the normal range downwards to F0, with one other model going as far as a bottom C0, making a full eight octave range. These extra keys are sometimes hidden under a small hinged lid that can be flipped down to cover the keys in order to avoid visual disorientation in a pianist unfamiliar with the extended keyboard. On others, the colours of the extra white keys are reversed (black instead of white).
The extra keys are added primarily for increased resonance from the associated strings; that is, they vibrate sympathetically with other strings whenever the damper pedal is depressed and thus give a fuller tone. Only a very small number of works composed for piano actually use these notes. More recently, the Stuart and Sons company has also manufactured extended-range pianos. On their instruments, the range is extended both down the bass to F0 and up the treble to F8 for a full eight octaves. The extra keys are the same as the other keys in appearance.
Small studio upright acoustical pianos with only 65 keys have been manufactured for use by roving pianists. Known as "gig" pianos and still containing a cast iron harp, these are comparatively lightweight and can be easily transported to and from engagements by only two men. As their harp is longer than that of a spinet or console piano, they have a stronger bass sound that to some pianists is well worth the trade-off in range that a reduced key-set offers.
Piano pedals from left to right: una corda, sostenuto, and damper.
Pianos have had pedals, or some close equivalent, since the earliest days. (In the 18th century, some pianos used levers pressed upward by the player's knee instead of pedals.) Most grand pianos have three pedals: soft pedal (una corda), sostenuto, and sustain pedal (from left to right, respectively). Most modern upright pianos have three pedals: soft pedal, practice pedal and sustain pedal, though older or cheaper models may lack the practice pedal.
The sustain pedal (or, damper pedal) is often simply called "the pedal", since it is the most frequently used. It is placed as the rightmost pedal in the group. It lifts the dampers from all keys, sustaining all played notes, and altering the overall tone.
The soft pedal or una corda pedal is placed leftmost in the row of pedals. In grand pianos, it shifts the entire action, including the keyboard, to the right, so that the hammers hit only one of the three strings for each note (hence the name una corda, or 'one string'). The effect is to soften the note as well as to change the tone. In uprights, this action is not possible, and so the pedal moves the hammers closer to the strings, allowing the hammers to hit the strings with less kinetic energy to produce a softer sound.
On grand pianos, the middle pedal is a sostenuto pedal. This pedal keeps raised any damper that was already raised at the moment the pedal is depressed. This makes it possible to sustain some notes (by depressing the sostenuto pedal before notes to be sustained are released) while the player's hands are free to play other notes. This can be useful for musical passages with pedal points and other otherwise tricky or impossible situations.
On many upright pianos, there is a middle pedal called the 'practice' or celeste pedal. This drops a piece of felt between the hammers and strings, greatly muting the sounds.
There are also non-standard variants. On vertical pianos, the middle pedal can be a bass sustain pedal: that is, when it is depressed, the dampers lift off the strings only in the bass section. This pedal would be used only when a pianist needs to sustain a single bass note or chord over many measures, while playing the melody in the treble section. On the largest Fazioli piano, there is a fourth pedal to the left of the principal three. This fourth pedal works in the same way as the soft pedal of an upright piano, moving the hammers closer to the strings.
An upright pedal piano
The rare transposing piano, of which Irving Berlin possessed an example, had a middle pedal that functioned as a clutch which disengages the keyboard from the mechanism, enabling the keyboard to be moved to the left or right with a lever. The entire action of the piano is thus shifted to allow the pianist to play music written in one key so that it sounds in a different key. The pedalier piano, or pedal piano, is a rare type of piano that includes a pedalboard, enabling bass register notes to be played with the feet, as is standard on the organ. There are two types of pedal piano: the pedal board may be an integral part of the instrument, using the same strings and mechanism as the manual keyboard, or, less frequently, it may consist of two independent pianos (each with its separate mechanics and strings) which are placed one above the other, a regular piano played by the hands and a bass-register piano played by the feet.
Many parts of a piano are made of materials selected for sturdiness. In quality pianos, the outer rim of the piano is made of a hardwood, normally maple or beech. According to Harold A. Conklin, the purpose of a sturdy rim is so that "the vibrational energy will stay as much as possible in the soundboard instead of dissipating uselessly in the case parts, which are inefficient radiators of sound."
View from below of a 182-cm grand piano. In order of distance from viewer: softwood braces, tapered soundboard ribs, soundboard. The metal rod at lower right is a humidity control device.
The rim is normally made by laminating flexible strips of hardwood to the desired shape, a system that was developed by Theodore Steinway in 1880. The thick wooden braces at the bottom (grands) or back (uprights) of the piano are not as acoustically important as the rim, and are often made of a softwood, even in top-quality pianos, in order to save weight. The requirement of structural strength, fulfilled with stout hardwood and thick metal, makes a piano heavy; even a small upright can weigh 136 kg (300 lb), and the Steinway concert grand (Model D) weighs 480 kg (990 lb). The largest piano built, the Fazioli F308, weighs 691 kg (1520 lb).
The pinblock, which holds the tuning pins in place, is another area of the piano where toughness is important. It is made of hardwood, (often maple) and generally is laminated (built of multiple layers) for additional strength and gripping power. Piano strings (also called piano wire), which must endure years of extreme tension and hard blows, are made of high quality steel. They are manufactured to vary as little as possible in diameter, since all deviations from uniformity introduce tonal distortion. The bass strings of a piano are made of a steel core wrapped with copper wire, to increase their mass whilst retaining flexibility.
The plate, or metal frame, of a piano is usually made of cast iron. It is advantageous for the plate to be quite massive. Since the strings are attached to the plate at one end, any vibrations transmitted to the plate will result in loss of energy to the desired (efficient) channel of sound transmission, namely the bridge and the soundboard. Some manufacturers now use cast steel in their plates, for greater strength. The casting of the plate is a delicate art, since the dimensions are crucial and the iron shrinks by about one percent during cooling.
The inclusion in a piano of an extremely large piece of metal is potentially an aesthetic handicap, which piano makers overcome by polishing, painting and decorating the plate. Plates often include the manufacturer's ornamental medallion and can be strikingly attractive. In an effort to make pianos lighter, Alcoa worked with Winter and Company piano manufacturers to make pianos using an aluminum plate during the 1940s. The use of aluminum for piano plates, however, did not become widely accepted and was discontinued.
The numerous grand parts and upright parts of a piano action are generally hardwood (e.g. maple, beech. hornbeam). However, since World War II, plastics have become available. Early plastics were incorporated into some pianos in the late 1940s and 1950s, but proved disastrous because they crystallized and lost their strength after only a few decades of use. The Steinway firm once incorporated Teflon, a synthetic material developed by DuPont, for some grand action parts in place of cloth, but ultimately abandoned the experiment due to an inherent "clicking" which invariably developed over time. (Also Teflon is "humidity stable" whereas the wood adjacent to the Teflon will swell and shrink with humidity changes, causing problems.) More recently, the Kawai firm has built pianos with action parts made of more modern and effective plastics such as carbon fiber; these parts have held up better and have generally received the respect of piano technicians .
Ivorite and ebony keys on a modern Steinway & Sons concert grand piano.
The part of the piano where materials probably matter more than anywhere else is the soundboard. In quality pianos, this is made of solid spruce (that is, spruce boards glued together at their edges). Spruce is chosen for its high ratio of strength to weight. The best piano makers use close-grained, quarter-sawn, defect-free spruce, and make sure that it has been carefully dried over a long period of time before making it into soundboards. In cheap pianos, the soundboard is often made of plywood.
Piano keys are generally made of spruce or basswood, for lightness. Spruce is normally used in high-quality pianos. Traditionally, the black keys were made from ebony and the white keys were covered with strips of ivory, but since ivory-yielding species are now endangered and protected by treaty, plastics are now almost exclusively used. Also, ivory tends to chip more easily than plastic. Legal ivory can still be obtained in limited quantities. At one time, the Yamaha firm innovated a plastic called "Ivorine" or "Ivorite", since imitated by other makers, that mimics the look and feel of ivory.
A piano tuner
Pianos need regular tuning to keep them up to pitch, which is usually the internationally recognized standard concert pitch of A4 = 440 Hz. The hammers of pianos are voiced to compensate for gradual hardening, and other parts also need periodic regulation. Aged and worn pianos can be rebuilt or reconditioned. Often, by replacing a great number of their parts, they can be made to perform as well as new pianos. Older pianos are often more settled and produce a warmer tone.
Piano moving should be done by trained piano movers using adequate manpower and the correct equipment for any particular piano's size and weight. Pianos are heavy yet delicate instruments. Over the years, professional piano movers have developed special techniques for transporting both grands and uprights which prevent damage to the case and to the piano's mechanics.
The piano at the social center in the 19th century (Moritz von Schwind, 1868). The man at the piano is Franz Schubert.
The piano is a crucial instrument in Western classical music, jazz, film, television, and most other complex western musical genres. Since a large number of composers are proficient pianists â and because the piano keyboard offers an easy means of complex melodic and harmonic interplay â the piano is often used as a tool for composition.
Pianos were, and still are, popular instruments for private household ownership. Hence, pianos have gained a place in the popular consciousness, and are sometimes referred to by nicknames including: "the ivories", "the joanna", "the eighty-eight", and "the black(s) and white(s)", "the little joe(s)". Playing the piano is sometimes referred to as "tickling the ivories".
;General
* Innovations in the piano
* Jazz piano
* Piano acoustics
* Piano key frequencies (in equal temperament)
* Piano trio
* String piano
;Related lists
* List of films about pianists
* Lists of solo piano pieces
* List of piano makers
* List of piano brand names
* List of classical pianists (recorded)
;Related instruments
* Hammered dulcimer
* Harp
* Clavichord
* Harpsichord
* Organ and Pipe organ
* Electric piano
* Electronic piano
* The authoritative New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (available online by subscription), contains a wealth of information. Main article: "Pianoforte".
* The Encyclopædia Britannica (available online by subscription) also includes much information on the piano. In the 1988 edition, the primary article can be found in "Musical Instruments".
* The Piano Book by Larry Fine (4th ed. Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts: Brookside Press, 2001; ISBN 1-929145-01-2) gives the basics of how pianos work, and a thorough evaluative survey of current pianos and their manufacturers. It also includes advice on buying and owning pianos.
*Giraffes, black dragons, and other pianos: a technological history from Cristofori to the modern concert grand by Edwin M. Good (1982, second ed., 2001, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press) is a standard reference on the history of the piano.
*The Early Pianoforte by Stewart Pollens (1995, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) is an authoritative work covering the ancestry of the piano, its invention by Cristofori, and the early stages of its subsequent evolution.
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;Information
* Yamaha Musician - Yamaha piano reviews and enthusiast site
* Grand Piano information and images
* The Piano Page Lots of information from the Piano Technicians Guild
* WikiRecording's Guide to Recording Pianos
;History
* History of the Piano Forte, Association of Blind Piano Tuners, UK
* The Frederick Historical Piano Collection
;Piano Technique
* Principles of Piano Technique
;Sheet music for Piano
* All Piano Scores Free printable classical sheet music for piano + audio
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Piano | Did Bartolomeo Cristofori invent the modern piano? | Yes | data/set2/a1 | Piano
Baby Grand Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard that produces sound by striking steel strings with felt covered hammers. The hammers immediately rebound, allowing the strings to continue vibrating at their resonant frequency. " Hammer Time" by John Kiehl, Wolfram Demonstrations Project. These vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a soundboard that couples the acoustic energy to the air so that it can be heard as sound.
The piano is widely used in Western music for solo performance, ensemble use, chamber music, and accompaniment. It is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal. Although not portable and often expensive, the piano's versatility and ubiquity have made it one of the most familiar musical instruments. It is sometimes classified as both a percussion and a stringed instrument. According to the Hornbostel-Sachs method of music classification, it is grouped with Chordophones.
The word piano is a shortened form of the word pianoforte, which is seldom used except in formal language and derived from the original Italian name for the instrument, clavicembalo [or gravicembalo] col piano e forte (literally harpsichord with soft and loud). This refers to the instrument's responsiveness to keyboard touch, which allows the pianist to produce notes at different dynamic levels by controlling the speed with which the hammers hit the strings.
Early piano replica by the modern builder Paul McNulty, after Walter & Sohn, 1805
The piano was originally founded on earlier technological innovations. The first string instruments with struck strings were the hammered dulcimers originating from the Persian traditional musical instrument santur. David R. Peterson (1994), "Acoustics of the hammered dulcimer, its history, and recent developments", Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 95 (5), p. 3002. During the Middle Ages, there were several attempts at creating stringed keyboard instruments with struck strings, Pollens, 1995. chp. 1 the earliest being the hurdy gurdy which has uncertain origins. By the 17th century, 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.
Grand piano by Louis Bas of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, France, 1781. Earliest French grand piano known to survive; includes an inverted wrestplank and action derived from the work of Bartolomeo Cristofiori (ca. 1700) with ornately decorated soundboard.
The invention of the modern piano is credited to Bartolomeo Cristofori of Padua, Italy, who was employed by Prince Ferdinand de Medici as the Keeper of the Instruments. He was an expert harpsichord maker and was well acquainted with the previous body of knowledge on stringed keyboard instruments. It is not known exactly when Cristofori first built a piano. An inventory made by his employers, the Medici family, indicates the existence of a piano by the year 1700; another document of doubtful authenticity indicates a date of 1698. The three Cristofori pianos that survive today date from the 1720s.
Cristofori's great success was in solving, without any prior example, the fundamental mechanical problem of piano design: the hammer must strike the string, but not remain in contact with it (as a tangent remains in contact with a clavichord string) because this would damp the sound. Moreover, the hammer must return to its rest position without bouncing violently, and it must be possible to repeat a note rapidly. Cristofori's piano action served as a model for the many different approaches to piano actions that followed. While Cristofori's early instruments were made with thin strings and were much quieter than the modern piano, compared to the clavichord (the only previous keyboard instrument capable of minutely controlled dynamic nuance through the keyboard) they were considerably louder and had more sustaining power.
Cristofori's new instrument remained relatively unknown until an Italian writer, Scipione Maffei, wrote an enthusiastic article about it (1711), including a diagram of the mechanism. This article was widely distributed, and most of the next generation of piano builders started their work because of reading it. One of these builders was Gottfried Silbermann, better known as an organ builder. Silbermann's pianos were virtually direct copies of Cristofori's, with one important addition: Silbermann invented the forerunner of the modern damper pedal, which lifts all the dampers from the strings at once.
Silbermann showed Johann Sebastian Bach one of his early instruments in the 1730s, but Bach did not like it at that time, claiming that the higher notes were too soft to allow a full dynamic range. Although this earned him some animosity from Silbermann, the criticism was apparently heeded. Bach did approve of a later instrument he saw in 1747, and even served as an agent in selling Silbermann's pianos.
Piano making flourished during the late 18th century in the Viennese school, which included Johann Andreas Stein (who worked in Augsburg, Germany) and the Viennese makers Nannette Streicher (daughter of Johann Andreas Stein) and Anton Walter. Viennese-style pianos were built with wood frames, two strings per note, and had leather-covered hammers. Some of these Viennese pianos had the opposite coloring of modern-day pianos; the natural keys were black and the accidental keys white. It was for such instruments that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed his concertos and sonatas, and replicas of them are built today for use in authentic-instrument performance of his music. The pianos of Mozart's day had a softer, clearer tone than today's pianos or English pianos, with less sustaining power. The term fortepiano is nowadays often used to distinguish the 18th-century instrument from later pianos.
In the period lasting from about 1790 to 1860, the Mozart-era piano underwent tremendous changes that led to the modern form of the instrument. This revolution was in response to a consistent preference by composers and pianists for a more powerful, sustained piano sound, and made possible by the ongoing Industrial Revolution with technological resources such as high-quality steel, called piano wire, for strings, and precision casting for the production of iron frames. Over time, the tonal range of the piano was also increased from the five octaves of Mozart's day to the 7â
or more octaves found on modern pianos.
Broadwood square action
Early technological progress owed much to the English firm of Broadwood, who already had a reputation for the splendour and powerful tone of its harpsichords. Broadwood constructed instruments that were progressively larger, louder, and more robustly constructed. They sent pianos to both Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven, and were the first firm to build pianos with a range of more than five octaves: five octaves and a fifth during the 1790s, six octaves by 1810 (Beethoven used the extra notes in his later works), and seven octaves by 1820. The Viennese makers similarly followed these trends, however the two schools used different piano actions: Broadwoods were more robust, Viennese instruments were more sensitive.
Erard square action
By the 1820s, the center of innovation had shifted to Paris, where the Pleyel firm manufactured pianos used by Frédéric Chopin and the Ãrard firm manufactured those used by Franz Liszt. In 1821, Sébastien Ãrard invented the double escapement action, which permitted a note to be repeated even if the key had not yet risen to its maximum vertical position. This facilitated rapid playing of repeated notes - and this musical device was pioneered by Liszt. When the invention became public, as revised by Henri Herz, the double escapement action gradually became standard in grand pianos, and is still incorporated into all grand pianos currently produced.
One of the major technical innovations that helped to create the sound of the modern piano was the use of a strong iron frame. Also called the "plate", the iron frame sits atop the soundboard, and serves as the primary bulwark against the force of string tension. The increased structural integrity of the iron frame allowed the use of thicker, tenser, and more numerous strings. In a modern grand the total string tension can exceed 20 tons. The single piece cast iron frame was patented in 1825 in Boston by Alpheus Babcock, combining the metal hitch pin plate (1821, claimed by Broadwood on behalf of Samuel Hervé) and resisting bars (Thom and Allen, 1820, but also claimed by Broadwood and Ãrard). Babcock later worked for the Chickering & Mackays firm who patented the first full iron frame for grand pianos in 1843. Composite forged metal frames were preferred by many European makers until the American system was fully adopted by the early 20th century.
Other innovations for the mechanism included the use of felt hammer coverings instead of layered leather hammers. Felt hammers, which were first introduced by Henri Pape in 1826, were a more consistent material, permitting wider dynamic ranges as hammer weights and string tension increased. The sostenuto pedal (see below), invented in 1844 by Jean Louis Boisselot and improved by the Steinway firm in 1874, allowed a wider range of effects.
Other important technical innovations of this era included changes to the way the piano was strung, such as the use of a "choir" of three strings rather than two for all but the lower notes, and the use of different stringing methods. With the over strung scale, also called "cross-stringing", the strings are placed in a vertically overlapping slanted arrangement, with two heights of bridges on the soundboard instead of just one. This permits larger, but not necessarily longer, strings to fit within the case of the piano. Over stringing was invented by Jean-Henri Pape during the 1820s, and first patented for use in grand pianos in the United States by Henry Steinway Jr. in 1859.
Duplex scaling: Treble strings of a 182 cm. grand piano. From lower left to upper right: dampers, main sounding length of strings, treble bridge, duplex string length, duplex bridge (long bar perpendicular to strings), hitchpins. With duplexes or aliquot scales, which was patented in 1872 by Theodore Steinway, the different components of string vibrations are controlled by tuning their secondary parts in octave relationships with the sounding lengths. Similar systems developed by Blüthner (1872), as well as Taskin (1788), and Collard (1821) used more distinctly ringing undamped vibrations to modify tone.
Some early pianos had shapes and designs that are no longer in use. The square piano had horizontal strings arranged diagonally across the rectangular case above the hammers and with the keyboard set in the long side. This design is attributed to Gottfried Silbermann or Christian Ernst Friderici on the continent, and Johannes Zumpe or Harman Vietor in England and it was improved by changes first introduced by Guillaume-Lebrecht Petzold in France and Alpheus Babcock in the United States. Square pianos were built in great numbers through the 1840s in Europe and the 1890s in America, and saw the most visible changes of any type of piano: the celebrated iron framed over strung squares manufactured by Steinway & Sons were more than two and a half times the size of Zumpe's wood framed instruments from a century before. Their overwhelming popularity was due to inexpensive construction and price, although their performance and tone were often limited by simple actions and closely spaced strings.
The mechanism in upright pianos is perpendicular to the keys.
The tall, vertically strung upright grand was arranged like a grand set on end, with the soundboard and bridges above the keys, and tuning pins below them. The term was later revived by many manufacturers for advertising purposes. Giraffe, pyramid and lyre pianos were arranged in a somewhat similar fashion in evocatively shaped cases.
The very tall cabinet piano was introduced about 1805 and was built through the 1840s. It had strings arranged vertically on a continuous frame with bridges extended nearly to the floor, behind the keyboard and very large sticker action. The short cottage upright or pianino with vertical stringing, made popular by Robert Wornum around 1815, was built into the 20th century. They are informally called birdcage pianos because of their prominent damper mechanism. Pianinos were distinguished from the oblique, or diagonally strung upright made popular in France by Roller & Blanchet during the late 1820s. The tiny spinet upright was manufactured from the mid-1930s until recent times. The low position of the hammers required the use of a "drop action" to preserve a reasonable keyboard height.
Modern upright and grand pianos attained their present forms by the end of the 19th century. Improvements have been made in manufacturing processes, and many individual details of the instrument continue to receive attention.
Much of the most widely admired piano repertoire, for example, that of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, was composed for a type of instrument that is rather different from the modern instruments on which this music is normally performed today. Even the music of the Romantics, including Liszt, Chopin, Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn and Johannes Brahms, was written for pianos substantially different from ours.
A schematic depiction of the construction of a pianoforte.
Modern pianos come in two basic configurations (with subcategories): the grand piano and the upright piano.
Grand piano
In grand pianos, the frame and strings are horizontal, with the strings extending away from the keyboard. There are several sizes of grand piano. A rough generalization distinguishes the "concert grand" (between about and long) from the "parlor grand" or "boudoir grand" (about to ) and the smaller "baby grand".
All else being equal, longer pianos with longer strings have better sound and lower inharmonicity of the strings. Inharmonicity is the degree to which the frequencies of overtones (known as partials, partial tones, or harmonics) depart from whole multiples of the fundamental frequency. Pianos with shorter, thicker, and stiffer strings (e.g., baby grands) have more inharmonicity. The longer strings on a concert grand can vibrate more freely than the shorter, thicker strings on a baby grand, which means that a concert grand's strings will have truer overtones. This is partly because the strings will be tuned closer to equal temperament in relation to the standard pitch with less "stretching" in the piano tuning (See: Piano tuning). Full-size grands are usually used for public concerts, whereas smaller grands, introduced by Sohmer & Co. in 1884, are often chosen for domestic use where space and cost are considerations.
Upright piano
Upright pianos, also called vertical pianos, are more compact because the frame and strings are vertical. It is considered harder to produce a sensitive piano action when the hammers move horizontally, as the vertical hammer return is dependent on springs which are prone to wear and tear. However, a well-regulated vertical piano will probably play more smoothly than a poorly regulated grand piano, and the very best upright pianos approach the level of some grand pianos of the same size in tone quality and responsiveness.
One noticeable advantage that the grand piano action has over the vertical action is that all grand pianos have a special repetition lever in the playing action that is absent in all verticals. This repetition lever, a separate one for every key, catches the hammer close to the strings as long as the keys are played repeatedly and fairly quickly. In this position, with the hammer resting on the lever, a pianist can play repeated notes, staccato, and trills with much more speed and control than is possible on a vertical piano.
Upright pianos with unusually tall frames and long strings are sometimes called "upright grand" pianos.
Some authors classify modern pianos according to their height and, to modifications of the action that are necessary to accomodate the height.
* Studio pianos are around 42 to 45 inches tall. This is the shortest cabinet that can accomodate a 'full-sized' action located above the keyboard.
* Console pianos have a compact action (shorter hammers), and are a few inches shorter than studio models.
* The top of a Spinet model barely rises above the keyboard. The action is located below, operated by vertical wires that are attached to the backs of the keys.
* Anything taller than a studio piano is called an upright.
Player piano
Toy pianos began to be manufactured in the 19th century. In 1863, Henri Fourneaux invented the player piano, which "plays itself" from a piano roll without the need for a pianist. The player piano is a piano that records a performance using rolls of paper with perforations, and then replays the performance using pneumatic devices. A modern equivalent for the player piano is the Yamaha Disklavier system, which uses solenoids and midi instead of pneumatics and rolls. Silent pianos, which allow a regular piano to be used converted to a digital instrument, are a recent innovation and are becoming more popular.
Irving Berlin played a special piano called the transposing piano, which was invented in 1801 by Edward Ryley. It had a lever under the keyboard used to alter the music to any key. One of Berlin's pianos is in the Smithsonian Museum. For much of his career, Berlin only knew how to play the black keys. But with his 'trick piano' he was no longer limited to the key of F-sharp.
A relatively recent development is the prepared piano, which is used in contemporary art music. A prepared piano is a standard grand piano which has had objects placed inside it before a performance in order to alter its sound, or which has had its mechanism changed in some way. The scores for music for prepared piano often instruct the pianist to insert pieces of rubber or small pieces of metal (screws or washers) in between the strings. These added items either mute the strings or create unusual vibrating sounds.
Since the 1980s, digital pianos have been available, which use digital sampling technology to reproduce the sound of each piano note. The best digital pianos are sophisticated, with features including working pedals, weighted keys, multiple voices, and MIDI interfaces. However, with such technology, it is difficult to duplicate one particular aspect of acoustic pianos, namely that when the damper pedal (see below) is depressed, the strings not struck vibrate sympathetically when other strings are struck, as well as the unique instrument-specific mathematical non-linearity of partials on any given unison. Since this sympathetic vibration is considered central to piano tone, many digital pianos do not sound the same as the best acoustic pianos. Progress is being made in this area by including physical models of sympathetic vibration in the synthesis software. Some higher end digital pianos, such as the Yamaha Clavinova series, or the KAWAI MP8 series, produced in the last few years incorporate string resonance technology to overcome this limitation.
With the advent of powerful desktop computers, highly realistic sampled digital grand pianos have become available as affordable software modules. Some use multi-gigabyte piano sample sets with as many as 90 recordings, each lasting many seconds, for each of the 88 keys under different conditions, augmented by additional samples to emulate sympathetic resonance, key release, the drop of the dampers, and simulations of piano techniques like re-pedaling.
Keyboard
Almost every modern piano has 36 black keys and 52 white keys for a total of 88 keys (seven octaves plus a minor third, from A0 to C8). Many older pianos only have 85 keys (seven octaves from A0 to A7), while some manufacturers extend the range further in one or both directions.
Some Bösendorfer pianos extend the normal range downwards to F0, with one other model going as far as a bottom C0, making a full eight octave range. These extra keys are sometimes hidden under a small hinged lid that can be flipped down to cover the keys in order to avoid visual disorientation in a pianist unfamiliar with the extended keyboard. On others, the colours of the extra white keys are reversed (black instead of white).
The extra keys are added primarily for increased resonance from the associated strings; that is, they vibrate sympathetically with other strings whenever the damper pedal is depressed and thus give a fuller tone. Only a very small number of works composed for piano actually use these notes. More recently, the Stuart and Sons company has also manufactured extended-range pianos. On their instruments, the range is extended both down the bass to F0 and up the treble to F8 for a full eight octaves. The extra keys are the same as the other keys in appearance.
Small studio upright acoustical pianos with only 65 keys have been manufactured for use by roving pianists. Known as "gig" pianos and still containing a cast iron harp, these are comparatively lightweight and can be easily transported to and from engagements by only two men. As their harp is longer than that of a spinet or console piano, they have a stronger bass sound that to some pianists is well worth the trade-off in range that a reduced key-set offers.
Piano pedals from left to right: una corda, sostenuto, and damper.
Pianos have had pedals, or some close equivalent, since the earliest days. (In the 18th century, some pianos used levers pressed upward by the player's knee instead of pedals.) Most grand pianos have three pedals: soft pedal (una corda), sostenuto, and sustain pedal (from left to right, respectively). Most modern upright pianos have three pedals: soft pedal, practice pedal and sustain pedal, though older or cheaper models may lack the practice pedal.
The sustain pedal (or, damper pedal) is often simply called "the pedal", since it is the most frequently used. It is placed as the rightmost pedal in the group. It lifts the dampers from all keys, sustaining all played notes, and altering the overall tone.
The soft pedal or una corda pedal is placed leftmost in the row of pedals. In grand pianos, it shifts the entire action, including the keyboard, to the right, so that the hammers hit only one of the three strings for each note (hence the name una corda, or 'one string'). The effect is to soften the note as well as to change the tone. In uprights, this action is not possible, and so the pedal moves the hammers closer to the strings, allowing the hammers to hit the strings with less kinetic energy to produce a softer sound.
On grand pianos, the middle pedal is a sostenuto pedal. This pedal keeps raised any damper that was already raised at the moment the pedal is depressed. This makes it possible to sustain some notes (by depressing the sostenuto pedal before notes to be sustained are released) while the player's hands are free to play other notes. This can be useful for musical passages with pedal points and other otherwise tricky or impossible situations.
On many upright pianos, there is a middle pedal called the 'practice' or celeste pedal. This drops a piece of felt between the hammers and strings, greatly muting the sounds.
There are also non-standard variants. On vertical pianos, the middle pedal can be a bass sustain pedal: that is, when it is depressed, the dampers lift off the strings only in the bass section. This pedal would be used only when a pianist needs to sustain a single bass note or chord over many measures, while playing the melody in the treble section. On the largest Fazioli piano, there is a fourth pedal to the left of the principal three. This fourth pedal works in the same way as the soft pedal of an upright piano, moving the hammers closer to the strings.
An upright pedal piano
The rare transposing piano, of which Irving Berlin possessed an example, had a middle pedal that functioned as a clutch which disengages the keyboard from the mechanism, enabling the keyboard to be moved to the left or right with a lever. The entire action of the piano is thus shifted to allow the pianist to play music written in one key so that it sounds in a different key. The pedalier piano, or pedal piano, is a rare type of piano that includes a pedalboard, enabling bass register notes to be played with the feet, as is standard on the organ. There are two types of pedal piano: the pedal board may be an integral part of the instrument, using the same strings and mechanism as the manual keyboard, or, less frequently, it may consist of two independent pianos (each with its separate mechanics and strings) which are placed one above the other, a regular piano played by the hands and a bass-register piano played by the feet.
Many parts of a piano are made of materials selected for sturdiness. In quality pianos, the outer rim of the piano is made of a hardwood, normally maple or beech. According to Harold A. Conklin, the purpose of a sturdy rim is so that "the vibrational energy will stay as much as possible in the soundboard instead of dissipating uselessly in the case parts, which are inefficient radiators of sound."
View from below of a 182-cm grand piano. In order of distance from viewer: softwood braces, tapered soundboard ribs, soundboard. The metal rod at lower right is a humidity control device.
The rim is normally made by laminating flexible strips of hardwood to the desired shape, a system that was developed by Theodore Steinway in 1880. The thick wooden braces at the bottom (grands) or back (uprights) of the piano are not as acoustically important as the rim, and are often made of a softwood, even in top-quality pianos, in order to save weight. The requirement of structural strength, fulfilled with stout hardwood and thick metal, makes a piano heavy; even a small upright can weigh 136 kg (300 lb), and the Steinway concert grand (Model D) weighs 480 kg (990 lb). The largest piano built, the Fazioli F308, weighs 691 kg (1520 lb).
The pinblock, which holds the tuning pins in place, is another area of the piano where toughness is important. It is made of hardwood, (often maple) and generally is laminated (built of multiple layers) for additional strength and gripping power. Piano strings (also called piano wire), which must endure years of extreme tension and hard blows, are made of high quality steel. They are manufactured to vary as little as possible in diameter, since all deviations from uniformity introduce tonal distortion. The bass strings of a piano are made of a steel core wrapped with copper wire, to increase their mass whilst retaining flexibility.
The plate, or metal frame, of a piano is usually made of cast iron. It is advantageous for the plate to be quite massive. Since the strings are attached to the plate at one end, any vibrations transmitted to the plate will result in loss of energy to the desired (efficient) channel of sound transmission, namely the bridge and the soundboard. Some manufacturers now use cast steel in their plates, for greater strength. The casting of the plate is a delicate art, since the dimensions are crucial and the iron shrinks by about one percent during cooling.
The inclusion in a piano of an extremely large piece of metal is potentially an aesthetic handicap, which piano makers overcome by polishing, painting and decorating the plate. Plates often include the manufacturer's ornamental medallion and can be strikingly attractive. In an effort to make pianos lighter, Alcoa worked with Winter and Company piano manufacturers to make pianos using an aluminum plate during the 1940s. The use of aluminum for piano plates, however, did not become widely accepted and was discontinued.
The numerous grand parts and upright parts of a piano action are generally hardwood (e.g. maple, beech. hornbeam). However, since World War II, plastics have become available. Early plastics were incorporated into some pianos in the late 1940s and 1950s, but proved disastrous because they crystallized and lost their strength after only a few decades of use. The Steinway firm once incorporated Teflon, a synthetic material developed by DuPont, for some grand action parts in place of cloth, but ultimately abandoned the experiment due to an inherent "clicking" which invariably developed over time. (Also Teflon is "humidity stable" whereas the wood adjacent to the Teflon will swell and shrink with humidity changes, causing problems.) More recently, the Kawai firm has built pianos with action parts made of more modern and effective plastics such as carbon fiber; these parts have held up better and have generally received the respect of piano technicians .
Ivorite and ebony keys on a modern Steinway & Sons concert grand piano.
The part of the piano where materials probably matter more than anywhere else is the soundboard. In quality pianos, this is made of solid spruce (that is, spruce boards glued together at their edges). Spruce is chosen for its high ratio of strength to weight. The best piano makers use close-grained, quarter-sawn, defect-free spruce, and make sure that it has been carefully dried over a long period of time before making it into soundboards. In cheap pianos, the soundboard is often made of plywood.
Piano keys are generally made of spruce or basswood, for lightness. Spruce is normally used in high-quality pianos. Traditionally, the black keys were made from ebony and the white keys were covered with strips of ivory, but since ivory-yielding species are now endangered and protected by treaty, plastics are now almost exclusively used. Also, ivory tends to chip more easily than plastic. Legal ivory can still be obtained in limited quantities. At one time, the Yamaha firm innovated a plastic called "Ivorine" or "Ivorite", since imitated by other makers, that mimics the look and feel of ivory.
A piano tuner
Pianos need regular tuning to keep them up to pitch, which is usually the internationally recognized standard concert pitch of A4 = 440 Hz. The hammers of pianos are voiced to compensate for gradual hardening, and other parts also need periodic regulation. Aged and worn pianos can be rebuilt or reconditioned. Often, by replacing a great number of their parts, they can be made to perform as well as new pianos. Older pianos are often more settled and produce a warmer tone.
Piano moving should be done by trained piano movers using adequate manpower and the correct equipment for any particular piano's size and weight. Pianos are heavy yet delicate instruments. Over the years, professional piano movers have developed special techniques for transporting both grands and uprights which prevent damage to the case and to the piano's mechanics.
The piano at the social center in the 19th century (Moritz von Schwind, 1868). The man at the piano is Franz Schubert.
The piano is a crucial instrument in Western classical music, jazz, film, television, and most other complex western musical genres. Since a large number of composers are proficient pianists â and because the piano keyboard offers an easy means of complex melodic and harmonic interplay â the piano is often used as a tool for composition.
Pianos were, and still are, popular instruments for private household ownership. Hence, pianos have gained a place in the popular consciousness, and are sometimes referred to by nicknames including: "the ivories", "the joanna", "the eighty-eight", and "the black(s) and white(s)", "the little joe(s)". Playing the piano is sometimes referred to as "tickling the ivories".
;General
* Innovations in the piano
* Jazz piano
* Piano acoustics
* Piano key frequencies (in equal temperament)
* Piano trio
* String piano
;Related lists
* List of films about pianists
* Lists of solo piano pieces
* List of piano makers
* List of piano brand names
* List of classical pianists (recorded)
;Related instruments
* Hammered dulcimer
* Harp
* Clavichord
* Harpsichord
* Organ and Pipe organ
* Electric piano
* Electronic piano
* The authoritative New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (available online by subscription), contains a wealth of information. Main article: "Pianoforte".
* The Encyclopædia Britannica (available online by subscription) also includes much information on the piano. In the 1988 edition, the primary article can be found in "Musical Instruments".
* The Piano Book by Larry Fine (4th ed. Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts: Brookside Press, 2001; ISBN 1-929145-01-2) gives the basics of how pianos work, and a thorough evaluative survey of current pianos and their manufacturers. It also includes advice on buying and owning pianos.
*Giraffes, black dragons, and other pianos: a technological history from Cristofori to the modern concert grand by Edwin M. Good (1982, second ed., 2001, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press) is a standard reference on the history of the piano.
*The Early Pianoforte by Stewart Pollens (1995, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) is an authoritative work covering the ancestry of the piano, its invention by Cristofori, and the early stages of its subsequent evolution.
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;Information
* Yamaha Musician - Yamaha piano reviews and enthusiast site
* Grand Piano information and images
* The Piano Page Lots of information from the Piano Technicians Guild
* WikiRecording's Guide to Recording Pianos
;History
* History of the Piano Forte, Association of Blind Piano Tuners, UK
* The Frederick Historical Piano Collection
;Piano Technique
* Principles of Piano Technique
;Sheet music for Piano
* All Piano Scores Free printable classical sheet music for piano + audio
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Piano | What is the middle pedal called on grand pianos? | the sostenuto pedal. | data/set2/a1 | Piano
Baby Grand Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard that produces sound by striking steel strings with felt covered hammers. The hammers immediately rebound, allowing the strings to continue vibrating at their resonant frequency. " Hammer Time" by John Kiehl, Wolfram Demonstrations Project. These vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a soundboard that couples the acoustic energy to the air so that it can be heard as sound.
The piano is widely used in Western music for solo performance, ensemble use, chamber music, and accompaniment. It is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal. Although not portable and often expensive, the piano's versatility and ubiquity have made it one of the most familiar musical instruments. It is sometimes classified as both a percussion and a stringed instrument. According to the Hornbostel-Sachs method of music classification, it is grouped with Chordophones.
The word piano is a shortened form of the word pianoforte, which is seldom used except in formal language and derived from the original Italian name for the instrument, clavicembalo [or gravicembalo] col piano e forte (literally harpsichord with soft and loud). This refers to the instrument's responsiveness to keyboard touch, which allows the pianist to produce notes at different dynamic levels by controlling the speed with which the hammers hit the strings.
Early piano replica by the modern builder Paul McNulty, after Walter & Sohn, 1805
The piano was originally founded on earlier technological innovations. The first string instruments with struck strings were the hammered dulcimers originating from the Persian traditional musical instrument santur. David R. Peterson (1994), "Acoustics of the hammered dulcimer, its history, and recent developments", Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 95 (5), p. 3002. During the Middle Ages, there were several attempts at creating stringed keyboard instruments with struck strings, Pollens, 1995. chp. 1 the earliest being the hurdy gurdy which has uncertain origins. By the 17th century, 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.
Grand piano by Louis Bas of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, France, 1781. Earliest French grand piano known to survive; includes an inverted wrestplank and action derived from the work of Bartolomeo Cristofiori (ca. 1700) with ornately decorated soundboard.
The invention of the modern piano is credited to Bartolomeo Cristofori of Padua, Italy, who was employed by Prince Ferdinand de Medici as the Keeper of the Instruments. He was an expert harpsichord maker and was well acquainted with the previous body of knowledge on stringed keyboard instruments. It is not known exactly when Cristofori first built a piano. An inventory made by his employers, the Medici family, indicates the existence of a piano by the year 1700; another document of doubtful authenticity indicates a date of 1698. The three Cristofori pianos that survive today date from the 1720s.
Cristofori's great success was in solving, without any prior example, the fundamental mechanical problem of piano design: the hammer must strike the string, but not remain in contact with it (as a tangent remains in contact with a clavichord string) because this would damp the sound. Moreover, the hammer must return to its rest position without bouncing violently, and it must be possible to repeat a note rapidly. Cristofori's piano action served as a model for the many different approaches to piano actions that followed. While Cristofori's early instruments were made with thin strings and were much quieter than the modern piano, compared to the clavichord (the only previous keyboard instrument capable of minutely controlled dynamic nuance through the keyboard) they were considerably louder and had more sustaining power.
Cristofori's new instrument remained relatively unknown until an Italian writer, Scipione Maffei, wrote an enthusiastic article about it (1711), including a diagram of the mechanism. This article was widely distributed, and most of the next generation of piano builders started their work because of reading it. One of these builders was Gottfried Silbermann, better known as an organ builder. Silbermann's pianos were virtually direct copies of Cristofori's, with one important addition: Silbermann invented the forerunner of the modern damper pedal, which lifts all the dampers from the strings at once.
Silbermann showed Johann Sebastian Bach one of his early instruments in the 1730s, but Bach did not like it at that time, claiming that the higher notes were too soft to allow a full dynamic range. Although this earned him some animosity from Silbermann, the criticism was apparently heeded. Bach did approve of a later instrument he saw in 1747, and even served as an agent in selling Silbermann's pianos.
Piano making flourished during the late 18th century in the Viennese school, which included Johann Andreas Stein (who worked in Augsburg, Germany) and the Viennese makers Nannette Streicher (daughter of Johann Andreas Stein) and Anton Walter. Viennese-style pianos were built with wood frames, two strings per note, and had leather-covered hammers. Some of these Viennese pianos had the opposite coloring of modern-day pianos; the natural keys were black and the accidental keys white. It was for such instruments that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed his concertos and sonatas, and replicas of them are built today for use in authentic-instrument performance of his music. The pianos of Mozart's day had a softer, clearer tone than today's pianos or English pianos, with less sustaining power. The term fortepiano is nowadays often used to distinguish the 18th-century instrument from later pianos.
In the period lasting from about 1790 to 1860, the Mozart-era piano underwent tremendous changes that led to the modern form of the instrument. This revolution was in response to a consistent preference by composers and pianists for a more powerful, sustained piano sound, and made possible by the ongoing Industrial Revolution with technological resources such as high-quality steel, called piano wire, for strings, and precision casting for the production of iron frames. Over time, the tonal range of the piano was also increased from the five octaves of Mozart's day to the 7â
or more octaves found on modern pianos.
Broadwood square action
Early technological progress owed much to the English firm of Broadwood, who already had a reputation for the splendour and powerful tone of its harpsichords. Broadwood constructed instruments that were progressively larger, louder, and more robustly constructed. They sent pianos to both Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven, and were the first firm to build pianos with a range of more than five octaves: five octaves and a fifth during the 1790s, six octaves by 1810 (Beethoven used the extra notes in his later works), and seven octaves by 1820. The Viennese makers similarly followed these trends, however the two schools used different piano actions: Broadwoods were more robust, Viennese instruments were more sensitive.
Erard square action
By the 1820s, the center of innovation had shifted to Paris, where the Pleyel firm manufactured pianos used by Frédéric Chopin and the Ãrard firm manufactured those used by Franz Liszt. In 1821, Sébastien Ãrard invented the double escapement action, which permitted a note to be repeated even if the key had not yet risen to its maximum vertical position. This facilitated rapid playing of repeated notes - and this musical device was pioneered by Liszt. When the invention became public, as revised by Henri Herz, the double escapement action gradually became standard in grand pianos, and is still incorporated into all grand pianos currently produced.
One of the major technical innovations that helped to create the sound of the modern piano was the use of a strong iron frame. Also called the "plate", the iron frame sits atop the soundboard, and serves as the primary bulwark against the force of string tension. The increased structural integrity of the iron frame allowed the use of thicker, tenser, and more numerous strings. In a modern grand the total string tension can exceed 20 tons. The single piece cast iron frame was patented in 1825 in Boston by Alpheus Babcock, combining the metal hitch pin plate (1821, claimed by Broadwood on behalf of Samuel Hervé) and resisting bars (Thom and Allen, 1820, but also claimed by Broadwood and Ãrard). Babcock later worked for the Chickering & Mackays firm who patented the first full iron frame for grand pianos in 1843. Composite forged metal frames were preferred by many European makers until the American system was fully adopted by the early 20th century.
Other innovations for the mechanism included the use of felt hammer coverings instead of layered leather hammers. Felt hammers, which were first introduced by Henri Pape in 1826, were a more consistent material, permitting wider dynamic ranges as hammer weights and string tension increased. The sostenuto pedal (see below), invented in 1844 by Jean Louis Boisselot and improved by the Steinway firm in 1874, allowed a wider range of effects.
Other important technical innovations of this era included changes to the way the piano was strung, such as the use of a "choir" of three strings rather than two for all but the lower notes, and the use of different stringing methods. With the over strung scale, also called "cross-stringing", the strings are placed in a vertically overlapping slanted arrangement, with two heights of bridges on the soundboard instead of just one. This permits larger, but not necessarily longer, strings to fit within the case of the piano. Over stringing was invented by Jean-Henri Pape during the 1820s, and first patented for use in grand pianos in the United States by Henry Steinway Jr. in 1859.
Duplex scaling: Treble strings of a 182 cm. grand piano. From lower left to upper right: dampers, main sounding length of strings, treble bridge, duplex string length, duplex bridge (long bar perpendicular to strings), hitchpins. With duplexes or aliquot scales, which was patented in 1872 by Theodore Steinway, the different components of string vibrations are controlled by tuning their secondary parts in octave relationships with the sounding lengths. Similar systems developed by Blüthner (1872), as well as Taskin (1788), and Collard (1821) used more distinctly ringing undamped vibrations to modify tone.
Some early pianos had shapes and designs that are no longer in use. The square piano had horizontal strings arranged diagonally across the rectangular case above the hammers and with the keyboard set in the long side. This design is attributed to Gottfried Silbermann or Christian Ernst Friderici on the continent, and Johannes Zumpe or Harman Vietor in England and it was improved by changes first introduced by Guillaume-Lebrecht Petzold in France and Alpheus Babcock in the United States. Square pianos were built in great numbers through the 1840s in Europe and the 1890s in America, and saw the most visible changes of any type of piano: the celebrated iron framed over strung squares manufactured by Steinway & Sons were more than two and a half times the size of Zumpe's wood framed instruments from a century before. Their overwhelming popularity was due to inexpensive construction and price, although their performance and tone were often limited by simple actions and closely spaced strings.
The mechanism in upright pianos is perpendicular to the keys.
The tall, vertically strung upright grand was arranged like a grand set on end, with the soundboard and bridges above the keys, and tuning pins below them. The term was later revived by many manufacturers for advertising purposes. Giraffe, pyramid and lyre pianos were arranged in a somewhat similar fashion in evocatively shaped cases.
The very tall cabinet piano was introduced about 1805 and was built through the 1840s. It had strings arranged vertically on a continuous frame with bridges extended nearly to the floor, behind the keyboard and very large sticker action. The short cottage upright or pianino with vertical stringing, made popular by Robert Wornum around 1815, was built into the 20th century. They are informally called birdcage pianos because of their prominent damper mechanism. Pianinos were distinguished from the oblique, or diagonally strung upright made popular in France by Roller & Blanchet during the late 1820s. The tiny spinet upright was manufactured from the mid-1930s until recent times. The low position of the hammers required the use of a "drop action" to preserve a reasonable keyboard height.
Modern upright and grand pianos attained their present forms by the end of the 19th century. Improvements have been made in manufacturing processes, and many individual details of the instrument continue to receive attention.
Much of the most widely admired piano repertoire, for example, that of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, was composed for a type of instrument that is rather different from the modern instruments on which this music is normally performed today. Even the music of the Romantics, including Liszt, Chopin, Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn and Johannes Brahms, was written for pianos substantially different from ours.
A schematic depiction of the construction of a pianoforte.
Modern pianos come in two basic configurations (with subcategories): the grand piano and the upright piano.
Grand piano
In grand pianos, the frame and strings are horizontal, with the strings extending away from the keyboard. There are several sizes of grand piano. A rough generalization distinguishes the "concert grand" (between about and long) from the "parlor grand" or "boudoir grand" (about to ) and the smaller "baby grand".
All else being equal, longer pianos with longer strings have better sound and lower inharmonicity of the strings. Inharmonicity is the degree to which the frequencies of overtones (known as partials, partial tones, or harmonics) depart from whole multiples of the fundamental frequency. Pianos with shorter, thicker, and stiffer strings (e.g., baby grands) have more inharmonicity. The longer strings on a concert grand can vibrate more freely than the shorter, thicker strings on a baby grand, which means that a concert grand's strings will have truer overtones. This is partly because the strings will be tuned closer to equal temperament in relation to the standard pitch with less "stretching" in the piano tuning (See: Piano tuning). Full-size grands are usually used for public concerts, whereas smaller grands, introduced by Sohmer & Co. in 1884, are often chosen for domestic use where space and cost are considerations.
Upright piano
Upright pianos, also called vertical pianos, are more compact because the frame and strings are vertical. It is considered harder to produce a sensitive piano action when the hammers move horizontally, as the vertical hammer return is dependent on springs which are prone to wear and tear. However, a well-regulated vertical piano will probably play more smoothly than a poorly regulated grand piano, and the very best upright pianos approach the level of some grand pianos of the same size in tone quality and responsiveness.
One noticeable advantage that the grand piano action has over the vertical action is that all grand pianos have a special repetition lever in the playing action that is absent in all verticals. This repetition lever, a separate one for every key, catches the hammer close to the strings as long as the keys are played repeatedly and fairly quickly. In this position, with the hammer resting on the lever, a pianist can play repeated notes, staccato, and trills with much more speed and control than is possible on a vertical piano.
Upright pianos with unusually tall frames and long strings are sometimes called "upright grand" pianos.
Some authors classify modern pianos according to their height and, to modifications of the action that are necessary to accomodate the height.
* Studio pianos are around 42 to 45 inches tall. This is the shortest cabinet that can accomodate a 'full-sized' action located above the keyboard.
* Console pianos have a compact action (shorter hammers), and are a few inches shorter than studio models.
* The top of a Spinet model barely rises above the keyboard. The action is located below, operated by vertical wires that are attached to the backs of the keys.
* Anything taller than a studio piano is called an upright.
Player piano
Toy pianos began to be manufactured in the 19th century. In 1863, Henri Fourneaux invented the player piano, which "plays itself" from a piano roll without the need for a pianist. The player piano is a piano that records a performance using rolls of paper with perforations, and then replays the performance using pneumatic devices. A modern equivalent for the player piano is the Yamaha Disklavier system, which uses solenoids and midi instead of pneumatics and rolls. Silent pianos, which allow a regular piano to be used converted to a digital instrument, are a recent innovation and are becoming more popular.
Irving Berlin played a special piano called the transposing piano, which was invented in 1801 by Edward Ryley. It had a lever under the keyboard used to alter the music to any key. One of Berlin's pianos is in the Smithsonian Museum. For much of his career, Berlin only knew how to play the black keys. But with his 'trick piano' he was no longer limited to the key of F-sharp.
A relatively recent development is the prepared piano, which is used in contemporary art music. A prepared piano is a standard grand piano which has had objects placed inside it before a performance in order to alter its sound, or which has had its mechanism changed in some way. The scores for music for prepared piano often instruct the pianist to insert pieces of rubber or small pieces of metal (screws or washers) in between the strings. These added items either mute the strings or create unusual vibrating sounds.
Since the 1980s, digital pianos have been available, which use digital sampling technology to reproduce the sound of each piano note. The best digital pianos are sophisticated, with features including working pedals, weighted keys, multiple voices, and MIDI interfaces. However, with such technology, it is difficult to duplicate one particular aspect of acoustic pianos, namely that when the damper pedal (see below) is depressed, the strings not struck vibrate sympathetically when other strings are struck, as well as the unique instrument-specific mathematical non-linearity of partials on any given unison. Since this sympathetic vibration is considered central to piano tone, many digital pianos do not sound the same as the best acoustic pianos. Progress is being made in this area by including physical models of sympathetic vibration in the synthesis software. Some higher end digital pianos, such as the Yamaha Clavinova series, or the KAWAI MP8 series, produced in the last few years incorporate string resonance technology to overcome this limitation.
With the advent of powerful desktop computers, highly realistic sampled digital grand pianos have become available as affordable software modules. Some use multi-gigabyte piano sample sets with as many as 90 recordings, each lasting many seconds, for each of the 88 keys under different conditions, augmented by additional samples to emulate sympathetic resonance, key release, the drop of the dampers, and simulations of piano techniques like re-pedaling.
Keyboard
Almost every modern piano has 36 black keys and 52 white keys for a total of 88 keys (seven octaves plus a minor third, from A0 to C8). Many older pianos only have 85 keys (seven octaves from A0 to A7), while some manufacturers extend the range further in one or both directions.
Some Bösendorfer pianos extend the normal range downwards to F0, with one other model going as far as a bottom C0, making a full eight octave range. These extra keys are sometimes hidden under a small hinged lid that can be flipped down to cover the keys in order to avoid visual disorientation in a pianist unfamiliar with the extended keyboard. On others, the colours of the extra white keys are reversed (black instead of white).
The extra keys are added primarily for increased resonance from the associated strings; that is, they vibrate sympathetically with other strings whenever the damper pedal is depressed and thus give a fuller tone. Only a very small number of works composed for piano actually use these notes. More recently, the Stuart and Sons company has also manufactured extended-range pianos. On their instruments, the range is extended both down the bass to F0 and up the treble to F8 for a full eight octaves. The extra keys are the same as the other keys in appearance.
Small studio upright acoustical pianos with only 65 keys have been manufactured for use by roving pianists. Known as "gig" pianos and still containing a cast iron harp, these are comparatively lightweight and can be easily transported to and from engagements by only two men. As their harp is longer than that of a spinet or console piano, they have a stronger bass sound that to some pianists is well worth the trade-off in range that a reduced key-set offers.
Piano pedals from left to right: una corda, sostenuto, and damper.
Pianos have had pedals, or some close equivalent, since the earliest days. (In the 18th century, some pianos used levers pressed upward by the player's knee instead of pedals.) Most grand pianos have three pedals: soft pedal (una corda), sostenuto, and sustain pedal (from left to right, respectively). Most modern upright pianos have three pedals: soft pedal, practice pedal and sustain pedal, though older or cheaper models may lack the practice pedal.
The sustain pedal (or, damper pedal) is often simply called "the pedal", since it is the most frequently used. It is placed as the rightmost pedal in the group. It lifts the dampers from all keys, sustaining all played notes, and altering the overall tone.
The soft pedal or una corda pedal is placed leftmost in the row of pedals. In grand pianos, it shifts the entire action, including the keyboard, to the right, so that the hammers hit only one of the three strings for each note (hence the name una corda, or 'one string'). The effect is to soften the note as well as to change the tone. In uprights, this action is not possible, and so the pedal moves the hammers closer to the strings, allowing the hammers to hit the strings with less kinetic energy to produce a softer sound.
On grand pianos, the middle pedal is a sostenuto pedal. This pedal keeps raised any damper that was already raised at the moment the pedal is depressed. This makes it possible to sustain some notes (by depressing the sostenuto pedal before notes to be sustained are released) while the player's hands are free to play other notes. This can be useful for musical passages with pedal points and other otherwise tricky or impossible situations.
On many upright pianos, there is a middle pedal called the 'practice' or celeste pedal. This drops a piece of felt between the hammers and strings, greatly muting the sounds.
There are also non-standard variants. On vertical pianos, the middle pedal can be a bass sustain pedal: that is, when it is depressed, the dampers lift off the strings only in the bass section. This pedal would be used only when a pianist needs to sustain a single bass note or chord over many measures, while playing the melody in the treble section. On the largest Fazioli piano, there is a fourth pedal to the left of the principal three. This fourth pedal works in the same way as the soft pedal of an upright piano, moving the hammers closer to the strings.
An upright pedal piano
The rare transposing piano, of which Irving Berlin possessed an example, had a middle pedal that functioned as a clutch which disengages the keyboard from the mechanism, enabling the keyboard to be moved to the left or right with a lever. The entire action of the piano is thus shifted to allow the pianist to play music written in one key so that it sounds in a different key. The pedalier piano, or pedal piano, is a rare type of piano that includes a pedalboard, enabling bass register notes to be played with the feet, as is standard on the organ. There are two types of pedal piano: the pedal board may be an integral part of the instrument, using the same strings and mechanism as the manual keyboard, or, less frequently, it may consist of two independent pianos (each with its separate mechanics and strings) which are placed one above the other, a regular piano played by the hands and a bass-register piano played by the feet.
Many parts of a piano are made of materials selected for sturdiness. In quality pianos, the outer rim of the piano is made of a hardwood, normally maple or beech. According to Harold A. Conklin, the purpose of a sturdy rim is so that "the vibrational energy will stay as much as possible in the soundboard instead of dissipating uselessly in the case parts, which are inefficient radiators of sound."
View from below of a 182-cm grand piano. In order of distance from viewer: softwood braces, tapered soundboard ribs, soundboard. The metal rod at lower right is a humidity control device.
The rim is normally made by laminating flexible strips of hardwood to the desired shape, a system that was developed by Theodore Steinway in 1880. The thick wooden braces at the bottom (grands) or back (uprights) of the piano are not as acoustically important as the rim, and are often made of a softwood, even in top-quality pianos, in order to save weight. The requirement of structural strength, fulfilled with stout hardwood and thick metal, makes a piano heavy; even a small upright can weigh 136 kg (300 lb), and the Steinway concert grand (Model D) weighs 480 kg (990 lb). The largest piano built, the Fazioli F308, weighs 691 kg (1520 lb).
The pinblock, which holds the tuning pins in place, is another area of the piano where toughness is important. It is made of hardwood, (often maple) and generally is laminated (built of multiple layers) for additional strength and gripping power. Piano strings (also called piano wire), which must endure years of extreme tension and hard blows, are made of high quality steel. They are manufactured to vary as little as possible in diameter, since all deviations from uniformity introduce tonal distortion. The bass strings of a piano are made of a steel core wrapped with copper wire, to increase their mass whilst retaining flexibility.
The plate, or metal frame, of a piano is usually made of cast iron. It is advantageous for the plate to be quite massive. Since the strings are attached to the plate at one end, any vibrations transmitted to the plate will result in loss of energy to the desired (efficient) channel of sound transmission, namely the bridge and the soundboard. Some manufacturers now use cast steel in their plates, for greater strength. The casting of the plate is a delicate art, since the dimensions are crucial and the iron shrinks by about one percent during cooling.
The inclusion in a piano of an extremely large piece of metal is potentially an aesthetic handicap, which piano makers overcome by polishing, painting and decorating the plate. Plates often include the manufacturer's ornamental medallion and can be strikingly attractive. In an effort to make pianos lighter, Alcoa worked with Winter and Company piano manufacturers to make pianos using an aluminum plate during the 1940s. The use of aluminum for piano plates, however, did not become widely accepted and was discontinued.
The numerous grand parts and upright parts of a piano action are generally hardwood (e.g. maple, beech. hornbeam). However, since World War II, plastics have become available. Early plastics were incorporated into some pianos in the late 1940s and 1950s, but proved disastrous because they crystallized and lost their strength after only a few decades of use. The Steinway firm once incorporated Teflon, a synthetic material developed by DuPont, for some grand action parts in place of cloth, but ultimately abandoned the experiment due to an inherent "clicking" which invariably developed over time. (Also Teflon is "humidity stable" whereas the wood adjacent to the Teflon will swell and shrink with humidity changes, causing problems.) More recently, the Kawai firm has built pianos with action parts made of more modern and effective plastics such as carbon fiber; these parts have held up better and have generally received the respect of piano technicians .
Ivorite and ebony keys on a modern Steinway & Sons concert grand piano.
The part of the piano where materials probably matter more than anywhere else is the soundboard. In quality pianos, this is made of solid spruce (that is, spruce boards glued together at their edges). Spruce is chosen for its high ratio of strength to weight. The best piano makers use close-grained, quarter-sawn, defect-free spruce, and make sure that it has been carefully dried over a long period of time before making it into soundboards. In cheap pianos, the soundboard is often made of plywood.
Piano keys are generally made of spruce or basswood, for lightness. Spruce is normally used in high-quality pianos. Traditionally, the black keys were made from ebony and the white keys were covered with strips of ivory, but since ivory-yielding species are now endangered and protected by treaty, plastics are now almost exclusively used. Also, ivory tends to chip more easily than plastic. Legal ivory can still be obtained in limited quantities. At one time, the Yamaha firm innovated a plastic called "Ivorine" or "Ivorite", since imitated by other makers, that mimics the look and feel of ivory.
A piano tuner
Pianos need regular tuning to keep them up to pitch, which is usually the internationally recognized standard concert pitch of A4 = 440 Hz. The hammers of pianos are voiced to compensate for gradual hardening, and other parts also need periodic regulation. Aged and worn pianos can be rebuilt or reconditioned. Often, by replacing a great number of their parts, they can be made to perform as well as new pianos. Older pianos are often more settled and produce a warmer tone.
Piano moving should be done by trained piano movers using adequate manpower and the correct equipment for any particular piano's size and weight. Pianos are heavy yet delicate instruments. Over the years, professional piano movers have developed special techniques for transporting both grands and uprights which prevent damage to the case and to the piano's mechanics.
The piano at the social center in the 19th century (Moritz von Schwind, 1868). The man at the piano is Franz Schubert.
The piano is a crucial instrument in Western classical music, jazz, film, television, and most other complex western musical genres. Since a large number of composers are proficient pianists â and because the piano keyboard offers an easy means of complex melodic and harmonic interplay â the piano is often used as a tool for composition.
Pianos were, and still are, popular instruments for private household ownership. Hence, pianos have gained a place in the popular consciousness, and are sometimes referred to by nicknames including: "the ivories", "the joanna", "the eighty-eight", and "the black(s) and white(s)", "the little joe(s)". Playing the piano is sometimes referred to as "tickling the ivories".
;General
* Innovations in the piano
* Jazz piano
* Piano acoustics
* Piano key frequencies (in equal temperament)
* Piano trio
* String piano
;Related lists
* List of films about pianists
* Lists of solo piano pieces
* List of piano makers
* List of piano brand names
* List of classical pianists (recorded)
;Related instruments
* Hammered dulcimer
* Harp
* Clavichord
* Harpsichord
* Organ and Pipe organ
* Electric piano
* Electronic piano
* The authoritative New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (available online by subscription), contains a wealth of information. Main article: "Pianoforte".
* The Encyclopædia Britannica (available online by subscription) also includes much information on the piano. In the 1988 edition, the primary article can be found in "Musical Instruments".
* The Piano Book by Larry Fine (4th ed. Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts: Brookside Press, 2001; ISBN 1-929145-01-2) gives the basics of how pianos work, and a thorough evaluative survey of current pianos and their manufacturers. It also includes advice on buying and owning pianos.
*Giraffes, black dragons, and other pianos: a technological history from Cristofori to the modern concert grand by Edwin M. Good (1982, second ed., 2001, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press) is a standard reference on the history of the piano.
*The Early Pianoforte by Stewart Pollens (1995, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) is an authoritative work covering the ancestry of the piano, its invention by Cristofori, and the early stages of its subsequent evolution.
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;Information
* Yamaha Musician - Yamaha piano reviews and enthusiast site
* Grand Piano information and images
* The Piano Page Lots of information from the Piano Technicians Guild
* WikiRecording's Guide to Recording Pianos
;History
* History of the Piano Forte, Association of Blind Piano Tuners, UK
* The Frederick Historical Piano Collection
;Piano Technique
* Principles of Piano Technique
;Sheet music for Piano
* All Piano Scores Free printable classical sheet music for piano + audio
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Piano | What is the middle pedal called on grand pianos? | sostenuto pedal | data/set2/a1 | Piano
Baby Grand Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard that produces sound by striking steel strings with felt covered hammers. The hammers immediately rebound, allowing the strings to continue vibrating at their resonant frequency. " Hammer Time" by John Kiehl, Wolfram Demonstrations Project. These vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a soundboard that couples the acoustic energy to the air so that it can be heard as sound.
The piano is widely used in Western music for solo performance, ensemble use, chamber music, and accompaniment. It is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal. Although not portable and often expensive, the piano's versatility and ubiquity have made it one of the most familiar musical instruments. It is sometimes classified as both a percussion and a stringed instrument. According to the Hornbostel-Sachs method of music classification, it is grouped with Chordophones.
The word piano is a shortened form of the word pianoforte, which is seldom used except in formal language and derived from the original Italian name for the instrument, clavicembalo [or gravicembalo] col piano e forte (literally harpsichord with soft and loud). This refers to the instrument's responsiveness to keyboard touch, which allows the pianist to produce notes at different dynamic levels by controlling the speed with which the hammers hit the strings.
Early piano replica by the modern builder Paul McNulty, after Walter & Sohn, 1805
The piano was originally founded on earlier technological innovations. The first string instruments with struck strings were the hammered dulcimers originating from the Persian traditional musical instrument santur. David R. Peterson (1994), "Acoustics of the hammered dulcimer, its history, and recent developments", Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 95 (5), p. 3002. During the Middle Ages, there were several attempts at creating stringed keyboard instruments with struck strings, Pollens, 1995. chp. 1 the earliest being the hurdy gurdy which has uncertain origins. By the 17th century, 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.
Grand piano by Louis Bas of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, France, 1781. Earliest French grand piano known to survive; includes an inverted wrestplank and action derived from the work of Bartolomeo Cristofiori (ca. 1700) with ornately decorated soundboard.
The invention of the modern piano is credited to Bartolomeo Cristofori of Padua, Italy, who was employed by Prince Ferdinand de Medici as the Keeper of the Instruments. He was an expert harpsichord maker and was well acquainted with the previous body of knowledge on stringed keyboard instruments. It is not known exactly when Cristofori first built a piano. An inventory made by his employers, the Medici family, indicates the existence of a piano by the year 1700; another document of doubtful authenticity indicates a date of 1698. The three Cristofori pianos that survive today date from the 1720s.
Cristofori's great success was in solving, without any prior example, the fundamental mechanical problem of piano design: the hammer must strike the string, but not remain in contact with it (as a tangent remains in contact with a clavichord string) because this would damp the sound. Moreover, the hammer must return to its rest position without bouncing violently, and it must be possible to repeat a note rapidly. Cristofori's piano action served as a model for the many different approaches to piano actions that followed. While Cristofori's early instruments were made with thin strings and were much quieter than the modern piano, compared to the clavichord (the only previous keyboard instrument capable of minutely controlled dynamic nuance through the keyboard) they were considerably louder and had more sustaining power.
Cristofori's new instrument remained relatively unknown until an Italian writer, Scipione Maffei, wrote an enthusiastic article about it (1711), including a diagram of the mechanism. This article was widely distributed, and most of the next generation of piano builders started their work because of reading it. One of these builders was Gottfried Silbermann, better known as an organ builder. Silbermann's pianos were virtually direct copies of Cristofori's, with one important addition: Silbermann invented the forerunner of the modern damper pedal, which lifts all the dampers from the strings at once.
Silbermann showed Johann Sebastian Bach one of his early instruments in the 1730s, but Bach did not like it at that time, claiming that the higher notes were too soft to allow a full dynamic range. Although this earned him some animosity from Silbermann, the criticism was apparently heeded. Bach did approve of a later instrument he saw in 1747, and even served as an agent in selling Silbermann's pianos.
Piano making flourished during the late 18th century in the Viennese school, which included Johann Andreas Stein (who worked in Augsburg, Germany) and the Viennese makers Nannette Streicher (daughter of Johann Andreas Stein) and Anton Walter. Viennese-style pianos were built with wood frames, two strings per note, and had leather-covered hammers. Some of these Viennese pianos had the opposite coloring of modern-day pianos; the natural keys were black and the accidental keys white. It was for such instruments that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed his concertos and sonatas, and replicas of them are built today for use in authentic-instrument performance of his music. The pianos of Mozart's day had a softer, clearer tone than today's pianos or English pianos, with less sustaining power. The term fortepiano is nowadays often used to distinguish the 18th-century instrument from later pianos.
In the period lasting from about 1790 to 1860, the Mozart-era piano underwent tremendous changes that led to the modern form of the instrument. This revolution was in response to a consistent preference by composers and pianists for a more powerful, sustained piano sound, and made possible by the ongoing Industrial Revolution with technological resources such as high-quality steel, called piano wire, for strings, and precision casting for the production of iron frames. Over time, the tonal range of the piano was also increased from the five octaves of Mozart's day to the 7â
or more octaves found on modern pianos.
Broadwood square action
Early technological progress owed much to the English firm of Broadwood, who already had a reputation for the splendour and powerful tone of its harpsichords. Broadwood constructed instruments that were progressively larger, louder, and more robustly constructed. They sent pianos to both Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven, and were the first firm to build pianos with a range of more than five octaves: five octaves and a fifth during the 1790s, six octaves by 1810 (Beethoven used the extra notes in his later works), and seven octaves by 1820. The Viennese makers similarly followed these trends, however the two schools used different piano actions: Broadwoods were more robust, Viennese instruments were more sensitive.
Erard square action
By the 1820s, the center of innovation had shifted to Paris, where the Pleyel firm manufactured pianos used by Frédéric Chopin and the Ãrard firm manufactured those used by Franz Liszt. In 1821, Sébastien Ãrard invented the double escapement action, which permitted a note to be repeated even if the key had not yet risen to its maximum vertical position. This facilitated rapid playing of repeated notes - and this musical device was pioneered by Liszt. When the invention became public, as revised by Henri Herz, the double escapement action gradually became standard in grand pianos, and is still incorporated into all grand pianos currently produced.
One of the major technical innovations that helped to create the sound of the modern piano was the use of a strong iron frame. Also called the "plate", the iron frame sits atop the soundboard, and serves as the primary bulwark against the force of string tension. The increased structural integrity of the iron frame allowed the use of thicker, tenser, and more numerous strings. In a modern grand the total string tension can exceed 20 tons. The single piece cast iron frame was patented in 1825 in Boston by Alpheus Babcock, combining the metal hitch pin plate (1821, claimed by Broadwood on behalf of Samuel Hervé) and resisting bars (Thom and Allen, 1820, but also claimed by Broadwood and Ãrard). Babcock later worked for the Chickering & Mackays firm who patented the first full iron frame for grand pianos in 1843. Composite forged metal frames were preferred by many European makers until the American system was fully adopted by the early 20th century.
Other innovations for the mechanism included the use of felt hammer coverings instead of layered leather hammers. Felt hammers, which were first introduced by Henri Pape in 1826, were a more consistent material, permitting wider dynamic ranges as hammer weights and string tension increased. The sostenuto pedal (see below), invented in 1844 by Jean Louis Boisselot and improved by the Steinway firm in 1874, allowed a wider range of effects.
Other important technical innovations of this era included changes to the way the piano was strung, such as the use of a "choir" of three strings rather than two for all but the lower notes, and the use of different stringing methods. With the over strung scale, also called "cross-stringing", the strings are placed in a vertically overlapping slanted arrangement, with two heights of bridges on the soundboard instead of just one. This permits larger, but not necessarily longer, strings to fit within the case of the piano. Over stringing was invented by Jean-Henri Pape during the 1820s, and first patented for use in grand pianos in the United States by Henry Steinway Jr. in 1859.
Duplex scaling: Treble strings of a 182 cm. grand piano. From lower left to upper right: dampers, main sounding length of strings, treble bridge, duplex string length, duplex bridge (long bar perpendicular to strings), hitchpins. With duplexes or aliquot scales, which was patented in 1872 by Theodore Steinway, the different components of string vibrations are controlled by tuning their secondary parts in octave relationships with the sounding lengths. Similar systems developed by Blüthner (1872), as well as Taskin (1788), and Collard (1821) used more distinctly ringing undamped vibrations to modify tone.
Some early pianos had shapes and designs that are no longer in use. The square piano had horizontal strings arranged diagonally across the rectangular case above the hammers and with the keyboard set in the long side. This design is attributed to Gottfried Silbermann or Christian Ernst Friderici on the continent, and Johannes Zumpe or Harman Vietor in England and it was improved by changes first introduced by Guillaume-Lebrecht Petzold in France and Alpheus Babcock in the United States. Square pianos were built in great numbers through the 1840s in Europe and the 1890s in America, and saw the most visible changes of any type of piano: the celebrated iron framed over strung squares manufactured by Steinway & Sons were more than two and a half times the size of Zumpe's wood framed instruments from a century before. Their overwhelming popularity was due to inexpensive construction and price, although their performance and tone were often limited by simple actions and closely spaced strings.
The mechanism in upright pianos is perpendicular to the keys.
The tall, vertically strung upright grand was arranged like a grand set on end, with the soundboard and bridges above the keys, and tuning pins below them. The term was later revived by many manufacturers for advertising purposes. Giraffe, pyramid and lyre pianos were arranged in a somewhat similar fashion in evocatively shaped cases.
The very tall cabinet piano was introduced about 1805 and was built through the 1840s. It had strings arranged vertically on a continuous frame with bridges extended nearly to the floor, behind the keyboard and very large sticker action. The short cottage upright or pianino with vertical stringing, made popular by Robert Wornum around 1815, was built into the 20th century. They are informally called birdcage pianos because of their prominent damper mechanism. Pianinos were distinguished from the oblique, or diagonally strung upright made popular in France by Roller & Blanchet during the late 1820s. The tiny spinet upright was manufactured from the mid-1930s until recent times. The low position of the hammers required the use of a "drop action" to preserve a reasonable keyboard height.
Modern upright and grand pianos attained their present forms by the end of the 19th century. Improvements have been made in manufacturing processes, and many individual details of the instrument continue to receive attention.
Much of the most widely admired piano repertoire, for example, that of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, was composed for a type of instrument that is rather different from the modern instruments on which this music is normally performed today. Even the music of the Romantics, including Liszt, Chopin, Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn and Johannes Brahms, was written for pianos substantially different from ours.
A schematic depiction of the construction of a pianoforte.
Modern pianos come in two basic configurations (with subcategories): the grand piano and the upright piano.
Grand piano
In grand pianos, the frame and strings are horizontal, with the strings extending away from the keyboard. There are several sizes of grand piano. A rough generalization distinguishes the "concert grand" (between about and long) from the "parlor grand" or "boudoir grand" (about to ) and the smaller "baby grand".
All else being equal, longer pianos with longer strings have better sound and lower inharmonicity of the strings. Inharmonicity is the degree to which the frequencies of overtones (known as partials, partial tones, or harmonics) depart from whole multiples of the fundamental frequency. Pianos with shorter, thicker, and stiffer strings (e.g., baby grands) have more inharmonicity. The longer strings on a concert grand can vibrate more freely than the shorter, thicker strings on a baby grand, which means that a concert grand's strings will have truer overtones. This is partly because the strings will be tuned closer to equal temperament in relation to the standard pitch with less "stretching" in the piano tuning (See: Piano tuning). Full-size grands are usually used for public concerts, whereas smaller grands, introduced by Sohmer & Co. in 1884, are often chosen for domestic use where space and cost are considerations.
Upright piano
Upright pianos, also called vertical pianos, are more compact because the frame and strings are vertical. It is considered harder to produce a sensitive piano action when the hammers move horizontally, as the vertical hammer return is dependent on springs which are prone to wear and tear. However, a well-regulated vertical piano will probably play more smoothly than a poorly regulated grand piano, and the very best upright pianos approach the level of some grand pianos of the same size in tone quality and responsiveness.
One noticeable advantage that the grand piano action has over the vertical action is that all grand pianos have a special repetition lever in the playing action that is absent in all verticals. This repetition lever, a separate one for every key, catches the hammer close to the strings as long as the keys are played repeatedly and fairly quickly. In this position, with the hammer resting on the lever, a pianist can play repeated notes, staccato, and trills with much more speed and control than is possible on a vertical piano.
Upright pianos with unusually tall frames and long strings are sometimes called "upright grand" pianos.
Some authors classify modern pianos according to their height and, to modifications of the action that are necessary to accomodate the height.
* Studio pianos are around 42 to 45 inches tall. This is the shortest cabinet that can accomodate a 'full-sized' action located above the keyboard.
* Console pianos have a compact action (shorter hammers), and are a few inches shorter than studio models.
* The top of a Spinet model barely rises above the keyboard. The action is located below, operated by vertical wires that are attached to the backs of the keys.
* Anything taller than a studio piano is called an upright.
Player piano
Toy pianos began to be manufactured in the 19th century. In 1863, Henri Fourneaux invented the player piano, which "plays itself" from a piano roll without the need for a pianist. The player piano is a piano that records a performance using rolls of paper with perforations, and then replays the performance using pneumatic devices. A modern equivalent for the player piano is the Yamaha Disklavier system, which uses solenoids and midi instead of pneumatics and rolls. Silent pianos, which allow a regular piano to be used converted to a digital instrument, are a recent innovation and are becoming more popular.
Irving Berlin played a special piano called the transposing piano, which was invented in 1801 by Edward Ryley. It had a lever under the keyboard used to alter the music to any key. One of Berlin's pianos is in the Smithsonian Museum. For much of his career, Berlin only knew how to play the black keys. But with his 'trick piano' he was no longer limited to the key of F-sharp.
A relatively recent development is the prepared piano, which is used in contemporary art music. A prepared piano is a standard grand piano which has had objects placed inside it before a performance in order to alter its sound, or which has had its mechanism changed in some way. The scores for music for prepared piano often instruct the pianist to insert pieces of rubber or small pieces of metal (screws or washers) in between the strings. These added items either mute the strings or create unusual vibrating sounds.
Since the 1980s, digital pianos have been available, which use digital sampling technology to reproduce the sound of each piano note. The best digital pianos are sophisticated, with features including working pedals, weighted keys, multiple voices, and MIDI interfaces. However, with such technology, it is difficult to duplicate one particular aspect of acoustic pianos, namely that when the damper pedal (see below) is depressed, the strings not struck vibrate sympathetically when other strings are struck, as well as the unique instrument-specific mathematical non-linearity of partials on any given unison. Since this sympathetic vibration is considered central to piano tone, many digital pianos do not sound the same as the best acoustic pianos. Progress is being made in this area by including physical models of sympathetic vibration in the synthesis software. Some higher end digital pianos, such as the Yamaha Clavinova series, or the KAWAI MP8 series, produced in the last few years incorporate string resonance technology to overcome this limitation.
With the advent of powerful desktop computers, highly realistic sampled digital grand pianos have become available as affordable software modules. Some use multi-gigabyte piano sample sets with as many as 90 recordings, each lasting many seconds, for each of the 88 keys under different conditions, augmented by additional samples to emulate sympathetic resonance, key release, the drop of the dampers, and simulations of piano techniques like re-pedaling.
Keyboard
Almost every modern piano has 36 black keys and 52 white keys for a total of 88 keys (seven octaves plus a minor third, from A0 to C8). Many older pianos only have 85 keys (seven octaves from A0 to A7), while some manufacturers extend the range further in one or both directions.
Some Bösendorfer pianos extend the normal range downwards to F0, with one other model going as far as a bottom C0, making a full eight octave range. These extra keys are sometimes hidden under a small hinged lid that can be flipped down to cover the keys in order to avoid visual disorientation in a pianist unfamiliar with the extended keyboard. On others, the colours of the extra white keys are reversed (black instead of white).
The extra keys are added primarily for increased resonance from the associated strings; that is, they vibrate sympathetically with other strings whenever the damper pedal is depressed and thus give a fuller tone. Only a very small number of works composed for piano actually use these notes. More recently, the Stuart and Sons company has also manufactured extended-range pianos. On their instruments, the range is extended both down the bass to F0 and up the treble to F8 for a full eight octaves. The extra keys are the same as the other keys in appearance.
Small studio upright acoustical pianos with only 65 keys have been manufactured for use by roving pianists. Known as "gig" pianos and still containing a cast iron harp, these are comparatively lightweight and can be easily transported to and from engagements by only two men. As their harp is longer than that of a spinet or console piano, they have a stronger bass sound that to some pianists is well worth the trade-off in range that a reduced key-set offers.
Piano pedals from left to right: una corda, sostenuto, and damper.
Pianos have had pedals, or some close equivalent, since the earliest days. (In the 18th century, some pianos used levers pressed upward by the player's knee instead of pedals.) Most grand pianos have three pedals: soft pedal (una corda), sostenuto, and sustain pedal (from left to right, respectively). Most modern upright pianos have three pedals: soft pedal, practice pedal and sustain pedal, though older or cheaper models may lack the practice pedal.
The sustain pedal (or, damper pedal) is often simply called "the pedal", since it is the most frequently used. It is placed as the rightmost pedal in the group. It lifts the dampers from all keys, sustaining all played notes, and altering the overall tone.
The soft pedal or una corda pedal is placed leftmost in the row of pedals. In grand pianos, it shifts the entire action, including the keyboard, to the right, so that the hammers hit only one of the three strings for each note (hence the name una corda, or 'one string'). The effect is to soften the note as well as to change the tone. In uprights, this action is not possible, and so the pedal moves the hammers closer to the strings, allowing the hammers to hit the strings with less kinetic energy to produce a softer sound.
On grand pianos, the middle pedal is a sostenuto pedal. This pedal keeps raised any damper that was already raised at the moment the pedal is depressed. This makes it possible to sustain some notes (by depressing the sostenuto pedal before notes to be sustained are released) while the player's hands are free to play other notes. This can be useful for musical passages with pedal points and other otherwise tricky or impossible situations.
On many upright pianos, there is a middle pedal called the 'practice' or celeste pedal. This drops a piece of felt between the hammers and strings, greatly muting the sounds.
There are also non-standard variants. On vertical pianos, the middle pedal can be a bass sustain pedal: that is, when it is depressed, the dampers lift off the strings only in the bass section. This pedal would be used only when a pianist needs to sustain a single bass note or chord over many measures, while playing the melody in the treble section. On the largest Fazioli piano, there is a fourth pedal to the left of the principal three. This fourth pedal works in the same way as the soft pedal of an upright piano, moving the hammers closer to the strings.
An upright pedal piano
The rare transposing piano, of which Irving Berlin possessed an example, had a middle pedal that functioned as a clutch which disengages the keyboard from the mechanism, enabling the keyboard to be moved to the left or right with a lever. The entire action of the piano is thus shifted to allow the pianist to play music written in one key so that it sounds in a different key. The pedalier piano, or pedal piano, is a rare type of piano that includes a pedalboard, enabling bass register notes to be played with the feet, as is standard on the organ. There are two types of pedal piano: the pedal board may be an integral part of the instrument, using the same strings and mechanism as the manual keyboard, or, less frequently, it may consist of two independent pianos (each with its separate mechanics and strings) which are placed one above the other, a regular piano played by the hands and a bass-register piano played by the feet.
Many parts of a piano are made of materials selected for sturdiness. In quality pianos, the outer rim of the piano is made of a hardwood, normally maple or beech. According to Harold A. Conklin, the purpose of a sturdy rim is so that "the vibrational energy will stay as much as possible in the soundboard instead of dissipating uselessly in the case parts, which are inefficient radiators of sound."
View from below of a 182-cm grand piano. In order of distance from viewer: softwood braces, tapered soundboard ribs, soundboard. The metal rod at lower right is a humidity control device.
The rim is normally made by laminating flexible strips of hardwood to the desired shape, a system that was developed by Theodore Steinway in 1880. The thick wooden braces at the bottom (grands) or back (uprights) of the piano are not as acoustically important as the rim, and are often made of a softwood, even in top-quality pianos, in order to save weight. The requirement of structural strength, fulfilled with stout hardwood and thick metal, makes a piano heavy; even a small upright can weigh 136 kg (300 lb), and the Steinway concert grand (Model D) weighs 480 kg (990 lb). The largest piano built, the Fazioli F308, weighs 691 kg (1520 lb).
The pinblock, which holds the tuning pins in place, is another area of the piano where toughness is important. It is made of hardwood, (often maple) and generally is laminated (built of multiple layers) for additional strength and gripping power. Piano strings (also called piano wire), which must endure years of extreme tension and hard blows, are made of high quality steel. They are manufactured to vary as little as possible in diameter, since all deviations from uniformity introduce tonal distortion. The bass strings of a piano are made of a steel core wrapped with copper wire, to increase their mass whilst retaining flexibility.
The plate, or metal frame, of a piano is usually made of cast iron. It is advantageous for the plate to be quite massive. Since the strings are attached to the plate at one end, any vibrations transmitted to the plate will result in loss of energy to the desired (efficient) channel of sound transmission, namely the bridge and the soundboard. Some manufacturers now use cast steel in their plates, for greater strength. The casting of the plate is a delicate art, since the dimensions are crucial and the iron shrinks by about one percent during cooling.
The inclusion in a piano of an extremely large piece of metal is potentially an aesthetic handicap, which piano makers overcome by polishing, painting and decorating the plate. Plates often include the manufacturer's ornamental medallion and can be strikingly attractive. In an effort to make pianos lighter, Alcoa worked with Winter and Company piano manufacturers to make pianos using an aluminum plate during the 1940s. The use of aluminum for piano plates, however, did not become widely accepted and was discontinued.
The numerous grand parts and upright parts of a piano action are generally hardwood (e.g. maple, beech. hornbeam). However, since World War II, plastics have become available. Early plastics were incorporated into some pianos in the late 1940s and 1950s, but proved disastrous because they crystallized and lost their strength after only a few decades of use. The Steinway firm once incorporated Teflon, a synthetic material developed by DuPont, for some grand action parts in place of cloth, but ultimately abandoned the experiment due to an inherent "clicking" which invariably developed over time. (Also Teflon is "humidity stable" whereas the wood adjacent to the Teflon will swell and shrink with humidity changes, causing problems.) More recently, the Kawai firm has built pianos with action parts made of more modern and effective plastics such as carbon fiber; these parts have held up better and have generally received the respect of piano technicians .
Ivorite and ebony keys on a modern Steinway & Sons concert grand piano.
The part of the piano where materials probably matter more than anywhere else is the soundboard. In quality pianos, this is made of solid spruce (that is, spruce boards glued together at their edges). Spruce is chosen for its high ratio of strength to weight. The best piano makers use close-grained, quarter-sawn, defect-free spruce, and make sure that it has been carefully dried over a long period of time before making it into soundboards. In cheap pianos, the soundboard is often made of plywood.
Piano keys are generally made of spruce or basswood, for lightness. Spruce is normally used in high-quality pianos. Traditionally, the black keys were made from ebony and the white keys were covered with strips of ivory, but since ivory-yielding species are now endangered and protected by treaty, plastics are now almost exclusively used. Also, ivory tends to chip more easily than plastic. Legal ivory can still be obtained in limited quantities. At one time, the Yamaha firm innovated a plastic called "Ivorine" or "Ivorite", since imitated by other makers, that mimics the look and feel of ivory.
A piano tuner
Pianos need regular tuning to keep them up to pitch, which is usually the internationally recognized standard concert pitch of A4 = 440 Hz. The hammers of pianos are voiced to compensate for gradual hardening, and other parts also need periodic regulation. Aged and worn pianos can be rebuilt or reconditioned. Often, by replacing a great number of their parts, they can be made to perform as well as new pianos. Older pianos are often more settled and produce a warmer tone.
Piano moving should be done by trained piano movers using adequate manpower and the correct equipment for any particular piano's size and weight. Pianos are heavy yet delicate instruments. Over the years, professional piano movers have developed special techniques for transporting both grands and uprights which prevent damage to the case and to the piano's mechanics.
The piano at the social center in the 19th century (Moritz von Schwind, 1868). The man at the piano is Franz Schubert.
The piano is a crucial instrument in Western classical music, jazz, film, television, and most other complex western musical genres. Since a large number of composers are proficient pianists â and because the piano keyboard offers an easy means of complex melodic and harmonic interplay â the piano is often used as a tool for composition.
Pianos were, and still are, popular instruments for private household ownership. Hence, pianos have gained a place in the popular consciousness, and are sometimes referred to by nicknames including: "the ivories", "the joanna", "the eighty-eight", and "the black(s) and white(s)", "the little joe(s)". Playing the piano is sometimes referred to as "tickling the ivories".
;General
* Innovations in the piano
* Jazz piano
* Piano acoustics
* Piano key frequencies (in equal temperament)
* Piano trio
* String piano
;Related lists
* List of films about pianists
* Lists of solo piano pieces
* List of piano makers
* List of piano brand names
* List of classical pianists (recorded)
;Related instruments
* Hammered dulcimer
* Harp
* Clavichord
* Harpsichord
* Organ and Pipe organ
* Electric piano
* Electronic piano
* The authoritative New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (available online by subscription), contains a wealth of information. Main article: "Pianoforte".
* The Encyclopædia Britannica (available online by subscription) also includes much information on the piano. In the 1988 edition, the primary article can be found in "Musical Instruments".
* The Piano Book by Larry Fine (4th ed. Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts: Brookside Press, 2001; ISBN 1-929145-01-2) gives the basics of how pianos work, and a thorough evaluative survey of current pianos and their manufacturers. It also includes advice on buying and owning pianos.
*Giraffes, black dragons, and other pianos: a technological history from Cristofori to the modern concert grand by Edwin M. Good (1982, second ed., 2001, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press) is a standard reference on the history of the piano.
*The Early Pianoforte by Stewart Pollens (1995, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) is an authoritative work covering the ancestry of the piano, its invention by Cristofori, and the early stages of its subsequent evolution.
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;Information
* Yamaha Musician - Yamaha piano reviews and enthusiast site
* Grand Piano information and images
* The Piano Page Lots of information from the Piano Technicians Guild
* WikiRecording's Guide to Recording Pianos
;History
* History of the Piano Forte, Association of Blind Piano Tuners, UK
* The Frederick Historical Piano Collection
;Piano Technique
* Principles of Piano Technique
;Sheet music for Piano
* All Piano Scores Free printable classical sheet music for piano + audio
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Piano | How many black keys do modern pianos have? | 36. | data/set2/a1 | Piano
Baby Grand Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard that produces sound by striking steel strings with felt covered hammers. The hammers immediately rebound, allowing the strings to continue vibrating at their resonant frequency. " Hammer Time" by John Kiehl, Wolfram Demonstrations Project. These vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a soundboard that couples the acoustic energy to the air so that it can be heard as sound.
The piano is widely used in Western music for solo performance, ensemble use, chamber music, and accompaniment. It is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal. Although not portable and often expensive, the piano's versatility and ubiquity have made it one of the most familiar musical instruments. It is sometimes classified as both a percussion and a stringed instrument. According to the Hornbostel-Sachs method of music classification, it is grouped with Chordophones.
The word piano is a shortened form of the word pianoforte, which is seldom used except in formal language and derived from the original Italian name for the instrument, clavicembalo [or gravicembalo] col piano e forte (literally harpsichord with soft and loud). This refers to the instrument's responsiveness to keyboard touch, which allows the pianist to produce notes at different dynamic levels by controlling the speed with which the hammers hit the strings.
Early piano replica by the modern builder Paul McNulty, after Walter & Sohn, 1805
The piano was originally founded on earlier technological innovations. The first string instruments with struck strings were the hammered dulcimers originating from the Persian traditional musical instrument santur. David R. Peterson (1994), "Acoustics of the hammered dulcimer, its history, and recent developments", Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 95 (5), p. 3002. During the Middle Ages, there were several attempts at creating stringed keyboard instruments with struck strings, Pollens, 1995. chp. 1 the earliest being the hurdy gurdy which has uncertain origins. By the 17th century, 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.
Grand piano by Louis Bas of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, France, 1781. Earliest French grand piano known to survive; includes an inverted wrestplank and action derived from the work of Bartolomeo Cristofiori (ca. 1700) with ornately decorated soundboard.
The invention of the modern piano is credited to Bartolomeo Cristofori of Padua, Italy, who was employed by Prince Ferdinand de Medici as the Keeper of the Instruments. He was an expert harpsichord maker and was well acquainted with the previous body of knowledge on stringed keyboard instruments. It is not known exactly when Cristofori first built a piano. An inventory made by his employers, the Medici family, indicates the existence of a piano by the year 1700; another document of doubtful authenticity indicates a date of 1698. The three Cristofori pianos that survive today date from the 1720s.
Cristofori's great success was in solving, without any prior example, the fundamental mechanical problem of piano design: the hammer must strike the string, but not remain in contact with it (as a tangent remains in contact with a clavichord string) because this would damp the sound. Moreover, the hammer must return to its rest position without bouncing violently, and it must be possible to repeat a note rapidly. Cristofori's piano action served as a model for the many different approaches to piano actions that followed. While Cristofori's early instruments were made with thin strings and were much quieter than the modern piano, compared to the clavichord (the only previous keyboard instrument capable of minutely controlled dynamic nuance through the keyboard) they were considerably louder and had more sustaining power.
Cristofori's new instrument remained relatively unknown until an Italian writer, Scipione Maffei, wrote an enthusiastic article about it (1711), including a diagram of the mechanism. This article was widely distributed, and most of the next generation of piano builders started their work because of reading it. One of these builders was Gottfried Silbermann, better known as an organ builder. Silbermann's pianos were virtually direct copies of Cristofori's, with one important addition: Silbermann invented the forerunner of the modern damper pedal, which lifts all the dampers from the strings at once.
Silbermann showed Johann Sebastian Bach one of his early instruments in the 1730s, but Bach did not like it at that time, claiming that the higher notes were too soft to allow a full dynamic range. Although this earned him some animosity from Silbermann, the criticism was apparently heeded. Bach did approve of a later instrument he saw in 1747, and even served as an agent in selling Silbermann's pianos.
Piano making flourished during the late 18th century in the Viennese school, which included Johann Andreas Stein (who worked in Augsburg, Germany) and the Viennese makers Nannette Streicher (daughter of Johann Andreas Stein) and Anton Walter. Viennese-style pianos were built with wood frames, two strings per note, and had leather-covered hammers. Some of these Viennese pianos had the opposite coloring of modern-day pianos; the natural keys were black and the accidental keys white. It was for such instruments that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed his concertos and sonatas, and replicas of them are built today for use in authentic-instrument performance of his music. The pianos of Mozart's day had a softer, clearer tone than today's pianos or English pianos, with less sustaining power. The term fortepiano is nowadays often used to distinguish the 18th-century instrument from later pianos.
In the period lasting from about 1790 to 1860, the Mozart-era piano underwent tremendous changes that led to the modern form of the instrument. This revolution was in response to a consistent preference by composers and pianists for a more powerful, sustained piano sound, and made possible by the ongoing Industrial Revolution with technological resources such as high-quality steel, called piano wire, for strings, and precision casting for the production of iron frames. Over time, the tonal range of the piano was also increased from the five octaves of Mozart's day to the 7â
or more octaves found on modern pianos.
Broadwood square action
Early technological progress owed much to the English firm of Broadwood, who already had a reputation for the splendour and powerful tone of its harpsichords. Broadwood constructed instruments that were progressively larger, louder, and more robustly constructed. They sent pianos to both Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven, and were the first firm to build pianos with a range of more than five octaves: five octaves and a fifth during the 1790s, six octaves by 1810 (Beethoven used the extra notes in his later works), and seven octaves by 1820. The Viennese makers similarly followed these trends, however the two schools used different piano actions: Broadwoods were more robust, Viennese instruments were more sensitive.
Erard square action
By the 1820s, the center of innovation had shifted to Paris, where the Pleyel firm manufactured pianos used by Frédéric Chopin and the Ãrard firm manufactured those used by Franz Liszt. In 1821, Sébastien Ãrard invented the double escapement action, which permitted a note to be repeated even if the key had not yet risen to its maximum vertical position. This facilitated rapid playing of repeated notes - and this musical device was pioneered by Liszt. When the invention became public, as revised by Henri Herz, the double escapement action gradually became standard in grand pianos, and is still incorporated into all grand pianos currently produced.
One of the major technical innovations that helped to create the sound of the modern piano was the use of a strong iron frame. Also called the "plate", the iron frame sits atop the soundboard, and serves as the primary bulwark against the force of string tension. The increased structural integrity of the iron frame allowed the use of thicker, tenser, and more numerous strings. In a modern grand the total string tension can exceed 20 tons. The single piece cast iron frame was patented in 1825 in Boston by Alpheus Babcock, combining the metal hitch pin plate (1821, claimed by Broadwood on behalf of Samuel Hervé) and resisting bars (Thom and Allen, 1820, but also claimed by Broadwood and Ãrard). Babcock later worked for the Chickering & Mackays firm who patented the first full iron frame for grand pianos in 1843. Composite forged metal frames were preferred by many European makers until the American system was fully adopted by the early 20th century.
Other innovations for the mechanism included the use of felt hammer coverings instead of layered leather hammers. Felt hammers, which were first introduced by Henri Pape in 1826, were a more consistent material, permitting wider dynamic ranges as hammer weights and string tension increased. The sostenuto pedal (see below), invented in 1844 by Jean Louis Boisselot and improved by the Steinway firm in 1874, allowed a wider range of effects.
Other important technical innovations of this era included changes to the way the piano was strung, such as the use of a "choir" of three strings rather than two for all but the lower notes, and the use of different stringing methods. With the over strung scale, also called "cross-stringing", the strings are placed in a vertically overlapping slanted arrangement, with two heights of bridges on the soundboard instead of just one. This permits larger, but not necessarily longer, strings to fit within the case of the piano. Over stringing was invented by Jean-Henri Pape during the 1820s, and first patented for use in grand pianos in the United States by Henry Steinway Jr. in 1859.
Duplex scaling: Treble strings of a 182 cm. grand piano. From lower left to upper right: dampers, main sounding length of strings, treble bridge, duplex string length, duplex bridge (long bar perpendicular to strings), hitchpins. With duplexes or aliquot scales, which was patented in 1872 by Theodore Steinway, the different components of string vibrations are controlled by tuning their secondary parts in octave relationships with the sounding lengths. Similar systems developed by Blüthner (1872), as well as Taskin (1788), and Collard (1821) used more distinctly ringing undamped vibrations to modify tone.
Some early pianos had shapes and designs that are no longer in use. The square piano had horizontal strings arranged diagonally across the rectangular case above the hammers and with the keyboard set in the long side. This design is attributed to Gottfried Silbermann or Christian Ernst Friderici on the continent, and Johannes Zumpe or Harman Vietor in England and it was improved by changes first introduced by Guillaume-Lebrecht Petzold in France and Alpheus Babcock in the United States. Square pianos were built in great numbers through the 1840s in Europe and the 1890s in America, and saw the most visible changes of any type of piano: the celebrated iron framed over strung squares manufactured by Steinway & Sons were more than two and a half times the size of Zumpe's wood framed instruments from a century before. Their overwhelming popularity was due to inexpensive construction and price, although their performance and tone were often limited by simple actions and closely spaced strings.
The mechanism in upright pianos is perpendicular to the keys.
The tall, vertically strung upright grand was arranged like a grand set on end, with the soundboard and bridges above the keys, and tuning pins below them. The term was later revived by many manufacturers for advertising purposes. Giraffe, pyramid and lyre pianos were arranged in a somewhat similar fashion in evocatively shaped cases.
The very tall cabinet piano was introduced about 1805 and was built through the 1840s. It had strings arranged vertically on a continuous frame with bridges extended nearly to the floor, behind the keyboard and very large sticker action. The short cottage upright or pianino with vertical stringing, made popular by Robert Wornum around 1815, was built into the 20th century. They are informally called birdcage pianos because of their prominent damper mechanism. Pianinos were distinguished from the oblique, or diagonally strung upright made popular in France by Roller & Blanchet during the late 1820s. The tiny spinet upright was manufactured from the mid-1930s until recent times. The low position of the hammers required the use of a "drop action" to preserve a reasonable keyboard height.
Modern upright and grand pianos attained their present forms by the end of the 19th century. Improvements have been made in manufacturing processes, and many individual details of the instrument continue to receive attention.
Much of the most widely admired piano repertoire, for example, that of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, was composed for a type of instrument that is rather different from the modern instruments on which this music is normally performed today. Even the music of the Romantics, including Liszt, Chopin, Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn and Johannes Brahms, was written for pianos substantially different from ours.
A schematic depiction of the construction of a pianoforte.
Modern pianos come in two basic configurations (with subcategories): the grand piano and the upright piano.
Grand piano
In grand pianos, the frame and strings are horizontal, with the strings extending away from the keyboard. There are several sizes of grand piano. A rough generalization distinguishes the "concert grand" (between about and long) from the "parlor grand" or "boudoir grand" (about to ) and the smaller "baby grand".
All else being equal, longer pianos with longer strings have better sound and lower inharmonicity of the strings. Inharmonicity is the degree to which the frequencies of overtones (known as partials, partial tones, or harmonics) depart from whole multiples of the fundamental frequency. Pianos with shorter, thicker, and stiffer strings (e.g., baby grands) have more inharmonicity. The longer strings on a concert grand can vibrate more freely than the shorter, thicker strings on a baby grand, which means that a concert grand's strings will have truer overtones. This is partly because the strings will be tuned closer to equal temperament in relation to the standard pitch with less "stretching" in the piano tuning (See: Piano tuning). Full-size grands are usually used for public concerts, whereas smaller grands, introduced by Sohmer & Co. in 1884, are often chosen for domestic use where space and cost are considerations.
Upright piano
Upright pianos, also called vertical pianos, are more compact because the frame and strings are vertical. It is considered harder to produce a sensitive piano action when the hammers move horizontally, as the vertical hammer return is dependent on springs which are prone to wear and tear. However, a well-regulated vertical piano will probably play more smoothly than a poorly regulated grand piano, and the very best upright pianos approach the level of some grand pianos of the same size in tone quality and responsiveness.
One noticeable advantage that the grand piano action has over the vertical action is that all grand pianos have a special repetition lever in the playing action that is absent in all verticals. This repetition lever, a separate one for every key, catches the hammer close to the strings as long as the keys are played repeatedly and fairly quickly. In this position, with the hammer resting on the lever, a pianist can play repeated notes, staccato, and trills with much more speed and control than is possible on a vertical piano.
Upright pianos with unusually tall frames and long strings are sometimes called "upright grand" pianos.
Some authors classify modern pianos according to their height and, to modifications of the action that are necessary to accomodate the height.
* Studio pianos are around 42 to 45 inches tall. This is the shortest cabinet that can accomodate a 'full-sized' action located above the keyboard.
* Console pianos have a compact action (shorter hammers), and are a few inches shorter than studio models.
* The top of a Spinet model barely rises above the keyboard. The action is located below, operated by vertical wires that are attached to the backs of the keys.
* Anything taller than a studio piano is called an upright.
Player piano
Toy pianos began to be manufactured in the 19th century. In 1863, Henri Fourneaux invented the player piano, which "plays itself" from a piano roll without the need for a pianist. The player piano is a piano that records a performance using rolls of paper with perforations, and then replays the performance using pneumatic devices. A modern equivalent for the player piano is the Yamaha Disklavier system, which uses solenoids and midi instead of pneumatics and rolls. Silent pianos, which allow a regular piano to be used converted to a digital instrument, are a recent innovation and are becoming more popular.
Irving Berlin played a special piano called the transposing piano, which was invented in 1801 by Edward Ryley. It had a lever under the keyboard used to alter the music to any key. One of Berlin's pianos is in the Smithsonian Museum. For much of his career, Berlin only knew how to play the black keys. But with his 'trick piano' he was no longer limited to the key of F-sharp.
A relatively recent development is the prepared piano, which is used in contemporary art music. A prepared piano is a standard grand piano which has had objects placed inside it before a performance in order to alter its sound, or which has had its mechanism changed in some way. The scores for music for prepared piano often instruct the pianist to insert pieces of rubber or small pieces of metal (screws or washers) in between the strings. These added items either mute the strings or create unusual vibrating sounds.
Since the 1980s, digital pianos have been available, which use digital sampling technology to reproduce the sound of each piano note. The best digital pianos are sophisticated, with features including working pedals, weighted keys, multiple voices, and MIDI interfaces. However, with such technology, it is difficult to duplicate one particular aspect of acoustic pianos, namely that when the damper pedal (see below) is depressed, the strings not struck vibrate sympathetically when other strings are struck, as well as the unique instrument-specific mathematical non-linearity of partials on any given unison. Since this sympathetic vibration is considered central to piano tone, many digital pianos do not sound the same as the best acoustic pianos. Progress is being made in this area by including physical models of sympathetic vibration in the synthesis software. Some higher end digital pianos, such as the Yamaha Clavinova series, or the KAWAI MP8 series, produced in the last few years incorporate string resonance technology to overcome this limitation.
With the advent of powerful desktop computers, highly realistic sampled digital grand pianos have become available as affordable software modules. Some use multi-gigabyte piano sample sets with as many as 90 recordings, each lasting many seconds, for each of the 88 keys under different conditions, augmented by additional samples to emulate sympathetic resonance, key release, the drop of the dampers, and simulations of piano techniques like re-pedaling.
Keyboard
Almost every modern piano has 36 black keys and 52 white keys for a total of 88 keys (seven octaves plus a minor third, from A0 to C8). Many older pianos only have 85 keys (seven octaves from A0 to A7), while some manufacturers extend the range further in one or both directions.
Some Bösendorfer pianos extend the normal range downwards to F0, with one other model going as far as a bottom C0, making a full eight octave range. These extra keys are sometimes hidden under a small hinged lid that can be flipped down to cover the keys in order to avoid visual disorientation in a pianist unfamiliar with the extended keyboard. On others, the colours of the extra white keys are reversed (black instead of white).
The extra keys are added primarily for increased resonance from the associated strings; that is, they vibrate sympathetically with other strings whenever the damper pedal is depressed and thus give a fuller tone. Only a very small number of works composed for piano actually use these notes. More recently, the Stuart and Sons company has also manufactured extended-range pianos. On their instruments, the range is extended both down the bass to F0 and up the treble to F8 for a full eight octaves. The extra keys are the same as the other keys in appearance.
Small studio upright acoustical pianos with only 65 keys have been manufactured for use by roving pianists. Known as "gig" pianos and still containing a cast iron harp, these are comparatively lightweight and can be easily transported to and from engagements by only two men. As their harp is longer than that of a spinet or console piano, they have a stronger bass sound that to some pianists is well worth the trade-off in range that a reduced key-set offers.
Piano pedals from left to right: una corda, sostenuto, and damper.
Pianos have had pedals, or some close equivalent, since the earliest days. (In the 18th century, some pianos used levers pressed upward by the player's knee instead of pedals.) Most grand pianos have three pedals: soft pedal (una corda), sostenuto, and sustain pedal (from left to right, respectively). Most modern upright pianos have three pedals: soft pedal, practice pedal and sustain pedal, though older or cheaper models may lack the practice pedal.
The sustain pedal (or, damper pedal) is often simply called "the pedal", since it is the most frequently used. It is placed as the rightmost pedal in the group. It lifts the dampers from all keys, sustaining all played notes, and altering the overall tone.
The soft pedal or una corda pedal is placed leftmost in the row of pedals. In grand pianos, it shifts the entire action, including the keyboard, to the right, so that the hammers hit only one of the three strings for each note (hence the name una corda, or 'one string'). The effect is to soften the note as well as to change the tone. In uprights, this action is not possible, and so the pedal moves the hammers closer to the strings, allowing the hammers to hit the strings with less kinetic energy to produce a softer sound.
On grand pianos, the middle pedal is a sostenuto pedal. This pedal keeps raised any damper that was already raised at the moment the pedal is depressed. This makes it possible to sustain some notes (by depressing the sostenuto pedal before notes to be sustained are released) while the player's hands are free to play other notes. This can be useful for musical passages with pedal points and other otherwise tricky or impossible situations.
On many upright pianos, there is a middle pedal called the 'practice' or celeste pedal. This drops a piece of felt between the hammers and strings, greatly muting the sounds.
There are also non-standard variants. On vertical pianos, the middle pedal can be a bass sustain pedal: that is, when it is depressed, the dampers lift off the strings only in the bass section. This pedal would be used only when a pianist needs to sustain a single bass note or chord over many measures, while playing the melody in the treble section. On the largest Fazioli piano, there is a fourth pedal to the left of the principal three. This fourth pedal works in the same way as the soft pedal of an upright piano, moving the hammers closer to the strings.
An upright pedal piano
The rare transposing piano, of which Irving Berlin possessed an example, had a middle pedal that functioned as a clutch which disengages the keyboard from the mechanism, enabling the keyboard to be moved to the left or right with a lever. The entire action of the piano is thus shifted to allow the pianist to play music written in one key so that it sounds in a different key. The pedalier piano, or pedal piano, is a rare type of piano that includes a pedalboard, enabling bass register notes to be played with the feet, as is standard on the organ. There are two types of pedal piano: the pedal board may be an integral part of the instrument, using the same strings and mechanism as the manual keyboard, or, less frequently, it may consist of two independent pianos (each with its separate mechanics and strings) which are placed one above the other, a regular piano played by the hands and a bass-register piano played by the feet.
Many parts of a piano are made of materials selected for sturdiness. In quality pianos, the outer rim of the piano is made of a hardwood, normally maple or beech. According to Harold A. Conklin, the purpose of a sturdy rim is so that "the vibrational energy will stay as much as possible in the soundboard instead of dissipating uselessly in the case parts, which are inefficient radiators of sound."
View from below of a 182-cm grand piano. In order of distance from viewer: softwood braces, tapered soundboard ribs, soundboard. The metal rod at lower right is a humidity control device.
The rim is normally made by laminating flexible strips of hardwood to the desired shape, a system that was developed by Theodore Steinway in 1880. The thick wooden braces at the bottom (grands) or back (uprights) of the piano are not as acoustically important as the rim, and are often made of a softwood, even in top-quality pianos, in order to save weight. The requirement of structural strength, fulfilled with stout hardwood and thick metal, makes a piano heavy; even a small upright can weigh 136 kg (300 lb), and the Steinway concert grand (Model D) weighs 480 kg (990 lb). The largest piano built, the Fazioli F308, weighs 691 kg (1520 lb).
The pinblock, which holds the tuning pins in place, is another area of the piano where toughness is important. It is made of hardwood, (often maple) and generally is laminated (built of multiple layers) for additional strength and gripping power. Piano strings (also called piano wire), which must endure years of extreme tension and hard blows, are made of high quality steel. They are manufactured to vary as little as possible in diameter, since all deviations from uniformity introduce tonal distortion. The bass strings of a piano are made of a steel core wrapped with copper wire, to increase their mass whilst retaining flexibility.
The plate, or metal frame, of a piano is usually made of cast iron. It is advantageous for the plate to be quite massive. Since the strings are attached to the plate at one end, any vibrations transmitted to the plate will result in loss of energy to the desired (efficient) channel of sound transmission, namely the bridge and the soundboard. Some manufacturers now use cast steel in their plates, for greater strength. The casting of the plate is a delicate art, since the dimensions are crucial and the iron shrinks by about one percent during cooling.
The inclusion in a piano of an extremely large piece of metal is potentially an aesthetic handicap, which piano makers overcome by polishing, painting and decorating the plate. Plates often include the manufacturer's ornamental medallion and can be strikingly attractive. In an effort to make pianos lighter, Alcoa worked with Winter and Company piano manufacturers to make pianos using an aluminum plate during the 1940s. The use of aluminum for piano plates, however, did not become widely accepted and was discontinued.
The numerous grand parts and upright parts of a piano action are generally hardwood (e.g. maple, beech. hornbeam). However, since World War II, plastics have become available. Early plastics were incorporated into some pianos in the late 1940s and 1950s, but proved disastrous because they crystallized and lost their strength after only a few decades of use. The Steinway firm once incorporated Teflon, a synthetic material developed by DuPont, for some grand action parts in place of cloth, but ultimately abandoned the experiment due to an inherent "clicking" which invariably developed over time. (Also Teflon is "humidity stable" whereas the wood adjacent to the Teflon will swell and shrink with humidity changes, causing problems.) More recently, the Kawai firm has built pianos with action parts made of more modern and effective plastics such as carbon fiber; these parts have held up better and have generally received the respect of piano technicians .
Ivorite and ebony keys on a modern Steinway & Sons concert grand piano.
The part of the piano where materials probably matter more than anywhere else is the soundboard. In quality pianos, this is made of solid spruce (that is, spruce boards glued together at their edges). Spruce is chosen for its high ratio of strength to weight. The best piano makers use close-grained, quarter-sawn, defect-free spruce, and make sure that it has been carefully dried over a long period of time before making it into soundboards. In cheap pianos, the soundboard is often made of plywood.
Piano keys are generally made of spruce or basswood, for lightness. Spruce is normally used in high-quality pianos. Traditionally, the black keys were made from ebony and the white keys were covered with strips of ivory, but since ivory-yielding species are now endangered and protected by treaty, plastics are now almost exclusively used. Also, ivory tends to chip more easily than plastic. Legal ivory can still be obtained in limited quantities. At one time, the Yamaha firm innovated a plastic called "Ivorine" or "Ivorite", since imitated by other makers, that mimics the look and feel of ivory.
A piano tuner
Pianos need regular tuning to keep them up to pitch, which is usually the internationally recognized standard concert pitch of A4 = 440 Hz. The hammers of pianos are voiced to compensate for gradual hardening, and other parts also need periodic regulation. Aged and worn pianos can be rebuilt or reconditioned. Often, by replacing a great number of their parts, they can be made to perform as well as new pianos. Older pianos are often more settled and produce a warmer tone.
Piano moving should be done by trained piano movers using adequate manpower and the correct equipment for any particular piano's size and weight. Pianos are heavy yet delicate instruments. Over the years, professional piano movers have developed special techniques for transporting both grands and uprights which prevent damage to the case and to the piano's mechanics.
The piano at the social center in the 19th century (Moritz von Schwind, 1868). The man at the piano is Franz Schubert.
The piano is a crucial instrument in Western classical music, jazz, film, television, and most other complex western musical genres. Since a large number of composers are proficient pianists â and because the piano keyboard offers an easy means of complex melodic and harmonic interplay â the piano is often used as a tool for composition.
Pianos were, and still are, popular instruments for private household ownership. Hence, pianos have gained a place in the popular consciousness, and are sometimes referred to by nicknames including: "the ivories", "the joanna", "the eighty-eight", and "the black(s) and white(s)", "the little joe(s)". Playing the piano is sometimes referred to as "tickling the ivories".
;General
* Innovations in the piano
* Jazz piano
* Piano acoustics
* Piano key frequencies (in equal temperament)
* Piano trio
* String piano
;Related lists
* List of films about pianists
* Lists of solo piano pieces
* List of piano makers
* List of piano brand names
* List of classical pianists (recorded)
;Related instruments
* Hammered dulcimer
* Harp
* Clavichord
* Harpsichord
* Organ and Pipe organ
* Electric piano
* Electronic piano
* The authoritative New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (available online by subscription), contains a wealth of information. Main article: "Pianoforte".
* The Encyclopædia Britannica (available online by subscription) also includes much information on the piano. In the 1988 edition, the primary article can be found in "Musical Instruments".
* The Piano Book by Larry Fine (4th ed. Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts: Brookside Press, 2001; ISBN 1-929145-01-2) gives the basics of how pianos work, and a thorough evaluative survey of current pianos and their manufacturers. It also includes advice on buying and owning pianos.
*Giraffes, black dragons, and other pianos: a technological history from Cristofori to the modern concert grand by Edwin M. Good (1982, second ed., 2001, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press) is a standard reference on the history of the piano.
*The Early Pianoforte by Stewart Pollens (1995, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) is an authoritative work covering the ancestry of the piano, its invention by Cristofori, and the early stages of its subsequent evolution.
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;Information
* Yamaha Musician - Yamaha piano reviews and enthusiast site
* Grand Piano information and images
* The Piano Page Lots of information from the Piano Technicians Guild
* WikiRecording's Guide to Recording Pianos
;History
* History of the Piano Forte, Association of Blind Piano Tuners, UK
* The Frederick Historical Piano Collection
;Piano Technique
* Principles of Piano Technique
;Sheet music for Piano
* All Piano Scores Free printable classical sheet music for piano + audio
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Piano | How many black keys do modern pianos have? | 36 | data/set2/a1 | Piano
Baby Grand Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard that produces sound by striking steel strings with felt covered hammers. The hammers immediately rebound, allowing the strings to continue vibrating at their resonant frequency. " Hammer Time" by John Kiehl, Wolfram Demonstrations Project. These vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a soundboard that couples the acoustic energy to the air so that it can be heard as sound.
The piano is widely used in Western music for solo performance, ensemble use, chamber music, and accompaniment. It is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal. Although not portable and often expensive, the piano's versatility and ubiquity have made it one of the most familiar musical instruments. It is sometimes classified as both a percussion and a stringed instrument. According to the Hornbostel-Sachs method of music classification, it is grouped with Chordophones.
The word piano is a shortened form of the word pianoforte, which is seldom used except in formal language and derived from the original Italian name for the instrument, clavicembalo [or gravicembalo] col piano e forte (literally harpsichord with soft and loud). This refers to the instrument's responsiveness to keyboard touch, which allows the pianist to produce notes at different dynamic levels by controlling the speed with which the hammers hit the strings.
Early piano replica by the modern builder Paul McNulty, after Walter & Sohn, 1805
The piano was originally founded on earlier technological innovations. The first string instruments with struck strings were the hammered dulcimers originating from the Persian traditional musical instrument santur. David R. Peterson (1994), "Acoustics of the hammered dulcimer, its history, and recent developments", Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 95 (5), p. 3002. During the Middle Ages, there were several attempts at creating stringed keyboard instruments with struck strings, Pollens, 1995. chp. 1 the earliest being the hurdy gurdy which has uncertain origins. By the 17th century, 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.
Grand piano by Louis Bas of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, France, 1781. Earliest French grand piano known to survive; includes an inverted wrestplank and action derived from the work of Bartolomeo Cristofiori (ca. 1700) with ornately decorated soundboard.
The invention of the modern piano is credited to Bartolomeo Cristofori of Padua, Italy, who was employed by Prince Ferdinand de Medici as the Keeper of the Instruments. He was an expert harpsichord maker and was well acquainted with the previous body of knowledge on stringed keyboard instruments. It is not known exactly when Cristofori first built a piano. An inventory made by his employers, the Medici family, indicates the existence of a piano by the year 1700; another document of doubtful authenticity indicates a date of 1698. The three Cristofori pianos that survive today date from the 1720s.
Cristofori's great success was in solving, without any prior example, the fundamental mechanical problem of piano design: the hammer must strike the string, but not remain in contact with it (as a tangent remains in contact with a clavichord string) because this would damp the sound. Moreover, the hammer must return to its rest position without bouncing violently, and it must be possible to repeat a note rapidly. Cristofori's piano action served as a model for the many different approaches to piano actions that followed. While Cristofori's early instruments were made with thin strings and were much quieter than the modern piano, compared to the clavichord (the only previous keyboard instrument capable of minutely controlled dynamic nuance through the keyboard) they were considerably louder and had more sustaining power.
Cristofori's new instrument remained relatively unknown until an Italian writer, Scipione Maffei, wrote an enthusiastic article about it (1711), including a diagram of the mechanism. This article was widely distributed, and most of the next generation of piano builders started their work because of reading it. One of these builders was Gottfried Silbermann, better known as an organ builder. Silbermann's pianos were virtually direct copies of Cristofori's, with one important addition: Silbermann invented the forerunner of the modern damper pedal, which lifts all the dampers from the strings at once.
Silbermann showed Johann Sebastian Bach one of his early instruments in the 1730s, but Bach did not like it at that time, claiming that the higher notes were too soft to allow a full dynamic range. Although this earned him some animosity from Silbermann, the criticism was apparently heeded. Bach did approve of a later instrument he saw in 1747, and even served as an agent in selling Silbermann's pianos.
Piano making flourished during the late 18th century in the Viennese school, which included Johann Andreas Stein (who worked in Augsburg, Germany) and the Viennese makers Nannette Streicher (daughter of Johann Andreas Stein) and Anton Walter. Viennese-style pianos were built with wood frames, two strings per note, and had leather-covered hammers. Some of these Viennese pianos had the opposite coloring of modern-day pianos; the natural keys were black and the accidental keys white. It was for such instruments that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed his concertos and sonatas, and replicas of them are built today for use in authentic-instrument performance of his music. The pianos of Mozart's day had a softer, clearer tone than today's pianos or English pianos, with less sustaining power. The term fortepiano is nowadays often used to distinguish the 18th-century instrument from later pianos.
In the period lasting from about 1790 to 1860, the Mozart-era piano underwent tremendous changes that led to the modern form of the instrument. This revolution was in response to a consistent preference by composers and pianists for a more powerful, sustained piano sound, and made possible by the ongoing Industrial Revolution with technological resources such as high-quality steel, called piano wire, for strings, and precision casting for the production of iron frames. Over time, the tonal range of the piano was also increased from the five octaves of Mozart's day to the 7â
or more octaves found on modern pianos.
Broadwood square action
Early technological progress owed much to the English firm of Broadwood, who already had a reputation for the splendour and powerful tone of its harpsichords. Broadwood constructed instruments that were progressively larger, louder, and more robustly constructed. They sent pianos to both Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven, and were the first firm to build pianos with a range of more than five octaves: five octaves and a fifth during the 1790s, six octaves by 1810 (Beethoven used the extra notes in his later works), and seven octaves by 1820. The Viennese makers similarly followed these trends, however the two schools used different piano actions: Broadwoods were more robust, Viennese instruments were more sensitive.
Erard square action
By the 1820s, the center of innovation had shifted to Paris, where the Pleyel firm manufactured pianos used by Frédéric Chopin and the Ãrard firm manufactured those used by Franz Liszt. In 1821, Sébastien Ãrard invented the double escapement action, which permitted a note to be repeated even if the key had not yet risen to its maximum vertical position. This facilitated rapid playing of repeated notes - and this musical device was pioneered by Liszt. When the invention became public, as revised by Henri Herz, the double escapement action gradually became standard in grand pianos, and is still incorporated into all grand pianos currently produced.
One of the major technical innovations that helped to create the sound of the modern piano was the use of a strong iron frame. Also called the "plate", the iron frame sits atop the soundboard, and serves as the primary bulwark against the force of string tension. The increased structural integrity of the iron frame allowed the use of thicker, tenser, and more numerous strings. In a modern grand the total string tension can exceed 20 tons. The single piece cast iron frame was patented in 1825 in Boston by Alpheus Babcock, combining the metal hitch pin plate (1821, claimed by Broadwood on behalf of Samuel Hervé) and resisting bars (Thom and Allen, 1820, but also claimed by Broadwood and Ãrard). Babcock later worked for the Chickering & Mackays firm who patented the first full iron frame for grand pianos in 1843. Composite forged metal frames were preferred by many European makers until the American system was fully adopted by the early 20th century.
Other innovations for the mechanism included the use of felt hammer coverings instead of layered leather hammers. Felt hammers, which were first introduced by Henri Pape in 1826, were a more consistent material, permitting wider dynamic ranges as hammer weights and string tension increased. The sostenuto pedal (see below), invented in 1844 by Jean Louis Boisselot and improved by the Steinway firm in 1874, allowed a wider range of effects.
Other important technical innovations of this era included changes to the way the piano was strung, such as the use of a "choir" of three strings rather than two for all but the lower notes, and the use of different stringing methods. With the over strung scale, also called "cross-stringing", the strings are placed in a vertically overlapping slanted arrangement, with two heights of bridges on the soundboard instead of just one. This permits larger, but not necessarily longer, strings to fit within the case of the piano. Over stringing was invented by Jean-Henri Pape during the 1820s, and first patented for use in grand pianos in the United States by Henry Steinway Jr. in 1859.
Duplex scaling: Treble strings of a 182 cm. grand piano. From lower left to upper right: dampers, main sounding length of strings, treble bridge, duplex string length, duplex bridge (long bar perpendicular to strings), hitchpins. With duplexes or aliquot scales, which was patented in 1872 by Theodore Steinway, the different components of string vibrations are controlled by tuning their secondary parts in octave relationships with the sounding lengths. Similar systems developed by Blüthner (1872), as well as Taskin (1788), and Collard (1821) used more distinctly ringing undamped vibrations to modify tone.
Some early pianos had shapes and designs that are no longer in use. The square piano had horizontal strings arranged diagonally across the rectangular case above the hammers and with the keyboard set in the long side. This design is attributed to Gottfried Silbermann or Christian Ernst Friderici on the continent, and Johannes Zumpe or Harman Vietor in England and it was improved by changes first introduced by Guillaume-Lebrecht Petzold in France and Alpheus Babcock in the United States. Square pianos were built in great numbers through the 1840s in Europe and the 1890s in America, and saw the most visible changes of any type of piano: the celebrated iron framed over strung squares manufactured by Steinway & Sons were more than two and a half times the size of Zumpe's wood framed instruments from a century before. Their overwhelming popularity was due to inexpensive construction and price, although their performance and tone were often limited by simple actions and closely spaced strings.
The mechanism in upright pianos is perpendicular to the keys.
The tall, vertically strung upright grand was arranged like a grand set on end, with the soundboard and bridges above the keys, and tuning pins below them. The term was later revived by many manufacturers for advertising purposes. Giraffe, pyramid and lyre pianos were arranged in a somewhat similar fashion in evocatively shaped cases.
The very tall cabinet piano was introduced about 1805 and was built through the 1840s. It had strings arranged vertically on a continuous frame with bridges extended nearly to the floor, behind the keyboard and very large sticker action. The short cottage upright or pianino with vertical stringing, made popular by Robert Wornum around 1815, was built into the 20th century. They are informally called birdcage pianos because of their prominent damper mechanism. Pianinos were distinguished from the oblique, or diagonally strung upright made popular in France by Roller & Blanchet during the late 1820s. The tiny spinet upright was manufactured from the mid-1930s until recent times. The low position of the hammers required the use of a "drop action" to preserve a reasonable keyboard height.
Modern upright and grand pianos attained their present forms by the end of the 19th century. Improvements have been made in manufacturing processes, and many individual details of the instrument continue to receive attention.
Much of the most widely admired piano repertoire, for example, that of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, was composed for a type of instrument that is rather different from the modern instruments on which this music is normally performed today. Even the music of the Romantics, including Liszt, Chopin, Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn and Johannes Brahms, was written for pianos substantially different from ours.
A schematic depiction of the construction of a pianoforte.
Modern pianos come in two basic configurations (with subcategories): the grand piano and the upright piano.
Grand piano
In grand pianos, the frame and strings are horizontal, with the strings extending away from the keyboard. There are several sizes of grand piano. A rough generalization distinguishes the "concert grand" (between about and long) from the "parlor grand" or "boudoir grand" (about to ) and the smaller "baby grand".
All else being equal, longer pianos with longer strings have better sound and lower inharmonicity of the strings. Inharmonicity is the degree to which the frequencies of overtones (known as partials, partial tones, or harmonics) depart from whole multiples of the fundamental frequency. Pianos with shorter, thicker, and stiffer strings (e.g., baby grands) have more inharmonicity. The longer strings on a concert grand can vibrate more freely than the shorter, thicker strings on a baby grand, which means that a concert grand's strings will have truer overtones. This is partly because the strings will be tuned closer to equal temperament in relation to the standard pitch with less "stretching" in the piano tuning (See: Piano tuning). Full-size grands are usually used for public concerts, whereas smaller grands, introduced by Sohmer & Co. in 1884, are often chosen for domestic use where space and cost are considerations.
Upright piano
Upright pianos, also called vertical pianos, are more compact because the frame and strings are vertical. It is considered harder to produce a sensitive piano action when the hammers move horizontally, as the vertical hammer return is dependent on springs which are prone to wear and tear. However, a well-regulated vertical piano will probably play more smoothly than a poorly regulated grand piano, and the very best upright pianos approach the level of some grand pianos of the same size in tone quality and responsiveness.
One noticeable advantage that the grand piano action has over the vertical action is that all grand pianos have a special repetition lever in the playing action that is absent in all verticals. This repetition lever, a separate one for every key, catches the hammer close to the strings as long as the keys are played repeatedly and fairly quickly. In this position, with the hammer resting on the lever, a pianist can play repeated notes, staccato, and trills with much more speed and control than is possible on a vertical piano.
Upright pianos with unusually tall frames and long strings are sometimes called "upright grand" pianos.
Some authors classify modern pianos according to their height and, to modifications of the action that are necessary to accomodate the height.
* Studio pianos are around 42 to 45 inches tall. This is the shortest cabinet that can accomodate a 'full-sized' action located above the keyboard.
* Console pianos have a compact action (shorter hammers), and are a few inches shorter than studio models.
* The top of a Spinet model barely rises above the keyboard. The action is located below, operated by vertical wires that are attached to the backs of the keys.
* Anything taller than a studio piano is called an upright.
Player piano
Toy pianos began to be manufactured in the 19th century. In 1863, Henri Fourneaux invented the player piano, which "plays itself" from a piano roll without the need for a pianist. The player piano is a piano that records a performance using rolls of paper with perforations, and then replays the performance using pneumatic devices. A modern equivalent for the player piano is the Yamaha Disklavier system, which uses solenoids and midi instead of pneumatics and rolls. Silent pianos, which allow a regular piano to be used converted to a digital instrument, are a recent innovation and are becoming more popular.
Irving Berlin played a special piano called the transposing piano, which was invented in 1801 by Edward Ryley. It had a lever under the keyboard used to alter the music to any key. One of Berlin's pianos is in the Smithsonian Museum. For much of his career, Berlin only knew how to play the black keys. But with his 'trick piano' he was no longer limited to the key of F-sharp.
A relatively recent development is the prepared piano, which is used in contemporary art music. A prepared piano is a standard grand piano which has had objects placed inside it before a performance in order to alter its sound, or which has had its mechanism changed in some way. The scores for music for prepared piano often instruct the pianist to insert pieces of rubber or small pieces of metal (screws or washers) in between the strings. These added items either mute the strings or create unusual vibrating sounds.
Since the 1980s, digital pianos have been available, which use digital sampling technology to reproduce the sound of each piano note. The best digital pianos are sophisticated, with features including working pedals, weighted keys, multiple voices, and MIDI interfaces. However, with such technology, it is difficult to duplicate one particular aspect of acoustic pianos, namely that when the damper pedal (see below) is depressed, the strings not struck vibrate sympathetically when other strings are struck, as well as the unique instrument-specific mathematical non-linearity of partials on any given unison. Since this sympathetic vibration is considered central to piano tone, many digital pianos do not sound the same as the best acoustic pianos. Progress is being made in this area by including physical models of sympathetic vibration in the synthesis software. Some higher end digital pianos, such as the Yamaha Clavinova series, or the KAWAI MP8 series, produced in the last few years incorporate string resonance technology to overcome this limitation.
With the advent of powerful desktop computers, highly realistic sampled digital grand pianos have become available as affordable software modules. Some use multi-gigabyte piano sample sets with as many as 90 recordings, each lasting many seconds, for each of the 88 keys under different conditions, augmented by additional samples to emulate sympathetic resonance, key release, the drop of the dampers, and simulations of piano techniques like re-pedaling.
Keyboard
Almost every modern piano has 36 black keys and 52 white keys for a total of 88 keys (seven octaves plus a minor third, from A0 to C8). Many older pianos only have 85 keys (seven octaves from A0 to A7), while some manufacturers extend the range further in one or both directions.
Some Bösendorfer pianos extend the normal range downwards to F0, with one other model going as far as a bottom C0, making a full eight octave range. These extra keys are sometimes hidden under a small hinged lid that can be flipped down to cover the keys in order to avoid visual disorientation in a pianist unfamiliar with the extended keyboard. On others, the colours of the extra white keys are reversed (black instead of white).
The extra keys are added primarily for increased resonance from the associated strings; that is, they vibrate sympathetically with other strings whenever the damper pedal is depressed and thus give a fuller tone. Only a very small number of works composed for piano actually use these notes. More recently, the Stuart and Sons company has also manufactured extended-range pianos. On their instruments, the range is extended both down the bass to F0 and up the treble to F8 for a full eight octaves. The extra keys are the same as the other keys in appearance.
Small studio upright acoustical pianos with only 65 keys have been manufactured for use by roving pianists. Known as "gig" pianos and still containing a cast iron harp, these are comparatively lightweight and can be easily transported to and from engagements by only two men. As their harp is longer than that of a spinet or console piano, they have a stronger bass sound that to some pianists is well worth the trade-off in range that a reduced key-set offers.
Piano pedals from left to right: una corda, sostenuto, and damper.
Pianos have had pedals, or some close equivalent, since the earliest days. (In the 18th century, some pianos used levers pressed upward by the player's knee instead of pedals.) Most grand pianos have three pedals: soft pedal (una corda), sostenuto, and sustain pedal (from left to right, respectively). Most modern upright pianos have three pedals: soft pedal, practice pedal and sustain pedal, though older or cheaper models may lack the practice pedal.
The sustain pedal (or, damper pedal) is often simply called "the pedal", since it is the most frequently used. It is placed as the rightmost pedal in the group. It lifts the dampers from all keys, sustaining all played notes, and altering the overall tone.
The soft pedal or una corda pedal is placed leftmost in the row of pedals. In grand pianos, it shifts the entire action, including the keyboard, to the right, so that the hammers hit only one of the three strings for each note (hence the name una corda, or 'one string'). The effect is to soften the note as well as to change the tone. In uprights, this action is not possible, and so the pedal moves the hammers closer to the strings, allowing the hammers to hit the strings with less kinetic energy to produce a softer sound.
On grand pianos, the middle pedal is a sostenuto pedal. This pedal keeps raised any damper that was already raised at the moment the pedal is depressed. This makes it possible to sustain some notes (by depressing the sostenuto pedal before notes to be sustained are released) while the player's hands are free to play other notes. This can be useful for musical passages with pedal points and other otherwise tricky or impossible situations.
On many upright pianos, there is a middle pedal called the 'practice' or celeste pedal. This drops a piece of felt between the hammers and strings, greatly muting the sounds.
There are also non-standard variants. On vertical pianos, the middle pedal can be a bass sustain pedal: that is, when it is depressed, the dampers lift off the strings only in the bass section. This pedal would be used only when a pianist needs to sustain a single bass note or chord over many measures, while playing the melody in the treble section. On the largest Fazioli piano, there is a fourth pedal to the left of the principal three. This fourth pedal works in the same way as the soft pedal of an upright piano, moving the hammers closer to the strings.
An upright pedal piano
The rare transposing piano, of which Irving Berlin possessed an example, had a middle pedal that functioned as a clutch which disengages the keyboard from the mechanism, enabling the keyboard to be moved to the left or right with a lever. The entire action of the piano is thus shifted to allow the pianist to play music written in one key so that it sounds in a different key. The pedalier piano, or pedal piano, is a rare type of piano that includes a pedalboard, enabling bass register notes to be played with the feet, as is standard on the organ. There are two types of pedal piano: the pedal board may be an integral part of the instrument, using the same strings and mechanism as the manual keyboard, or, less frequently, it may consist of two independent pianos (each with its separate mechanics and strings) which are placed one above the other, a regular piano played by the hands and a bass-register piano played by the feet.
Many parts of a piano are made of materials selected for sturdiness. In quality pianos, the outer rim of the piano is made of a hardwood, normally maple or beech. According to Harold A. Conklin, the purpose of a sturdy rim is so that "the vibrational energy will stay as much as possible in the soundboard instead of dissipating uselessly in the case parts, which are inefficient radiators of sound."
View from below of a 182-cm grand piano. In order of distance from viewer: softwood braces, tapered soundboard ribs, soundboard. The metal rod at lower right is a humidity control device.
The rim is normally made by laminating flexible strips of hardwood to the desired shape, a system that was developed by Theodore Steinway in 1880. The thick wooden braces at the bottom (grands) or back (uprights) of the piano are not as acoustically important as the rim, and are often made of a softwood, even in top-quality pianos, in order to save weight. The requirement of structural strength, fulfilled with stout hardwood and thick metal, makes a piano heavy; even a small upright can weigh 136 kg (300 lb), and the Steinway concert grand (Model D) weighs 480 kg (990 lb). The largest piano built, the Fazioli F308, weighs 691 kg (1520 lb).
The pinblock, which holds the tuning pins in place, is another area of the piano where toughness is important. It is made of hardwood, (often maple) and generally is laminated (built of multiple layers) for additional strength and gripping power. Piano strings (also called piano wire), which must endure years of extreme tension and hard blows, are made of high quality steel. They are manufactured to vary as little as possible in diameter, since all deviations from uniformity introduce tonal distortion. The bass strings of a piano are made of a steel core wrapped with copper wire, to increase their mass whilst retaining flexibility.
The plate, or metal frame, of a piano is usually made of cast iron. It is advantageous for the plate to be quite massive. Since the strings are attached to the plate at one end, any vibrations transmitted to the plate will result in loss of energy to the desired (efficient) channel of sound transmission, namely the bridge and the soundboard. Some manufacturers now use cast steel in their plates, for greater strength. The casting of the plate is a delicate art, since the dimensions are crucial and the iron shrinks by about one percent during cooling.
The inclusion in a piano of an extremely large piece of metal is potentially an aesthetic handicap, which piano makers overcome by polishing, painting and decorating the plate. Plates often include the manufacturer's ornamental medallion and can be strikingly attractive. In an effort to make pianos lighter, Alcoa worked with Winter and Company piano manufacturers to make pianos using an aluminum plate during the 1940s. The use of aluminum for piano plates, however, did not become widely accepted and was discontinued.
The numerous grand parts and upright parts of a piano action are generally hardwood (e.g. maple, beech. hornbeam). However, since World War II, plastics have become available. Early plastics were incorporated into some pianos in the late 1940s and 1950s, but proved disastrous because they crystallized and lost their strength after only a few decades of use. The Steinway firm once incorporated Teflon, a synthetic material developed by DuPont, for some grand action parts in place of cloth, but ultimately abandoned the experiment due to an inherent "clicking" which invariably developed over time. (Also Teflon is "humidity stable" whereas the wood adjacent to the Teflon will swell and shrink with humidity changes, causing problems.) More recently, the Kawai firm has built pianos with action parts made of more modern and effective plastics such as carbon fiber; these parts have held up better and have generally received the respect of piano technicians .
Ivorite and ebony keys on a modern Steinway & Sons concert grand piano.
The part of the piano where materials probably matter more than anywhere else is the soundboard. In quality pianos, this is made of solid spruce (that is, spruce boards glued together at their edges). Spruce is chosen for its high ratio of strength to weight. The best piano makers use close-grained, quarter-sawn, defect-free spruce, and make sure that it has been carefully dried over a long period of time before making it into soundboards. In cheap pianos, the soundboard is often made of plywood.
Piano keys are generally made of spruce or basswood, for lightness. Spruce is normally used in high-quality pianos. Traditionally, the black keys were made from ebony and the white keys were covered with strips of ivory, but since ivory-yielding species are now endangered and protected by treaty, plastics are now almost exclusively used. Also, ivory tends to chip more easily than plastic. Legal ivory can still be obtained in limited quantities. At one time, the Yamaha firm innovated a plastic called "Ivorine" or "Ivorite", since imitated by other makers, that mimics the look and feel of ivory.
A piano tuner
Pianos need regular tuning to keep them up to pitch, which is usually the internationally recognized standard concert pitch of A4 = 440 Hz. The hammers of pianos are voiced to compensate for gradual hardening, and other parts also need periodic regulation. Aged and worn pianos can be rebuilt or reconditioned. Often, by replacing a great number of their parts, they can be made to perform as well as new pianos. Older pianos are often more settled and produce a warmer tone.
Piano moving should be done by trained piano movers using adequate manpower and the correct equipment for any particular piano's size and weight. Pianos are heavy yet delicate instruments. Over the years, professional piano movers have developed special techniques for transporting both grands and uprights which prevent damage to the case and to the piano's mechanics.
The piano at the social center in the 19th century (Moritz von Schwind, 1868). The man at the piano is Franz Schubert.
The piano is a crucial instrument in Western classical music, jazz, film, television, and most other complex western musical genres. Since a large number of composers are proficient pianists â and because the piano keyboard offers an easy means of complex melodic and harmonic interplay â the piano is often used as a tool for composition.
Pianos were, and still are, popular instruments for private household ownership. Hence, pianos have gained a place in the popular consciousness, and are sometimes referred to by nicknames including: "the ivories", "the joanna", "the eighty-eight", and "the black(s) and white(s)", "the little joe(s)". Playing the piano is sometimes referred to as "tickling the ivories".
;General
* Innovations in the piano
* Jazz piano
* Piano acoustics
* Piano key frequencies (in equal temperament)
* Piano trio
* String piano
;Related lists
* List of films about pianists
* Lists of solo piano pieces
* List of piano makers
* List of piano brand names
* List of classical pianists (recorded)
;Related instruments
* Hammered dulcimer
* Harp
* Clavichord
* Harpsichord
* Organ and Pipe organ
* Electric piano
* Electronic piano
* The authoritative New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (available online by subscription), contains a wealth of information. Main article: "Pianoforte".
* The Encyclopædia Britannica (available online by subscription) also includes much information on the piano. In the 1988 edition, the primary article can be found in "Musical Instruments".
* The Piano Book by Larry Fine (4th ed. Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts: Brookside Press, 2001; ISBN 1-929145-01-2) gives the basics of how pianos work, and a thorough evaluative survey of current pianos and their manufacturers. It also includes advice on buying and owning pianos.
*Giraffes, black dragons, and other pianos: a technological history from Cristofori to the modern concert grand by Edwin M. Good (1982, second ed., 2001, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press) is a standard reference on the history of the piano.
*The Early Pianoforte by Stewart Pollens (1995, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) is an authoritative work covering the ancestry of the piano, its invention by Cristofori, and the early stages of its subsequent evolution.
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;Information
* Yamaha Musician - Yamaha piano reviews and enthusiast site
* Grand Piano information and images
* The Piano Page Lots of information from the Piano Technicians Guild
* WikiRecording's Guide to Recording Pianos
;History
* History of the Piano Forte, Association of Blind Piano Tuners, UK
* The Frederick Historical Piano Collection
;Piano Technique
* Principles of Piano Technique
;Sheet music for Piano
* All Piano Scores Free printable classical sheet music for piano + audio
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Piano | What is the sustain pedal called? | The pedal | data/set2/a1 | Piano
Baby Grand Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard that produces sound by striking steel strings with felt covered hammers. The hammers immediately rebound, allowing the strings to continue vibrating at their resonant frequency. " Hammer Time" by John Kiehl, Wolfram Demonstrations Project. These vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a soundboard that couples the acoustic energy to the air so that it can be heard as sound.
The piano is widely used in Western music for solo performance, ensemble use, chamber music, and accompaniment. It is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal. Although not portable and often expensive, the piano's versatility and ubiquity have made it one of the most familiar musical instruments. It is sometimes classified as both a percussion and a stringed instrument. According to the Hornbostel-Sachs method of music classification, it is grouped with Chordophones.
The word piano is a shortened form of the word pianoforte, which is seldom used except in formal language and derived from the original Italian name for the instrument, clavicembalo [or gravicembalo] col piano e forte (literally harpsichord with soft and loud). This refers to the instrument's responsiveness to keyboard touch, which allows the pianist to produce notes at different dynamic levels by controlling the speed with which the hammers hit the strings.
Early piano replica by the modern builder Paul McNulty, after Walter & Sohn, 1805
The piano was originally founded on earlier technological innovations. The first string instruments with struck strings were the hammered dulcimers originating from the Persian traditional musical instrument santur. David R. Peterson (1994), "Acoustics of the hammered dulcimer, its history, and recent developments", Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 95 (5), p. 3002. During the Middle Ages, there were several attempts at creating stringed keyboard instruments with struck strings, Pollens, 1995. chp. 1 the earliest being the hurdy gurdy which has uncertain origins. By the 17th century, 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.
Grand piano by Louis Bas of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, France, 1781. Earliest French grand piano known to survive; includes an inverted wrestplank and action derived from the work of Bartolomeo Cristofiori (ca. 1700) with ornately decorated soundboard.
The invention of the modern piano is credited to Bartolomeo Cristofori of Padua, Italy, who was employed by Prince Ferdinand de Medici as the Keeper of the Instruments. He was an expert harpsichord maker and was well acquainted with the previous body of knowledge on stringed keyboard instruments. It is not known exactly when Cristofori first built a piano. An inventory made by his employers, the Medici family, indicates the existence of a piano by the year 1700; another document of doubtful authenticity indicates a date of 1698. The three Cristofori pianos that survive today date from the 1720s.
Cristofori's great success was in solving, without any prior example, the fundamental mechanical problem of piano design: the hammer must strike the string, but not remain in contact with it (as a tangent remains in contact with a clavichord string) because this would damp the sound. Moreover, the hammer must return to its rest position without bouncing violently, and it must be possible to repeat a note rapidly. Cristofori's piano action served as a model for the many different approaches to piano actions that followed. While Cristofori's early instruments were made with thin strings and were much quieter than the modern piano, compared to the clavichord (the only previous keyboard instrument capable of minutely controlled dynamic nuance through the keyboard) they were considerably louder and had more sustaining power.
Cristofori's new instrument remained relatively unknown until an Italian writer, Scipione Maffei, wrote an enthusiastic article about it (1711), including a diagram of the mechanism. This article was widely distributed, and most of the next generation of piano builders started their work because of reading it. One of these builders was Gottfried Silbermann, better known as an organ builder. Silbermann's pianos were virtually direct copies of Cristofori's, with one important addition: Silbermann invented the forerunner of the modern damper pedal, which lifts all the dampers from the strings at once.
Silbermann showed Johann Sebastian Bach one of his early instruments in the 1730s, but Bach did not like it at that time, claiming that the higher notes were too soft to allow a full dynamic range. Although this earned him some animosity from Silbermann, the criticism was apparently heeded. Bach did approve of a later instrument he saw in 1747, and even served as an agent in selling Silbermann's pianos.
Piano making flourished during the late 18th century in the Viennese school, which included Johann Andreas Stein (who worked in Augsburg, Germany) and the Viennese makers Nannette Streicher (daughter of Johann Andreas Stein) and Anton Walter. Viennese-style pianos were built with wood frames, two strings per note, and had leather-covered hammers. Some of these Viennese pianos had the opposite coloring of modern-day pianos; the natural keys were black and the accidental keys white. It was for such instruments that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed his concertos and sonatas, and replicas of them are built today for use in authentic-instrument performance of his music. The pianos of Mozart's day had a softer, clearer tone than today's pianos or English pianos, with less sustaining power. The term fortepiano is nowadays often used to distinguish the 18th-century instrument from later pianos.
In the period lasting from about 1790 to 1860, the Mozart-era piano underwent tremendous changes that led to the modern form of the instrument. This revolution was in response to a consistent preference by composers and pianists for a more powerful, sustained piano sound, and made possible by the ongoing Industrial Revolution with technological resources such as high-quality steel, called piano wire, for strings, and precision casting for the production of iron frames. Over time, the tonal range of the piano was also increased from the five octaves of Mozart's day to the 7â
or more octaves found on modern pianos.
Broadwood square action
Early technological progress owed much to the English firm of Broadwood, who already had a reputation for the splendour and powerful tone of its harpsichords. Broadwood constructed instruments that were progressively larger, louder, and more robustly constructed. They sent pianos to both Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven, and were the first firm to build pianos with a range of more than five octaves: five octaves and a fifth during the 1790s, six octaves by 1810 (Beethoven used the extra notes in his later works), and seven octaves by 1820. The Viennese makers similarly followed these trends, however the two schools used different piano actions: Broadwoods were more robust, Viennese instruments were more sensitive.
Erard square action
By the 1820s, the center of innovation had shifted to Paris, where the Pleyel firm manufactured pianos used by Frédéric Chopin and the Ãrard firm manufactured those used by Franz Liszt. In 1821, Sébastien Ãrard invented the double escapement action, which permitted a note to be repeated even if the key had not yet risen to its maximum vertical position. This facilitated rapid playing of repeated notes - and this musical device was pioneered by Liszt. When the invention became public, as revised by Henri Herz, the double escapement action gradually became standard in grand pianos, and is still incorporated into all grand pianos currently produced.
One of the major technical innovations that helped to create the sound of the modern piano was the use of a strong iron frame. Also called the "plate", the iron frame sits atop the soundboard, and serves as the primary bulwark against the force of string tension. The increased structural integrity of the iron frame allowed the use of thicker, tenser, and more numerous strings. In a modern grand the total string tension can exceed 20 tons. The single piece cast iron frame was patented in 1825 in Boston by Alpheus Babcock, combining the metal hitch pin plate (1821, claimed by Broadwood on behalf of Samuel Hervé) and resisting bars (Thom and Allen, 1820, but also claimed by Broadwood and Ãrard). Babcock later worked for the Chickering & Mackays firm who patented the first full iron frame for grand pianos in 1843. Composite forged metal frames were preferred by many European makers until the American system was fully adopted by the early 20th century.
Other innovations for the mechanism included the use of felt hammer coverings instead of layered leather hammers. Felt hammers, which were first introduced by Henri Pape in 1826, were a more consistent material, permitting wider dynamic ranges as hammer weights and string tension increased. The sostenuto pedal (see below), invented in 1844 by Jean Louis Boisselot and improved by the Steinway firm in 1874, allowed a wider range of effects.
Other important technical innovations of this era included changes to the way the piano was strung, such as the use of a "choir" of three strings rather than two for all but the lower notes, and the use of different stringing methods. With the over strung scale, also called "cross-stringing", the strings are placed in a vertically overlapping slanted arrangement, with two heights of bridges on the soundboard instead of just one. This permits larger, but not necessarily longer, strings to fit within the case of the piano. Over stringing was invented by Jean-Henri Pape during the 1820s, and first patented for use in grand pianos in the United States by Henry Steinway Jr. in 1859.
Duplex scaling: Treble strings of a 182 cm. grand piano. From lower left to upper right: dampers, main sounding length of strings, treble bridge, duplex string length, duplex bridge (long bar perpendicular to strings), hitchpins. With duplexes or aliquot scales, which was patented in 1872 by Theodore Steinway, the different components of string vibrations are controlled by tuning their secondary parts in octave relationships with the sounding lengths. Similar systems developed by Blüthner (1872), as well as Taskin (1788), and Collard (1821) used more distinctly ringing undamped vibrations to modify tone.
Some early pianos had shapes and designs that are no longer in use. The square piano had horizontal strings arranged diagonally across the rectangular case above the hammers and with the keyboard set in the long side. This design is attributed to Gottfried Silbermann or Christian Ernst Friderici on the continent, and Johannes Zumpe or Harman Vietor in England and it was improved by changes first introduced by Guillaume-Lebrecht Petzold in France and Alpheus Babcock in the United States. Square pianos were built in great numbers through the 1840s in Europe and the 1890s in America, and saw the most visible changes of any type of piano: the celebrated iron framed over strung squares manufactured by Steinway & Sons were more than two and a half times the size of Zumpe's wood framed instruments from a century before. Their overwhelming popularity was due to inexpensive construction and price, although their performance and tone were often limited by simple actions and closely spaced strings.
The mechanism in upright pianos is perpendicular to the keys.
The tall, vertically strung upright grand was arranged like a grand set on end, with the soundboard and bridges above the keys, and tuning pins below them. The term was later revived by many manufacturers for advertising purposes. Giraffe, pyramid and lyre pianos were arranged in a somewhat similar fashion in evocatively shaped cases.
The very tall cabinet piano was introduced about 1805 and was built through the 1840s. It had strings arranged vertically on a continuous frame with bridges extended nearly to the floor, behind the keyboard and very large sticker action. The short cottage upright or pianino with vertical stringing, made popular by Robert Wornum around 1815, was built into the 20th century. They are informally called birdcage pianos because of their prominent damper mechanism. Pianinos were distinguished from the oblique, or diagonally strung upright made popular in France by Roller & Blanchet during the late 1820s. The tiny spinet upright was manufactured from the mid-1930s until recent times. The low position of the hammers required the use of a "drop action" to preserve a reasonable keyboard height.
Modern upright and grand pianos attained their present forms by the end of the 19th century. Improvements have been made in manufacturing processes, and many individual details of the instrument continue to receive attention.
Much of the most widely admired piano repertoire, for example, that of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, was composed for a type of instrument that is rather different from the modern instruments on which this music is normally performed today. Even the music of the Romantics, including Liszt, Chopin, Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn and Johannes Brahms, was written for pianos substantially different from ours.
A schematic depiction of the construction of a pianoforte.
Modern pianos come in two basic configurations (with subcategories): the grand piano and the upright piano.
Grand piano
In grand pianos, the frame and strings are horizontal, with the strings extending away from the keyboard. There are several sizes of grand piano. A rough generalization distinguishes the "concert grand" (between about and long) from the "parlor grand" or "boudoir grand" (about to ) and the smaller "baby grand".
All else being equal, longer pianos with longer strings have better sound and lower inharmonicity of the strings. Inharmonicity is the degree to which the frequencies of overtones (known as partials, partial tones, or harmonics) depart from whole multiples of the fundamental frequency. Pianos with shorter, thicker, and stiffer strings (e.g., baby grands) have more inharmonicity. The longer strings on a concert grand can vibrate more freely than the shorter, thicker strings on a baby grand, which means that a concert grand's strings will have truer overtones. This is partly because the strings will be tuned closer to equal temperament in relation to the standard pitch with less "stretching" in the piano tuning (See: Piano tuning). Full-size grands are usually used for public concerts, whereas smaller grands, introduced by Sohmer & Co. in 1884, are often chosen for domestic use where space and cost are considerations.
Upright piano
Upright pianos, also called vertical pianos, are more compact because the frame and strings are vertical. It is considered harder to produce a sensitive piano action when the hammers move horizontally, as the vertical hammer return is dependent on springs which are prone to wear and tear. However, a well-regulated vertical piano will probably play more smoothly than a poorly regulated grand piano, and the very best upright pianos approach the level of some grand pianos of the same size in tone quality and responsiveness.
One noticeable advantage that the grand piano action has over the vertical action is that all grand pianos have a special repetition lever in the playing action that is absent in all verticals. This repetition lever, a separate one for every key, catches the hammer close to the strings as long as the keys are played repeatedly and fairly quickly. In this position, with the hammer resting on the lever, a pianist can play repeated notes, staccato, and trills with much more speed and control than is possible on a vertical piano.
Upright pianos with unusually tall frames and long strings are sometimes called "upright grand" pianos.
Some authors classify modern pianos according to their height and, to modifications of the action that are necessary to accomodate the height.
* Studio pianos are around 42 to 45 inches tall. This is the shortest cabinet that can accomodate a 'full-sized' action located above the keyboard.
* Console pianos have a compact action (shorter hammers), and are a few inches shorter than studio models.
* The top of a Spinet model barely rises above the keyboard. The action is located below, operated by vertical wires that are attached to the backs of the keys.
* Anything taller than a studio piano is called an upright.
Player piano
Toy pianos began to be manufactured in the 19th century. In 1863, Henri Fourneaux invented the player piano, which "plays itself" from a piano roll without the need for a pianist. The player piano is a piano that records a performance using rolls of paper with perforations, and then replays the performance using pneumatic devices. A modern equivalent for the player piano is the Yamaha Disklavier system, which uses solenoids and midi instead of pneumatics and rolls. Silent pianos, which allow a regular piano to be used converted to a digital instrument, are a recent innovation and are becoming more popular.
Irving Berlin played a special piano called the transposing piano, which was invented in 1801 by Edward Ryley. It had a lever under the keyboard used to alter the music to any key. One of Berlin's pianos is in the Smithsonian Museum. For much of his career, Berlin only knew how to play the black keys. But with his 'trick piano' he was no longer limited to the key of F-sharp.
A relatively recent development is the prepared piano, which is used in contemporary art music. A prepared piano is a standard grand piano which has had objects placed inside it before a performance in order to alter its sound, or which has had its mechanism changed in some way. The scores for music for prepared piano often instruct the pianist to insert pieces of rubber or small pieces of metal (screws or washers) in between the strings. These added items either mute the strings or create unusual vibrating sounds.
Since the 1980s, digital pianos have been available, which use digital sampling technology to reproduce the sound of each piano note. The best digital pianos are sophisticated, with features including working pedals, weighted keys, multiple voices, and MIDI interfaces. However, with such technology, it is difficult to duplicate one particular aspect of acoustic pianos, namely that when the damper pedal (see below) is depressed, the strings not struck vibrate sympathetically when other strings are struck, as well as the unique instrument-specific mathematical non-linearity of partials on any given unison. Since this sympathetic vibration is considered central to piano tone, many digital pianos do not sound the same as the best acoustic pianos. Progress is being made in this area by including physical models of sympathetic vibration in the synthesis software. Some higher end digital pianos, such as the Yamaha Clavinova series, or the KAWAI MP8 series, produced in the last few years incorporate string resonance technology to overcome this limitation.
With the advent of powerful desktop computers, highly realistic sampled digital grand pianos have become available as affordable software modules. Some use multi-gigabyte piano sample sets with as many as 90 recordings, each lasting many seconds, for each of the 88 keys under different conditions, augmented by additional samples to emulate sympathetic resonance, key release, the drop of the dampers, and simulations of piano techniques like re-pedaling.
Keyboard
Almost every modern piano has 36 black keys and 52 white keys for a total of 88 keys (seven octaves plus a minor third, from A0 to C8). Many older pianos only have 85 keys (seven octaves from A0 to A7), while some manufacturers extend the range further in one or both directions.
Some Bösendorfer pianos extend the normal range downwards to F0, with one other model going as far as a bottom C0, making a full eight octave range. These extra keys are sometimes hidden under a small hinged lid that can be flipped down to cover the keys in order to avoid visual disorientation in a pianist unfamiliar with the extended keyboard. On others, the colours of the extra white keys are reversed (black instead of white).
The extra keys are added primarily for increased resonance from the associated strings; that is, they vibrate sympathetically with other strings whenever the damper pedal is depressed and thus give a fuller tone. Only a very small number of works composed for piano actually use these notes. More recently, the Stuart and Sons company has also manufactured extended-range pianos. On their instruments, the range is extended both down the bass to F0 and up the treble to F8 for a full eight octaves. The extra keys are the same as the other keys in appearance.
Small studio upright acoustical pianos with only 65 keys have been manufactured for use by roving pianists. Known as "gig" pianos and still containing a cast iron harp, these are comparatively lightweight and can be easily transported to and from engagements by only two men. As their harp is longer than that of a spinet or console piano, they have a stronger bass sound that to some pianists is well worth the trade-off in range that a reduced key-set offers.
Piano pedals from left to right: una corda, sostenuto, and damper.
Pianos have had pedals, or some close equivalent, since the earliest days. (In the 18th century, some pianos used levers pressed upward by the player's knee instead of pedals.) Most grand pianos have three pedals: soft pedal (una corda), sostenuto, and sustain pedal (from left to right, respectively). Most modern upright pianos have three pedals: soft pedal, practice pedal and sustain pedal, though older or cheaper models may lack the practice pedal.
The sustain pedal (or, damper pedal) is often simply called "the pedal", since it is the most frequently used. It is placed as the rightmost pedal in the group. It lifts the dampers from all keys, sustaining all played notes, and altering the overall tone.
The soft pedal or una corda pedal is placed leftmost in the row of pedals. In grand pianos, it shifts the entire action, including the keyboard, to the right, so that the hammers hit only one of the three strings for each note (hence the name una corda, or 'one string'). The effect is to soften the note as well as to change the tone. In uprights, this action is not possible, and so the pedal moves the hammers closer to the strings, allowing the hammers to hit the strings with less kinetic energy to produce a softer sound.
On grand pianos, the middle pedal is a sostenuto pedal. This pedal keeps raised any damper that was already raised at the moment the pedal is depressed. This makes it possible to sustain some notes (by depressing the sostenuto pedal before notes to be sustained are released) while the player's hands are free to play other notes. This can be useful for musical passages with pedal points and other otherwise tricky or impossible situations.
On many upright pianos, there is a middle pedal called the 'practice' or celeste pedal. This drops a piece of felt between the hammers and strings, greatly muting the sounds.
There are also non-standard variants. On vertical pianos, the middle pedal can be a bass sustain pedal: that is, when it is depressed, the dampers lift off the strings only in the bass section. This pedal would be used only when a pianist needs to sustain a single bass note or chord over many measures, while playing the melody in the treble section. On the largest Fazioli piano, there is a fourth pedal to the left of the principal three. This fourth pedal works in the same way as the soft pedal of an upright piano, moving the hammers closer to the strings.
An upright pedal piano
The rare transposing piano, of which Irving Berlin possessed an example, had a middle pedal that functioned as a clutch which disengages the keyboard from the mechanism, enabling the keyboard to be moved to the left or right with a lever. The entire action of the piano is thus shifted to allow the pianist to play music written in one key so that it sounds in a different key. The pedalier piano, or pedal piano, is a rare type of piano that includes a pedalboard, enabling bass register notes to be played with the feet, as is standard on the organ. There are two types of pedal piano: the pedal board may be an integral part of the instrument, using the same strings and mechanism as the manual keyboard, or, less frequently, it may consist of two independent pianos (each with its separate mechanics and strings) which are placed one above the other, a regular piano played by the hands and a bass-register piano played by the feet.
Many parts of a piano are made of materials selected for sturdiness. In quality pianos, the outer rim of the piano is made of a hardwood, normally maple or beech. According to Harold A. Conklin, the purpose of a sturdy rim is so that "the vibrational energy will stay as much as possible in the soundboard instead of dissipating uselessly in the case parts, which are inefficient radiators of sound."
View from below of a 182-cm grand piano. In order of distance from viewer: softwood braces, tapered soundboard ribs, soundboard. The metal rod at lower right is a humidity control device.
The rim is normally made by laminating flexible strips of hardwood to the desired shape, a system that was developed by Theodore Steinway in 1880. The thick wooden braces at the bottom (grands) or back (uprights) of the piano are not as acoustically important as the rim, and are often made of a softwood, even in top-quality pianos, in order to save weight. The requirement of structural strength, fulfilled with stout hardwood and thick metal, makes a piano heavy; even a small upright can weigh 136 kg (300 lb), and the Steinway concert grand (Model D) weighs 480 kg (990 lb). The largest piano built, the Fazioli F308, weighs 691 kg (1520 lb).
The pinblock, which holds the tuning pins in place, is another area of the piano where toughness is important. It is made of hardwood, (often maple) and generally is laminated (built of multiple layers) for additional strength and gripping power. Piano strings (also called piano wire), which must endure years of extreme tension and hard blows, are made of high quality steel. They are manufactured to vary as little as possible in diameter, since all deviations from uniformity introduce tonal distortion. The bass strings of a piano are made of a steel core wrapped with copper wire, to increase their mass whilst retaining flexibility.
The plate, or metal frame, of a piano is usually made of cast iron. It is advantageous for the plate to be quite massive. Since the strings are attached to the plate at one end, any vibrations transmitted to the plate will result in loss of energy to the desired (efficient) channel of sound transmission, namely the bridge and the soundboard. Some manufacturers now use cast steel in their plates, for greater strength. The casting of the plate is a delicate art, since the dimensions are crucial and the iron shrinks by about one percent during cooling.
The inclusion in a piano of an extremely large piece of metal is potentially an aesthetic handicap, which piano makers overcome by polishing, painting and decorating the plate. Plates often include the manufacturer's ornamental medallion and can be strikingly attractive. In an effort to make pianos lighter, Alcoa worked with Winter and Company piano manufacturers to make pianos using an aluminum plate during the 1940s. The use of aluminum for piano plates, however, did not become widely accepted and was discontinued.
The numerous grand parts and upright parts of a piano action are generally hardwood (e.g. maple, beech. hornbeam). However, since World War II, plastics have become available. Early plastics were incorporated into some pianos in the late 1940s and 1950s, but proved disastrous because they crystallized and lost their strength after only a few decades of use. The Steinway firm once incorporated Teflon, a synthetic material developed by DuPont, for some grand action parts in place of cloth, but ultimately abandoned the experiment due to an inherent "clicking" which invariably developed over time. (Also Teflon is "humidity stable" whereas the wood adjacent to the Teflon will swell and shrink with humidity changes, causing problems.) More recently, the Kawai firm has built pianos with action parts made of more modern and effective plastics such as carbon fiber; these parts have held up better and have generally received the respect of piano technicians .
Ivorite and ebony keys on a modern Steinway & Sons concert grand piano.
The part of the piano where materials probably matter more than anywhere else is the soundboard. In quality pianos, this is made of solid spruce (that is, spruce boards glued together at their edges). Spruce is chosen for its high ratio of strength to weight. The best piano makers use close-grained, quarter-sawn, defect-free spruce, and make sure that it has been carefully dried over a long period of time before making it into soundboards. In cheap pianos, the soundboard is often made of plywood.
Piano keys are generally made of spruce or basswood, for lightness. Spruce is normally used in high-quality pianos. Traditionally, the black keys were made from ebony and the white keys were covered with strips of ivory, but since ivory-yielding species are now endangered and protected by treaty, plastics are now almost exclusively used. Also, ivory tends to chip more easily than plastic. Legal ivory can still be obtained in limited quantities. At one time, the Yamaha firm innovated a plastic called "Ivorine" or "Ivorite", since imitated by other makers, that mimics the look and feel of ivory.
A piano tuner
Pianos need regular tuning to keep them up to pitch, which is usually the internationally recognized standard concert pitch of A4 = 440 Hz. The hammers of pianos are voiced to compensate for gradual hardening, and other parts also need periodic regulation. Aged and worn pianos can be rebuilt or reconditioned. Often, by replacing a great number of their parts, they can be made to perform as well as new pianos. Older pianos are often more settled and produce a warmer tone.
Piano moving should be done by trained piano movers using adequate manpower and the correct equipment for any particular piano's size and weight. Pianos are heavy yet delicate instruments. Over the years, professional piano movers have developed special techniques for transporting both grands and uprights which prevent damage to the case and to the piano's mechanics.
The piano at the social center in the 19th century (Moritz von Schwind, 1868). The man at the piano is Franz Schubert.
The piano is a crucial instrument in Western classical music, jazz, film, television, and most other complex western musical genres. Since a large number of composers are proficient pianists â and because the piano keyboard offers an easy means of complex melodic and harmonic interplay â the piano is often used as a tool for composition.
Pianos were, and still are, popular instruments for private household ownership. Hence, pianos have gained a place in the popular consciousness, and are sometimes referred to by nicknames including: "the ivories", "the joanna", "the eighty-eight", and "the black(s) and white(s)", "the little joe(s)". Playing the piano is sometimes referred to as "tickling the ivories".
;General
* Innovations in the piano
* Jazz piano
* Piano acoustics
* Piano key frequencies (in equal temperament)
* Piano trio
* String piano
;Related lists
* List of films about pianists
* Lists of solo piano pieces
* List of piano makers
* List of piano brand names
* List of classical pianists (recorded)
;Related instruments
* Hammered dulcimer
* Harp
* Clavichord
* Harpsichord
* Organ and Pipe organ
* Electric piano
* Electronic piano
* The authoritative New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (available online by subscription), contains a wealth of information. Main article: "Pianoforte".
* The Encyclopædia Britannica (available online by subscription) also includes much information on the piano. In the 1988 edition, the primary article can be found in "Musical Instruments".
* The Piano Book by Larry Fine (4th ed. Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts: Brookside Press, 2001; ISBN 1-929145-01-2) gives the basics of how pianos work, and a thorough evaluative survey of current pianos and their manufacturers. It also includes advice on buying and owning pianos.
*Giraffes, black dragons, and other pianos: a technological history from Cristofori to the modern concert grand by Edwin M. Good (1982, second ed., 2001, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press) is a standard reference on the history of the piano.
*The Early Pianoforte by Stewart Pollens (1995, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) is an authoritative work covering the ancestry of the piano, its invention by Cristofori, and the early stages of its subsequent evolution.
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;Information
* Yamaha Musician - Yamaha piano reviews and enthusiast site
* Grand Piano information and images
* The Piano Page Lots of information from the Piano Technicians Guild
* WikiRecording's Guide to Recording Pianos
;History
* History of the Piano Forte, Association of Blind Piano Tuners, UK
* The Frederick Historical Piano Collection
;Piano Technique
* Principles of Piano Technique
;Sheet music for Piano
* All Piano Scores Free printable classical sheet music for piano + audio
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Piano | What is the sustain pedal called? | damper pedal | data/set2/a1 | Piano
Baby Grand Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard that produces sound by striking steel strings with felt covered hammers. The hammers immediately rebound, allowing the strings to continue vibrating at their resonant frequency. " Hammer Time" by John Kiehl, Wolfram Demonstrations Project. These vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a soundboard that couples the acoustic energy to the air so that it can be heard as sound.
The piano is widely used in Western music for solo performance, ensemble use, chamber music, and accompaniment. It is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal. Although not portable and often expensive, the piano's versatility and ubiquity have made it one of the most familiar musical instruments. It is sometimes classified as both a percussion and a stringed instrument. According to the Hornbostel-Sachs method of music classification, it is grouped with Chordophones.
The word piano is a shortened form of the word pianoforte, which is seldom used except in formal language and derived from the original Italian name for the instrument, clavicembalo [or gravicembalo] col piano e forte (literally harpsichord with soft and loud). This refers to the instrument's responsiveness to keyboard touch, which allows the pianist to produce notes at different dynamic levels by controlling the speed with which the hammers hit the strings.
Early piano replica by the modern builder Paul McNulty, after Walter & Sohn, 1805
The piano was originally founded on earlier technological innovations. The first string instruments with struck strings were the hammered dulcimers originating from the Persian traditional musical instrument santur. David R. Peterson (1994), "Acoustics of the hammered dulcimer, its history, and recent developments", Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 95 (5), p. 3002. During the Middle Ages, there were several attempts at creating stringed keyboard instruments with struck strings, Pollens, 1995. chp. 1 the earliest being the hurdy gurdy which has uncertain origins. By the 17th century, 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.
Grand piano by Louis Bas of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, France, 1781. Earliest French grand piano known to survive; includes an inverted wrestplank and action derived from the work of Bartolomeo Cristofiori (ca. 1700) with ornately decorated soundboard.
The invention of the modern piano is credited to Bartolomeo Cristofori of Padua, Italy, who was employed by Prince Ferdinand de Medici as the Keeper of the Instruments. He was an expert harpsichord maker and was well acquainted with the previous body of knowledge on stringed keyboard instruments. It is not known exactly when Cristofori first built a piano. An inventory made by his employers, the Medici family, indicates the existence of a piano by the year 1700; another document of doubtful authenticity indicates a date of 1698. The three Cristofori pianos that survive today date from the 1720s.
Cristofori's great success was in solving, without any prior example, the fundamental mechanical problem of piano design: the hammer must strike the string, but not remain in contact with it (as a tangent remains in contact with a clavichord string) because this would damp the sound. Moreover, the hammer must return to its rest position without bouncing violently, and it must be possible to repeat a note rapidly. Cristofori's piano action served as a model for the many different approaches to piano actions that followed. While Cristofori's early instruments were made with thin strings and were much quieter than the modern piano, compared to the clavichord (the only previous keyboard instrument capable of minutely controlled dynamic nuance through the keyboard) they were considerably louder and had more sustaining power.
Cristofori's new instrument remained relatively unknown until an Italian writer, Scipione Maffei, wrote an enthusiastic article about it (1711), including a diagram of the mechanism. This article was widely distributed, and most of the next generation of piano builders started their work because of reading it. One of these builders was Gottfried Silbermann, better known as an organ builder. Silbermann's pianos were virtually direct copies of Cristofori's, with one important addition: Silbermann invented the forerunner of the modern damper pedal, which lifts all the dampers from the strings at once.
Silbermann showed Johann Sebastian Bach one of his early instruments in the 1730s, but Bach did not like it at that time, claiming that the higher notes were too soft to allow a full dynamic range. Although this earned him some animosity from Silbermann, the criticism was apparently heeded. Bach did approve of a later instrument he saw in 1747, and even served as an agent in selling Silbermann's pianos.
Piano making flourished during the late 18th century in the Viennese school, which included Johann Andreas Stein (who worked in Augsburg, Germany) and the Viennese makers Nannette Streicher (daughter of Johann Andreas Stein) and Anton Walter. Viennese-style pianos were built with wood frames, two strings per note, and had leather-covered hammers. Some of these Viennese pianos had the opposite coloring of modern-day pianos; the natural keys were black and the accidental keys white. It was for such instruments that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed his concertos and sonatas, and replicas of them are built today for use in authentic-instrument performance of his music. The pianos of Mozart's day had a softer, clearer tone than today's pianos or English pianos, with less sustaining power. The term fortepiano is nowadays often used to distinguish the 18th-century instrument from later pianos.
In the period lasting from about 1790 to 1860, the Mozart-era piano underwent tremendous changes that led to the modern form of the instrument. This revolution was in response to a consistent preference by composers and pianists for a more powerful, sustained piano sound, and made possible by the ongoing Industrial Revolution with technological resources such as high-quality steel, called piano wire, for strings, and precision casting for the production of iron frames. Over time, the tonal range of the piano was also increased from the five octaves of Mozart's day to the 7â
or more octaves found on modern pianos.
Broadwood square action
Early technological progress owed much to the English firm of Broadwood, who already had a reputation for the splendour and powerful tone of its harpsichords. Broadwood constructed instruments that were progressively larger, louder, and more robustly constructed. They sent pianos to both Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven, and were the first firm to build pianos with a range of more than five octaves: five octaves and a fifth during the 1790s, six octaves by 1810 (Beethoven used the extra notes in his later works), and seven octaves by 1820. The Viennese makers similarly followed these trends, however the two schools used different piano actions: Broadwoods were more robust, Viennese instruments were more sensitive.
Erard square action
By the 1820s, the center of innovation had shifted to Paris, where the Pleyel firm manufactured pianos used by Frédéric Chopin and the Ãrard firm manufactured those used by Franz Liszt. In 1821, Sébastien Ãrard invented the double escapement action, which permitted a note to be repeated even if the key had not yet risen to its maximum vertical position. This facilitated rapid playing of repeated notes - and this musical device was pioneered by Liszt. When the invention became public, as revised by Henri Herz, the double escapement action gradually became standard in grand pianos, and is still incorporated into all grand pianos currently produced.
One of the major technical innovations that helped to create the sound of the modern piano was the use of a strong iron frame. Also called the "plate", the iron frame sits atop the soundboard, and serves as the primary bulwark against the force of string tension. The increased structural integrity of the iron frame allowed the use of thicker, tenser, and more numerous strings. In a modern grand the total string tension can exceed 20 tons. The single piece cast iron frame was patented in 1825 in Boston by Alpheus Babcock, combining the metal hitch pin plate (1821, claimed by Broadwood on behalf of Samuel Hervé) and resisting bars (Thom and Allen, 1820, but also claimed by Broadwood and Ãrard). Babcock later worked for the Chickering & Mackays firm who patented the first full iron frame for grand pianos in 1843. Composite forged metal frames were preferred by many European makers until the American system was fully adopted by the early 20th century.
Other innovations for the mechanism included the use of felt hammer coverings instead of layered leather hammers. Felt hammers, which were first introduced by Henri Pape in 1826, were a more consistent material, permitting wider dynamic ranges as hammer weights and string tension increased. The sostenuto pedal (see below), invented in 1844 by Jean Louis Boisselot and improved by the Steinway firm in 1874, allowed a wider range of effects.
Other important technical innovations of this era included changes to the way the piano was strung, such as the use of a "choir" of three strings rather than two for all but the lower notes, and the use of different stringing methods. With the over strung scale, also called "cross-stringing", the strings are placed in a vertically overlapping slanted arrangement, with two heights of bridges on the soundboard instead of just one. This permits larger, but not necessarily longer, strings to fit within the case of the piano. Over stringing was invented by Jean-Henri Pape during the 1820s, and first patented for use in grand pianos in the United States by Henry Steinway Jr. in 1859.
Duplex scaling: Treble strings of a 182 cm. grand piano. From lower left to upper right: dampers, main sounding length of strings, treble bridge, duplex string length, duplex bridge (long bar perpendicular to strings), hitchpins. With duplexes or aliquot scales, which was patented in 1872 by Theodore Steinway, the different components of string vibrations are controlled by tuning their secondary parts in octave relationships with the sounding lengths. Similar systems developed by Blüthner (1872), as well as Taskin (1788), and Collard (1821) used more distinctly ringing undamped vibrations to modify tone.
Some early pianos had shapes and designs that are no longer in use. The square piano had horizontal strings arranged diagonally across the rectangular case above the hammers and with the keyboard set in the long side. This design is attributed to Gottfried Silbermann or Christian Ernst Friderici on the continent, and Johannes Zumpe or Harman Vietor in England and it was improved by changes first introduced by Guillaume-Lebrecht Petzold in France and Alpheus Babcock in the United States. Square pianos were built in great numbers through the 1840s in Europe and the 1890s in America, and saw the most visible changes of any type of piano: the celebrated iron framed over strung squares manufactured by Steinway & Sons were more than two and a half times the size of Zumpe's wood framed instruments from a century before. Their overwhelming popularity was due to inexpensive construction and price, although their performance and tone were often limited by simple actions and closely spaced strings.
The mechanism in upright pianos is perpendicular to the keys.
The tall, vertically strung upright grand was arranged like a grand set on end, with the soundboard and bridges above the keys, and tuning pins below them. The term was later revived by many manufacturers for advertising purposes. Giraffe, pyramid and lyre pianos were arranged in a somewhat similar fashion in evocatively shaped cases.
The very tall cabinet piano was introduced about 1805 and was built through the 1840s. It had strings arranged vertically on a continuous frame with bridges extended nearly to the floor, behind the keyboard and very large sticker action. The short cottage upright or pianino with vertical stringing, made popular by Robert Wornum around 1815, was built into the 20th century. They are informally called birdcage pianos because of their prominent damper mechanism. Pianinos were distinguished from the oblique, or diagonally strung upright made popular in France by Roller & Blanchet during the late 1820s. The tiny spinet upright was manufactured from the mid-1930s until recent times. The low position of the hammers required the use of a "drop action" to preserve a reasonable keyboard height.
Modern upright and grand pianos attained their present forms by the end of the 19th century. Improvements have been made in manufacturing processes, and many individual details of the instrument continue to receive attention.
Much of the most widely admired piano repertoire, for example, that of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, was composed for a type of instrument that is rather different from the modern instruments on which this music is normally performed today. Even the music of the Romantics, including Liszt, Chopin, Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn and Johannes Brahms, was written for pianos substantially different from ours.
A schematic depiction of the construction of a pianoforte.
Modern pianos come in two basic configurations (with subcategories): the grand piano and the upright piano.
Grand piano
In grand pianos, the frame and strings are horizontal, with the strings extending away from the keyboard. There are several sizes of grand piano. A rough generalization distinguishes the "concert grand" (between about and long) from the "parlor grand" or "boudoir grand" (about to ) and the smaller "baby grand".
All else being equal, longer pianos with longer strings have better sound and lower inharmonicity of the strings. Inharmonicity is the degree to which the frequencies of overtones (known as partials, partial tones, or harmonics) depart from whole multiples of the fundamental frequency. Pianos with shorter, thicker, and stiffer strings (e.g., baby grands) have more inharmonicity. The longer strings on a concert grand can vibrate more freely than the shorter, thicker strings on a baby grand, which means that a concert grand's strings will have truer overtones. This is partly because the strings will be tuned closer to equal temperament in relation to the standard pitch with less "stretching" in the piano tuning (See: Piano tuning). Full-size grands are usually used for public concerts, whereas smaller grands, introduced by Sohmer & Co. in 1884, are often chosen for domestic use where space and cost are considerations.
Upright piano
Upright pianos, also called vertical pianos, are more compact because the frame and strings are vertical. It is considered harder to produce a sensitive piano action when the hammers move horizontally, as the vertical hammer return is dependent on springs which are prone to wear and tear. However, a well-regulated vertical piano will probably play more smoothly than a poorly regulated grand piano, and the very best upright pianos approach the level of some grand pianos of the same size in tone quality and responsiveness.
One noticeable advantage that the grand piano action has over the vertical action is that all grand pianos have a special repetition lever in the playing action that is absent in all verticals. This repetition lever, a separate one for every key, catches the hammer close to the strings as long as the keys are played repeatedly and fairly quickly. In this position, with the hammer resting on the lever, a pianist can play repeated notes, staccato, and trills with much more speed and control than is possible on a vertical piano.
Upright pianos with unusually tall frames and long strings are sometimes called "upright grand" pianos.
Some authors classify modern pianos according to their height and, to modifications of the action that are necessary to accomodate the height.
* Studio pianos are around 42 to 45 inches tall. This is the shortest cabinet that can accomodate a 'full-sized' action located above the keyboard.
* Console pianos have a compact action (shorter hammers), and are a few inches shorter than studio models.
* The top of a Spinet model barely rises above the keyboard. The action is located below, operated by vertical wires that are attached to the backs of the keys.
* Anything taller than a studio piano is called an upright.
Player piano
Toy pianos began to be manufactured in the 19th century. In 1863, Henri Fourneaux invented the player piano, which "plays itself" from a piano roll without the need for a pianist. The player piano is a piano that records a performance using rolls of paper with perforations, and then replays the performance using pneumatic devices. A modern equivalent for the player piano is the Yamaha Disklavier system, which uses solenoids and midi instead of pneumatics and rolls. Silent pianos, which allow a regular piano to be used converted to a digital instrument, are a recent innovation and are becoming more popular.
Irving Berlin played a special piano called the transposing piano, which was invented in 1801 by Edward Ryley. It had a lever under the keyboard used to alter the music to any key. One of Berlin's pianos is in the Smithsonian Museum. For much of his career, Berlin only knew how to play the black keys. But with his 'trick piano' he was no longer limited to the key of F-sharp.
A relatively recent development is the prepared piano, which is used in contemporary art music. A prepared piano is a standard grand piano which has had objects placed inside it before a performance in order to alter its sound, or which has had its mechanism changed in some way. The scores for music for prepared piano often instruct the pianist to insert pieces of rubber or small pieces of metal (screws or washers) in between the strings. These added items either mute the strings or create unusual vibrating sounds.
Since the 1980s, digital pianos have been available, which use digital sampling technology to reproduce the sound of each piano note. The best digital pianos are sophisticated, with features including working pedals, weighted keys, multiple voices, and MIDI interfaces. However, with such technology, it is difficult to duplicate one particular aspect of acoustic pianos, namely that when the damper pedal (see below) is depressed, the strings not struck vibrate sympathetically when other strings are struck, as well as the unique instrument-specific mathematical non-linearity of partials on any given unison. Since this sympathetic vibration is considered central to piano tone, many digital pianos do not sound the same as the best acoustic pianos. Progress is being made in this area by including physical models of sympathetic vibration in the synthesis software. Some higher end digital pianos, such as the Yamaha Clavinova series, or the KAWAI MP8 series, produced in the last few years incorporate string resonance technology to overcome this limitation.
With the advent of powerful desktop computers, highly realistic sampled digital grand pianos have become available as affordable software modules. Some use multi-gigabyte piano sample sets with as many as 90 recordings, each lasting many seconds, for each of the 88 keys under different conditions, augmented by additional samples to emulate sympathetic resonance, key release, the drop of the dampers, and simulations of piano techniques like re-pedaling.
Keyboard
Almost every modern piano has 36 black keys and 52 white keys for a total of 88 keys (seven octaves plus a minor third, from A0 to C8). Many older pianos only have 85 keys (seven octaves from A0 to A7), while some manufacturers extend the range further in one or both directions.
Some Bösendorfer pianos extend the normal range downwards to F0, with one other model going as far as a bottom C0, making a full eight octave range. These extra keys are sometimes hidden under a small hinged lid that can be flipped down to cover the keys in order to avoid visual disorientation in a pianist unfamiliar with the extended keyboard. On others, the colours of the extra white keys are reversed (black instead of white).
The extra keys are added primarily for increased resonance from the associated strings; that is, they vibrate sympathetically with other strings whenever the damper pedal is depressed and thus give a fuller tone. Only a very small number of works composed for piano actually use these notes. More recently, the Stuart and Sons company has also manufactured extended-range pianos. On their instruments, the range is extended both down the bass to F0 and up the treble to F8 for a full eight octaves. The extra keys are the same as the other keys in appearance.
Small studio upright acoustical pianos with only 65 keys have been manufactured for use by roving pianists. Known as "gig" pianos and still containing a cast iron harp, these are comparatively lightweight and can be easily transported to and from engagements by only two men. As their harp is longer than that of a spinet or console piano, they have a stronger bass sound that to some pianists is well worth the trade-off in range that a reduced key-set offers.
Piano pedals from left to right: una corda, sostenuto, and damper.
Pianos have had pedals, or some close equivalent, since the earliest days. (In the 18th century, some pianos used levers pressed upward by the player's knee instead of pedals.) Most grand pianos have three pedals: soft pedal (una corda), sostenuto, and sustain pedal (from left to right, respectively). Most modern upright pianos have three pedals: soft pedal, practice pedal and sustain pedal, though older or cheaper models may lack the practice pedal.
The sustain pedal (or, damper pedal) is often simply called "the pedal", since it is the most frequently used. It is placed as the rightmost pedal in the group. It lifts the dampers from all keys, sustaining all played notes, and altering the overall tone.
The soft pedal or una corda pedal is placed leftmost in the row of pedals. In grand pianos, it shifts the entire action, including the keyboard, to the right, so that the hammers hit only one of the three strings for each note (hence the name una corda, or 'one string'). The effect is to soften the note as well as to change the tone. In uprights, this action is not possible, and so the pedal moves the hammers closer to the strings, allowing the hammers to hit the strings with less kinetic energy to produce a softer sound.
On grand pianos, the middle pedal is a sostenuto pedal. This pedal keeps raised any damper that was already raised at the moment the pedal is depressed. This makes it possible to sustain some notes (by depressing the sostenuto pedal before notes to be sustained are released) while the player's hands are free to play other notes. This can be useful for musical passages with pedal points and other otherwise tricky or impossible situations.
On many upright pianos, there is a middle pedal called the 'practice' or celeste pedal. This drops a piece of felt between the hammers and strings, greatly muting the sounds.
There are also non-standard variants. On vertical pianos, the middle pedal can be a bass sustain pedal: that is, when it is depressed, the dampers lift off the strings only in the bass section. This pedal would be used only when a pianist needs to sustain a single bass note or chord over many measures, while playing the melody in the treble section. On the largest Fazioli piano, there is a fourth pedal to the left of the principal three. This fourth pedal works in the same way as the soft pedal of an upright piano, moving the hammers closer to the strings.
An upright pedal piano
The rare transposing piano, of which Irving Berlin possessed an example, had a middle pedal that functioned as a clutch which disengages the keyboard from the mechanism, enabling the keyboard to be moved to the left or right with a lever. The entire action of the piano is thus shifted to allow the pianist to play music written in one key so that it sounds in a different key. The pedalier piano, or pedal piano, is a rare type of piano that includes a pedalboard, enabling bass register notes to be played with the feet, as is standard on the organ. There are two types of pedal piano: the pedal board may be an integral part of the instrument, using the same strings and mechanism as the manual keyboard, or, less frequently, it may consist of two independent pianos (each with its separate mechanics and strings) which are placed one above the other, a regular piano played by the hands and a bass-register piano played by the feet.
Many parts of a piano are made of materials selected for sturdiness. In quality pianos, the outer rim of the piano is made of a hardwood, normally maple or beech. According to Harold A. Conklin, the purpose of a sturdy rim is so that "the vibrational energy will stay as much as possible in the soundboard instead of dissipating uselessly in the case parts, which are inefficient radiators of sound."
View from below of a 182-cm grand piano. In order of distance from viewer: softwood braces, tapered soundboard ribs, soundboard. The metal rod at lower right is a humidity control device.
The rim is normally made by laminating flexible strips of hardwood to the desired shape, a system that was developed by Theodore Steinway in 1880. The thick wooden braces at the bottom (grands) or back (uprights) of the piano are not as acoustically important as the rim, and are often made of a softwood, even in top-quality pianos, in order to save weight. The requirement of structural strength, fulfilled with stout hardwood and thick metal, makes a piano heavy; even a small upright can weigh 136 kg (300 lb), and the Steinway concert grand (Model D) weighs 480 kg (990 lb). The largest piano built, the Fazioli F308, weighs 691 kg (1520 lb).
The pinblock, which holds the tuning pins in place, is another area of the piano where toughness is important. It is made of hardwood, (often maple) and generally is laminated (built of multiple layers) for additional strength and gripping power. Piano strings (also called piano wire), which must endure years of extreme tension and hard blows, are made of high quality steel. They are manufactured to vary as little as possible in diameter, since all deviations from uniformity introduce tonal distortion. The bass strings of a piano are made of a steel core wrapped with copper wire, to increase their mass whilst retaining flexibility.
The plate, or metal frame, of a piano is usually made of cast iron. It is advantageous for the plate to be quite massive. Since the strings are attached to the plate at one end, any vibrations transmitted to the plate will result in loss of energy to the desired (efficient) channel of sound transmission, namely the bridge and the soundboard. Some manufacturers now use cast steel in their plates, for greater strength. The casting of the plate is a delicate art, since the dimensions are crucial and the iron shrinks by about one percent during cooling.
The inclusion in a piano of an extremely large piece of metal is potentially an aesthetic handicap, which piano makers overcome by polishing, painting and decorating the plate. Plates often include the manufacturer's ornamental medallion and can be strikingly attractive. In an effort to make pianos lighter, Alcoa worked with Winter and Company piano manufacturers to make pianos using an aluminum plate during the 1940s. The use of aluminum for piano plates, however, did not become widely accepted and was discontinued.
The numerous grand parts and upright parts of a piano action are generally hardwood (e.g. maple, beech. hornbeam). However, since World War II, plastics have become available. Early plastics were incorporated into some pianos in the late 1940s and 1950s, but proved disastrous because they crystallized and lost their strength after only a few decades of use. The Steinway firm once incorporated Teflon, a synthetic material developed by DuPont, for some grand action parts in place of cloth, but ultimately abandoned the experiment due to an inherent "clicking" which invariably developed over time. (Also Teflon is "humidity stable" whereas the wood adjacent to the Teflon will swell and shrink with humidity changes, causing problems.) More recently, the Kawai firm has built pianos with action parts made of more modern and effective plastics such as carbon fiber; these parts have held up better and have generally received the respect of piano technicians .
Ivorite and ebony keys on a modern Steinway & Sons concert grand piano.
The part of the piano where materials probably matter more than anywhere else is the soundboard. In quality pianos, this is made of solid spruce (that is, spruce boards glued together at their edges). Spruce is chosen for its high ratio of strength to weight. The best piano makers use close-grained, quarter-sawn, defect-free spruce, and make sure that it has been carefully dried over a long period of time before making it into soundboards. In cheap pianos, the soundboard is often made of plywood.
Piano keys are generally made of spruce or basswood, for lightness. Spruce is normally used in high-quality pianos. Traditionally, the black keys were made from ebony and the white keys were covered with strips of ivory, but since ivory-yielding species are now endangered and protected by treaty, plastics are now almost exclusively used. Also, ivory tends to chip more easily than plastic. Legal ivory can still be obtained in limited quantities. At one time, the Yamaha firm innovated a plastic called "Ivorine" or "Ivorite", since imitated by other makers, that mimics the look and feel of ivory.
A piano tuner
Pianos need regular tuning to keep them up to pitch, which is usually the internationally recognized standard concert pitch of A4 = 440 Hz. The hammers of pianos are voiced to compensate for gradual hardening, and other parts also need periodic regulation. Aged and worn pianos can be rebuilt or reconditioned. Often, by replacing a great number of their parts, they can be made to perform as well as new pianos. Older pianos are often more settled and produce a warmer tone.
Piano moving should be done by trained piano movers using adequate manpower and the correct equipment for any particular piano's size and weight. Pianos are heavy yet delicate instruments. Over the years, professional piano movers have developed special techniques for transporting both grands and uprights which prevent damage to the case and to the piano's mechanics.
The piano at the social center in the 19th century (Moritz von Schwind, 1868). The man at the piano is Franz Schubert.
The piano is a crucial instrument in Western classical music, jazz, film, television, and most other complex western musical genres. Since a large number of composers are proficient pianists â and because the piano keyboard offers an easy means of complex melodic and harmonic interplay â the piano is often used as a tool for composition.
Pianos were, and still are, popular instruments for private household ownership. Hence, pianos have gained a place in the popular consciousness, and are sometimes referred to by nicknames including: "the ivories", "the joanna", "the eighty-eight", and "the black(s) and white(s)", "the little joe(s)". Playing the piano is sometimes referred to as "tickling the ivories".
;General
* Innovations in the piano
* Jazz piano
* Piano acoustics
* Piano key frequencies (in equal temperament)
* Piano trio
* String piano
;Related lists
* List of films about pianists
* Lists of solo piano pieces
* List of piano makers
* List of piano brand names
* List of classical pianists (recorded)
;Related instruments
* Hammered dulcimer
* Harp
* Clavichord
* Harpsichord
* Organ and Pipe organ
* Electric piano
* Electronic piano
* The authoritative New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (available online by subscription), contains a wealth of information. Main article: "Pianoforte".
* The Encyclopædia Britannica (available online by subscription) also includes much information on the piano. In the 1988 edition, the primary article can be found in "Musical Instruments".
* The Piano Book by Larry Fine (4th ed. Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts: Brookside Press, 2001; ISBN 1-929145-01-2) gives the basics of how pianos work, and a thorough evaluative survey of current pianos and their manufacturers. It also includes advice on buying and owning pianos.
*Giraffes, black dragons, and other pianos: a technological history from Cristofori to the modern concert grand by Edwin M. Good (1982, second ed., 2001, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press) is a standard reference on the history of the piano.
*The Early Pianoforte by Stewart Pollens (1995, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) is an authoritative work covering the ancestry of the piano, its invention by Cristofori, and the early stages of its subsequent evolution.
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;Information
* Yamaha Musician - Yamaha piano reviews and enthusiast site
* Grand Piano information and images
* The Piano Page Lots of information from the Piano Technicians Guild
* WikiRecording's Guide to Recording Pianos
;History
* History of the Piano Forte, Association of Blind Piano Tuners, UK
* The Frederick Historical Piano Collection
;Piano Technique
* Principles of Piano Technique
;Sheet music for Piano
* All Piano Scores Free printable classical sheet music for piano + audio
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Piano | Where is Irving Berlin's piano located? | In the Smithsonian Museum. | data/set2/a1 | Piano
Baby Grand Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard that produces sound by striking steel strings with felt covered hammers. The hammers immediately rebound, allowing the strings to continue vibrating at their resonant frequency. " Hammer Time" by John Kiehl, Wolfram Demonstrations Project. These vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a soundboard that couples the acoustic energy to the air so that it can be heard as sound.
The piano is widely used in Western music for solo performance, ensemble use, chamber music, and accompaniment. It is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal. Although not portable and often expensive, the piano's versatility and ubiquity have made it one of the most familiar musical instruments. It is sometimes classified as both a percussion and a stringed instrument. According to the Hornbostel-Sachs method of music classification, it is grouped with Chordophones.
The word piano is a shortened form of the word pianoforte, which is seldom used except in formal language and derived from the original Italian name for the instrument, clavicembalo [or gravicembalo] col piano e forte (literally harpsichord with soft and loud). This refers to the instrument's responsiveness to keyboard touch, which allows the pianist to produce notes at different dynamic levels by controlling the speed with which the hammers hit the strings.
Early piano replica by the modern builder Paul McNulty, after Walter & Sohn, 1805
The piano was originally founded on earlier technological innovations. The first string instruments with struck strings were the hammered dulcimers originating from the Persian traditional musical instrument santur. David R. Peterson (1994), "Acoustics of the hammered dulcimer, its history, and recent developments", Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 95 (5), p. 3002. During the Middle Ages, there were several attempts at creating stringed keyboard instruments with struck strings, Pollens, 1995. chp. 1 the earliest being the hurdy gurdy which has uncertain origins. By the 17th century, 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.
Grand piano by Louis Bas of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, France, 1781. Earliest French grand piano known to survive; includes an inverted wrestplank and action derived from the work of Bartolomeo Cristofiori (ca. 1700) with ornately decorated soundboard.
The invention of the modern piano is credited to Bartolomeo Cristofori of Padua, Italy, who was employed by Prince Ferdinand de Medici as the Keeper of the Instruments. He was an expert harpsichord maker and was well acquainted with the previous body of knowledge on stringed keyboard instruments. It is not known exactly when Cristofori first built a piano. An inventory made by his employers, the Medici family, indicates the existence of a piano by the year 1700; another document of doubtful authenticity indicates a date of 1698. The three Cristofori pianos that survive today date from the 1720s.
Cristofori's great success was in solving, without any prior example, the fundamental mechanical problem of piano design: the hammer must strike the string, but not remain in contact with it (as a tangent remains in contact with a clavichord string) because this would damp the sound. Moreover, the hammer must return to its rest position without bouncing violently, and it must be possible to repeat a note rapidly. Cristofori's piano action served as a model for the many different approaches to piano actions that followed. While Cristofori's early instruments were made with thin strings and were much quieter than the modern piano, compared to the clavichord (the only previous keyboard instrument capable of minutely controlled dynamic nuance through the keyboard) they were considerably louder and had more sustaining power.
Cristofori's new instrument remained relatively unknown until an Italian writer, Scipione Maffei, wrote an enthusiastic article about it (1711), including a diagram of the mechanism. This article was widely distributed, and most of the next generation of piano builders started their work because of reading it. One of these builders was Gottfried Silbermann, better known as an organ builder. Silbermann's pianos were virtually direct copies of Cristofori's, with one important addition: Silbermann invented the forerunner of the modern damper pedal, which lifts all the dampers from the strings at once.
Silbermann showed Johann Sebastian Bach one of his early instruments in the 1730s, but Bach did not like it at that time, claiming that the higher notes were too soft to allow a full dynamic range. Although this earned him some animosity from Silbermann, the criticism was apparently heeded. Bach did approve of a later instrument he saw in 1747, and even served as an agent in selling Silbermann's pianos.
Piano making flourished during the late 18th century in the Viennese school, which included Johann Andreas Stein (who worked in Augsburg, Germany) and the Viennese makers Nannette Streicher (daughter of Johann Andreas Stein) and Anton Walter. Viennese-style pianos were built with wood frames, two strings per note, and had leather-covered hammers. Some of these Viennese pianos had the opposite coloring of modern-day pianos; the natural keys were black and the accidental keys white. It was for such instruments that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed his concertos and sonatas, and replicas of them are built today for use in authentic-instrument performance of his music. The pianos of Mozart's day had a softer, clearer tone than today's pianos or English pianos, with less sustaining power. The term fortepiano is nowadays often used to distinguish the 18th-century instrument from later pianos.
In the period lasting from about 1790 to 1860, the Mozart-era piano underwent tremendous changes that led to the modern form of the instrument. This revolution was in response to a consistent preference by composers and pianists for a more powerful, sustained piano sound, and made possible by the ongoing Industrial Revolution with technological resources such as high-quality steel, called piano wire, for strings, and precision casting for the production of iron frames. Over time, the tonal range of the piano was also increased from the five octaves of Mozart's day to the 7â
or more octaves found on modern pianos.
Broadwood square action
Early technological progress owed much to the English firm of Broadwood, who already had a reputation for the splendour and powerful tone of its harpsichords. Broadwood constructed instruments that were progressively larger, louder, and more robustly constructed. They sent pianos to both Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven, and were the first firm to build pianos with a range of more than five octaves: five octaves and a fifth during the 1790s, six octaves by 1810 (Beethoven used the extra notes in his later works), and seven octaves by 1820. The Viennese makers similarly followed these trends, however the two schools used different piano actions: Broadwoods were more robust, Viennese instruments were more sensitive.
Erard square action
By the 1820s, the center of innovation had shifted to Paris, where the Pleyel firm manufactured pianos used by Frédéric Chopin and the Ãrard firm manufactured those used by Franz Liszt. In 1821, Sébastien Ãrard invented the double escapement action, which permitted a note to be repeated even if the key had not yet risen to its maximum vertical position. This facilitated rapid playing of repeated notes - and this musical device was pioneered by Liszt. When the invention became public, as revised by Henri Herz, the double escapement action gradually became standard in grand pianos, and is still incorporated into all grand pianos currently produced.
One of the major technical innovations that helped to create the sound of the modern piano was the use of a strong iron frame. Also called the "plate", the iron frame sits atop the soundboard, and serves as the primary bulwark against the force of string tension. The increased structural integrity of the iron frame allowed the use of thicker, tenser, and more numerous strings. In a modern grand the total string tension can exceed 20 tons. The single piece cast iron frame was patented in 1825 in Boston by Alpheus Babcock, combining the metal hitch pin plate (1821, claimed by Broadwood on behalf of Samuel Hervé) and resisting bars (Thom and Allen, 1820, but also claimed by Broadwood and Ãrard). Babcock later worked for the Chickering & Mackays firm who patented the first full iron frame for grand pianos in 1843. Composite forged metal frames were preferred by many European makers until the American system was fully adopted by the early 20th century.
Other innovations for the mechanism included the use of felt hammer coverings instead of layered leather hammers. Felt hammers, which were first introduced by Henri Pape in 1826, were a more consistent material, permitting wider dynamic ranges as hammer weights and string tension increased. The sostenuto pedal (see below), invented in 1844 by Jean Louis Boisselot and improved by the Steinway firm in 1874, allowed a wider range of effects.
Other important technical innovations of this era included changes to the way the piano was strung, such as the use of a "choir" of three strings rather than two for all but the lower notes, and the use of different stringing methods. With the over strung scale, also called "cross-stringing", the strings are placed in a vertically overlapping slanted arrangement, with two heights of bridges on the soundboard instead of just one. This permits larger, but not necessarily longer, strings to fit within the case of the piano. Over stringing was invented by Jean-Henri Pape during the 1820s, and first patented for use in grand pianos in the United States by Henry Steinway Jr. in 1859.
Duplex scaling: Treble strings of a 182 cm. grand piano. From lower left to upper right: dampers, main sounding length of strings, treble bridge, duplex string length, duplex bridge (long bar perpendicular to strings), hitchpins. With duplexes or aliquot scales, which was patented in 1872 by Theodore Steinway, the different components of string vibrations are controlled by tuning their secondary parts in octave relationships with the sounding lengths. Similar systems developed by Blüthner (1872), as well as Taskin (1788), and Collard (1821) used more distinctly ringing undamped vibrations to modify tone.
Some early pianos had shapes and designs that are no longer in use. The square piano had horizontal strings arranged diagonally across the rectangular case above the hammers and with the keyboard set in the long side. This design is attributed to Gottfried Silbermann or Christian Ernst Friderici on the continent, and Johannes Zumpe or Harman Vietor in England and it was improved by changes first introduced by Guillaume-Lebrecht Petzold in France and Alpheus Babcock in the United States. Square pianos were built in great numbers through the 1840s in Europe and the 1890s in America, and saw the most visible changes of any type of piano: the celebrated iron framed over strung squares manufactured by Steinway & Sons were more than two and a half times the size of Zumpe's wood framed instruments from a century before. Their overwhelming popularity was due to inexpensive construction and price, although their performance and tone were often limited by simple actions and closely spaced strings.
The mechanism in upright pianos is perpendicular to the keys.
The tall, vertically strung upright grand was arranged like a grand set on end, with the soundboard and bridges above the keys, and tuning pins below them. The term was later revived by many manufacturers for advertising purposes. Giraffe, pyramid and lyre pianos were arranged in a somewhat similar fashion in evocatively shaped cases.
The very tall cabinet piano was introduced about 1805 and was built through the 1840s. It had strings arranged vertically on a continuous frame with bridges extended nearly to the floor, behind the keyboard and very large sticker action. The short cottage upright or pianino with vertical stringing, made popular by Robert Wornum around 1815, was built into the 20th century. They are informally called birdcage pianos because of their prominent damper mechanism. Pianinos were distinguished from the oblique, or diagonally strung upright made popular in France by Roller & Blanchet during the late 1820s. The tiny spinet upright was manufactured from the mid-1930s until recent times. The low position of the hammers required the use of a "drop action" to preserve a reasonable keyboard height.
Modern upright and grand pianos attained their present forms by the end of the 19th century. Improvements have been made in manufacturing processes, and many individual details of the instrument continue to receive attention.
Much of the most widely admired piano repertoire, for example, that of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, was composed for a type of instrument that is rather different from the modern instruments on which this music is normally performed today. Even the music of the Romantics, including Liszt, Chopin, Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn and Johannes Brahms, was written for pianos substantially different from ours.
A schematic depiction of the construction of a pianoforte.
Modern pianos come in two basic configurations (with subcategories): the grand piano and the upright piano.
Grand piano
In grand pianos, the frame and strings are horizontal, with the strings extending away from the keyboard. There are several sizes of grand piano. A rough generalization distinguishes the "concert grand" (between about and long) from the "parlor grand" or "boudoir grand" (about to ) and the smaller "baby grand".
All else being equal, longer pianos with longer strings have better sound and lower inharmonicity of the strings. Inharmonicity is the degree to which the frequencies of overtones (known as partials, partial tones, or harmonics) depart from whole multiples of the fundamental frequency. Pianos with shorter, thicker, and stiffer strings (e.g., baby grands) have more inharmonicity. The longer strings on a concert grand can vibrate more freely than the shorter, thicker strings on a baby grand, which means that a concert grand's strings will have truer overtones. This is partly because the strings will be tuned closer to equal temperament in relation to the standard pitch with less "stretching" in the piano tuning (See: Piano tuning). Full-size grands are usually used for public concerts, whereas smaller grands, introduced by Sohmer & Co. in 1884, are often chosen for domestic use where space and cost are considerations.
Upright piano
Upright pianos, also called vertical pianos, are more compact because the frame and strings are vertical. It is considered harder to produce a sensitive piano action when the hammers move horizontally, as the vertical hammer return is dependent on springs which are prone to wear and tear. However, a well-regulated vertical piano will probably play more smoothly than a poorly regulated grand piano, and the very best upright pianos approach the level of some grand pianos of the same size in tone quality and responsiveness.
One noticeable advantage that the grand piano action has over the vertical action is that all grand pianos have a special repetition lever in the playing action that is absent in all verticals. This repetition lever, a separate one for every key, catches the hammer close to the strings as long as the keys are played repeatedly and fairly quickly. In this position, with the hammer resting on the lever, a pianist can play repeated notes, staccato, and trills with much more speed and control than is possible on a vertical piano.
Upright pianos with unusually tall frames and long strings are sometimes called "upright grand" pianos.
Some authors classify modern pianos according to their height and, to modifications of the action that are necessary to accomodate the height.
* Studio pianos are around 42 to 45 inches tall. This is the shortest cabinet that can accomodate a 'full-sized' action located above the keyboard.
* Console pianos have a compact action (shorter hammers), and are a few inches shorter than studio models.
* The top of a Spinet model barely rises above the keyboard. The action is located below, operated by vertical wires that are attached to the backs of the keys.
* Anything taller than a studio piano is called an upright.
Player piano
Toy pianos began to be manufactured in the 19th century. In 1863, Henri Fourneaux invented the player piano, which "plays itself" from a piano roll without the need for a pianist. The player piano is a piano that records a performance using rolls of paper with perforations, and then replays the performance using pneumatic devices. A modern equivalent for the player piano is the Yamaha Disklavier system, which uses solenoids and midi instead of pneumatics and rolls. Silent pianos, which allow a regular piano to be used converted to a digital instrument, are a recent innovation and are becoming more popular.
Irving Berlin played a special piano called the transposing piano, which was invented in 1801 by Edward Ryley. It had a lever under the keyboard used to alter the music to any key. One of Berlin's pianos is in the Smithsonian Museum. For much of his career, Berlin only knew how to play the black keys. But with his 'trick piano' he was no longer limited to the key of F-sharp.
A relatively recent development is the prepared piano, which is used in contemporary art music. A prepared piano is a standard grand piano which has had objects placed inside it before a performance in order to alter its sound, or which has had its mechanism changed in some way. The scores for music for prepared piano often instruct the pianist to insert pieces of rubber or small pieces of metal (screws or washers) in between the strings. These added items either mute the strings or create unusual vibrating sounds.
Since the 1980s, digital pianos have been available, which use digital sampling technology to reproduce the sound of each piano note. The best digital pianos are sophisticated, with features including working pedals, weighted keys, multiple voices, and MIDI interfaces. However, with such technology, it is difficult to duplicate one particular aspect of acoustic pianos, namely that when the damper pedal (see below) is depressed, the strings not struck vibrate sympathetically when other strings are struck, as well as the unique instrument-specific mathematical non-linearity of partials on any given unison. Since this sympathetic vibration is considered central to piano tone, many digital pianos do not sound the same as the best acoustic pianos. Progress is being made in this area by including physical models of sympathetic vibration in the synthesis software. Some higher end digital pianos, such as the Yamaha Clavinova series, or the KAWAI MP8 series, produced in the last few years incorporate string resonance technology to overcome this limitation.
With the advent of powerful desktop computers, highly realistic sampled digital grand pianos have become available as affordable software modules. Some use multi-gigabyte piano sample sets with as many as 90 recordings, each lasting many seconds, for each of the 88 keys under different conditions, augmented by additional samples to emulate sympathetic resonance, key release, the drop of the dampers, and simulations of piano techniques like re-pedaling.
Keyboard
Almost every modern piano has 36 black keys and 52 white keys for a total of 88 keys (seven octaves plus a minor third, from A0 to C8). Many older pianos only have 85 keys (seven octaves from A0 to A7), while some manufacturers extend the range further in one or both directions.
Some Bösendorfer pianos extend the normal range downwards to F0, with one other model going as far as a bottom C0, making a full eight octave range. These extra keys are sometimes hidden under a small hinged lid that can be flipped down to cover the keys in order to avoid visual disorientation in a pianist unfamiliar with the extended keyboard. On others, the colours of the extra white keys are reversed (black instead of white).
The extra keys are added primarily for increased resonance from the associated strings; that is, they vibrate sympathetically with other strings whenever the damper pedal is depressed and thus give a fuller tone. Only a very small number of works composed for piano actually use these notes. More recently, the Stuart and Sons company has also manufactured extended-range pianos. On their instruments, the range is extended both down the bass to F0 and up the treble to F8 for a full eight octaves. The extra keys are the same as the other keys in appearance.
Small studio upright acoustical pianos with only 65 keys have been manufactured for use by roving pianists. Known as "gig" pianos and still containing a cast iron harp, these are comparatively lightweight and can be easily transported to and from engagements by only two men. As their harp is longer than that of a spinet or console piano, they have a stronger bass sound that to some pianists is well worth the trade-off in range that a reduced key-set offers.
Piano pedals from left to right: una corda, sostenuto, and damper.
Pianos have had pedals, or some close equivalent, since the earliest days. (In the 18th century, some pianos used levers pressed upward by the player's knee instead of pedals.) Most grand pianos have three pedals: soft pedal (una corda), sostenuto, and sustain pedal (from left to right, respectively). Most modern upright pianos have three pedals: soft pedal, practice pedal and sustain pedal, though older or cheaper models may lack the practice pedal.
The sustain pedal (or, damper pedal) is often simply called "the pedal", since it is the most frequently used. It is placed as the rightmost pedal in the group. It lifts the dampers from all keys, sustaining all played notes, and altering the overall tone.
The soft pedal or una corda pedal is placed leftmost in the row of pedals. In grand pianos, it shifts the entire action, including the keyboard, to the right, so that the hammers hit only one of the three strings for each note (hence the name una corda, or 'one string'). The effect is to soften the note as well as to change the tone. In uprights, this action is not possible, and so the pedal moves the hammers closer to the strings, allowing the hammers to hit the strings with less kinetic energy to produce a softer sound.
On grand pianos, the middle pedal is a sostenuto pedal. This pedal keeps raised any damper that was already raised at the moment the pedal is depressed. This makes it possible to sustain some notes (by depressing the sostenuto pedal before notes to be sustained are released) while the player's hands are free to play other notes. This can be useful for musical passages with pedal points and other otherwise tricky or impossible situations.
On many upright pianos, there is a middle pedal called the 'practice' or celeste pedal. This drops a piece of felt between the hammers and strings, greatly muting the sounds.
There are also non-standard variants. On vertical pianos, the middle pedal can be a bass sustain pedal: that is, when it is depressed, the dampers lift off the strings only in the bass section. This pedal would be used only when a pianist needs to sustain a single bass note or chord over many measures, while playing the melody in the treble section. On the largest Fazioli piano, there is a fourth pedal to the left of the principal three. This fourth pedal works in the same way as the soft pedal of an upright piano, moving the hammers closer to the strings.
An upright pedal piano
The rare transposing piano, of which Irving Berlin possessed an example, had a middle pedal that functioned as a clutch which disengages the keyboard from the mechanism, enabling the keyboard to be moved to the left or right with a lever. The entire action of the piano is thus shifted to allow the pianist to play music written in one key so that it sounds in a different key. The pedalier piano, or pedal piano, is a rare type of piano that includes a pedalboard, enabling bass register notes to be played with the feet, as is standard on the organ. There are two types of pedal piano: the pedal board may be an integral part of the instrument, using the same strings and mechanism as the manual keyboard, or, less frequently, it may consist of two independent pianos (each with its separate mechanics and strings) which are placed one above the other, a regular piano played by the hands and a bass-register piano played by the feet.
Many parts of a piano are made of materials selected for sturdiness. In quality pianos, the outer rim of the piano is made of a hardwood, normally maple or beech. According to Harold A. Conklin, the purpose of a sturdy rim is so that "the vibrational energy will stay as much as possible in the soundboard instead of dissipating uselessly in the case parts, which are inefficient radiators of sound."
View from below of a 182-cm grand piano. In order of distance from viewer: softwood braces, tapered soundboard ribs, soundboard. The metal rod at lower right is a humidity control device.
The rim is normally made by laminating flexible strips of hardwood to the desired shape, a system that was developed by Theodore Steinway in 1880. The thick wooden braces at the bottom (grands) or back (uprights) of the piano are not as acoustically important as the rim, and are often made of a softwood, even in top-quality pianos, in order to save weight. The requirement of structural strength, fulfilled with stout hardwood and thick metal, makes a piano heavy; even a small upright can weigh 136 kg (300 lb), and the Steinway concert grand (Model D) weighs 480 kg (990 lb). The largest piano built, the Fazioli F308, weighs 691 kg (1520 lb).
The pinblock, which holds the tuning pins in place, is another area of the piano where toughness is important. It is made of hardwood, (often maple) and generally is laminated (built of multiple layers) for additional strength and gripping power. Piano strings (also called piano wire), which must endure years of extreme tension and hard blows, are made of high quality steel. They are manufactured to vary as little as possible in diameter, since all deviations from uniformity introduce tonal distortion. The bass strings of a piano are made of a steel core wrapped with copper wire, to increase their mass whilst retaining flexibility.
The plate, or metal frame, of a piano is usually made of cast iron. It is advantageous for the plate to be quite massive. Since the strings are attached to the plate at one end, any vibrations transmitted to the plate will result in loss of energy to the desired (efficient) channel of sound transmission, namely the bridge and the soundboard. Some manufacturers now use cast steel in their plates, for greater strength. The casting of the plate is a delicate art, since the dimensions are crucial and the iron shrinks by about one percent during cooling.
The inclusion in a piano of an extremely large piece of metal is potentially an aesthetic handicap, which piano makers overcome by polishing, painting and decorating the plate. Plates often include the manufacturer's ornamental medallion and can be strikingly attractive. In an effort to make pianos lighter, Alcoa worked with Winter and Company piano manufacturers to make pianos using an aluminum plate during the 1940s. The use of aluminum for piano plates, however, did not become widely accepted and was discontinued.
The numerous grand parts and upright parts of a piano action are generally hardwood (e.g. maple, beech. hornbeam). However, since World War II, plastics have become available. Early plastics were incorporated into some pianos in the late 1940s and 1950s, but proved disastrous because they crystallized and lost their strength after only a few decades of use. The Steinway firm once incorporated Teflon, a synthetic material developed by DuPont, for some grand action parts in place of cloth, but ultimately abandoned the experiment due to an inherent "clicking" which invariably developed over time. (Also Teflon is "humidity stable" whereas the wood adjacent to the Teflon will swell and shrink with humidity changes, causing problems.) More recently, the Kawai firm has built pianos with action parts made of more modern and effective plastics such as carbon fiber; these parts have held up better and have generally received the respect of piano technicians .
Ivorite and ebony keys on a modern Steinway & Sons concert grand piano.
The part of the piano where materials probably matter more than anywhere else is the soundboard. In quality pianos, this is made of solid spruce (that is, spruce boards glued together at their edges). Spruce is chosen for its high ratio of strength to weight. The best piano makers use close-grained, quarter-sawn, defect-free spruce, and make sure that it has been carefully dried over a long period of time before making it into soundboards. In cheap pianos, the soundboard is often made of plywood.
Piano keys are generally made of spruce or basswood, for lightness. Spruce is normally used in high-quality pianos. Traditionally, the black keys were made from ebony and the white keys were covered with strips of ivory, but since ivory-yielding species are now endangered and protected by treaty, plastics are now almost exclusively used. Also, ivory tends to chip more easily than plastic. Legal ivory can still be obtained in limited quantities. At one time, the Yamaha firm innovated a plastic called "Ivorine" or "Ivorite", since imitated by other makers, that mimics the look and feel of ivory.
A piano tuner
Pianos need regular tuning to keep them up to pitch, which is usually the internationally recognized standard concert pitch of A4 = 440 Hz. The hammers of pianos are voiced to compensate for gradual hardening, and other parts also need periodic regulation. Aged and worn pianos can be rebuilt or reconditioned. Often, by replacing a great number of their parts, they can be made to perform as well as new pianos. Older pianos are often more settled and produce a warmer tone.
Piano moving should be done by trained piano movers using adequate manpower and the correct equipment for any particular piano's size and weight. Pianos are heavy yet delicate instruments. Over the years, professional piano movers have developed special techniques for transporting both grands and uprights which prevent damage to the case and to the piano's mechanics.
The piano at the social center in the 19th century (Moritz von Schwind, 1868). The man at the piano is Franz Schubert.
The piano is a crucial instrument in Western classical music, jazz, film, television, and most other complex western musical genres. Since a large number of composers are proficient pianists â and because the piano keyboard offers an easy means of complex melodic and harmonic interplay â the piano is often used as a tool for composition.
Pianos were, and still are, popular instruments for private household ownership. Hence, pianos have gained a place in the popular consciousness, and are sometimes referred to by nicknames including: "the ivories", "the joanna", "the eighty-eight", and "the black(s) and white(s)", "the little joe(s)". Playing the piano is sometimes referred to as "tickling the ivories".
;General
* Innovations in the piano
* Jazz piano
* Piano acoustics
* Piano key frequencies (in equal temperament)
* Piano trio
* String piano
;Related lists
* List of films about pianists
* Lists of solo piano pieces
* List of piano makers
* List of piano brand names
* List of classical pianists (recorded)
;Related instruments
* Hammered dulcimer
* Harp
* Clavichord
* Harpsichord
* Organ and Pipe organ
* Electric piano
* Electronic piano
* The authoritative New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (available online by subscription), contains a wealth of information. Main article: "Pianoforte".
* The Encyclopædia Britannica (available online by subscription) also includes much information on the piano. In the 1988 edition, the primary article can be found in "Musical Instruments".
* The Piano Book by Larry Fine (4th ed. Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts: Brookside Press, 2001; ISBN 1-929145-01-2) gives the basics of how pianos work, and a thorough evaluative survey of current pianos and their manufacturers. It also includes advice on buying and owning pianos.
*Giraffes, black dragons, and other pianos: a technological history from Cristofori to the modern concert grand by Edwin M. Good (1982, second ed., 2001, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press) is a standard reference on the history of the piano.
*The Early Pianoforte by Stewart Pollens (1995, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) is an authoritative work covering the ancestry of the piano, its invention by Cristofori, and the early stages of its subsequent evolution.
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;Information
* Yamaha Musician - Yamaha piano reviews and enthusiast site
* Grand Piano information and images
* The Piano Page Lots of information from the Piano Technicians Guild
* WikiRecording's Guide to Recording Pianos
;History
* History of the Piano Forte, Association of Blind Piano Tuners, UK
* The Frederick Historical Piano Collection
;Piano Technique
* Principles of Piano Technique
;Sheet music for Piano
* All Piano Scores Free printable classical sheet music for piano + audio
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Piano | Where is Irving Berlin's piano located? | in the Smithsonian Museum | data/set2/a1 | Piano
Baby Grand Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard that produces sound by striking steel strings with felt covered hammers. The hammers immediately rebound, allowing the strings to continue vibrating at their resonant frequency. " Hammer Time" by John Kiehl, Wolfram Demonstrations Project. These vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a soundboard that couples the acoustic energy to the air so that it can be heard as sound.
The piano is widely used in Western music for solo performance, ensemble use, chamber music, and accompaniment. It is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal. Although not portable and often expensive, the piano's versatility and ubiquity have made it one of the most familiar musical instruments. It is sometimes classified as both a percussion and a stringed instrument. According to the Hornbostel-Sachs method of music classification, it is grouped with Chordophones.
The word piano is a shortened form of the word pianoforte, which is seldom used except in formal language and derived from the original Italian name for the instrument, clavicembalo [or gravicembalo] col piano e forte (literally harpsichord with soft and loud). This refers to the instrument's responsiveness to keyboard touch, which allows the pianist to produce notes at different dynamic levels by controlling the speed with which the hammers hit the strings.
Early piano replica by the modern builder Paul McNulty, after Walter & Sohn, 1805
The piano was originally founded on earlier technological innovations. The first string instruments with struck strings were the hammered dulcimers originating from the Persian traditional musical instrument santur. David R. Peterson (1994), "Acoustics of the hammered dulcimer, its history, and recent developments", Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 95 (5), p. 3002. During the Middle Ages, there were several attempts at creating stringed keyboard instruments with struck strings, Pollens, 1995. chp. 1 the earliest being the hurdy gurdy which has uncertain origins. By the 17th century, 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.
Grand piano by Louis Bas of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, France, 1781. Earliest French grand piano known to survive; includes an inverted wrestplank and action derived from the work of Bartolomeo Cristofiori (ca. 1700) with ornately decorated soundboard.
The invention of the modern piano is credited to Bartolomeo Cristofori of Padua, Italy, who was employed by Prince Ferdinand de Medici as the Keeper of the Instruments. He was an expert harpsichord maker and was well acquainted with the previous body of knowledge on stringed keyboard instruments. It is not known exactly when Cristofori first built a piano. An inventory made by his employers, the Medici family, indicates the existence of a piano by the year 1700; another document of doubtful authenticity indicates a date of 1698. The three Cristofori pianos that survive today date from the 1720s.
Cristofori's great success was in solving, without any prior example, the fundamental mechanical problem of piano design: the hammer must strike the string, but not remain in contact with it (as a tangent remains in contact with a clavichord string) because this would damp the sound. Moreover, the hammer must return to its rest position without bouncing violently, and it must be possible to repeat a note rapidly. Cristofori's piano action served as a model for the many different approaches to piano actions that followed. While Cristofori's early instruments were made with thin strings and were much quieter than the modern piano, compared to the clavichord (the only previous keyboard instrument capable of minutely controlled dynamic nuance through the keyboard) they were considerably louder and had more sustaining power.
Cristofori's new instrument remained relatively unknown until an Italian writer, Scipione Maffei, wrote an enthusiastic article about it (1711), including a diagram of the mechanism. This article was widely distributed, and most of the next generation of piano builders started their work because of reading it. One of these builders was Gottfried Silbermann, better known as an organ builder. Silbermann's pianos were virtually direct copies of Cristofori's, with one important addition: Silbermann invented the forerunner of the modern damper pedal, which lifts all the dampers from the strings at once.
Silbermann showed Johann Sebastian Bach one of his early instruments in the 1730s, but Bach did not like it at that time, claiming that the higher notes were too soft to allow a full dynamic range. Although this earned him some animosity from Silbermann, the criticism was apparently heeded. Bach did approve of a later instrument he saw in 1747, and even served as an agent in selling Silbermann's pianos.
Piano making flourished during the late 18th century in the Viennese school, which included Johann Andreas Stein (who worked in Augsburg, Germany) and the Viennese makers Nannette Streicher (daughter of Johann Andreas Stein) and Anton Walter. Viennese-style pianos were built with wood frames, two strings per note, and had leather-covered hammers. Some of these Viennese pianos had the opposite coloring of modern-day pianos; the natural keys were black and the accidental keys white. It was for such instruments that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed his concertos and sonatas, and replicas of them are built today for use in authentic-instrument performance of his music. The pianos of Mozart's day had a softer, clearer tone than today's pianos or English pianos, with less sustaining power. The term fortepiano is nowadays often used to distinguish the 18th-century instrument from later pianos.
In the period lasting from about 1790 to 1860, the Mozart-era piano underwent tremendous changes that led to the modern form of the instrument. This revolution was in response to a consistent preference by composers and pianists for a more powerful, sustained piano sound, and made possible by the ongoing Industrial Revolution with technological resources such as high-quality steel, called piano wire, for strings, and precision casting for the production of iron frames. Over time, the tonal range of the piano was also increased from the five octaves of Mozart's day to the 7â
or more octaves found on modern pianos.
Broadwood square action
Early technological progress owed much to the English firm of Broadwood, who already had a reputation for the splendour and powerful tone of its harpsichords. Broadwood constructed instruments that were progressively larger, louder, and more robustly constructed. They sent pianos to both Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven, and were the first firm to build pianos with a range of more than five octaves: five octaves and a fifth during the 1790s, six octaves by 1810 (Beethoven used the extra notes in his later works), and seven octaves by 1820. The Viennese makers similarly followed these trends, however the two schools used different piano actions: Broadwoods were more robust, Viennese instruments were more sensitive.
Erard square action
By the 1820s, the center of innovation had shifted to Paris, where the Pleyel firm manufactured pianos used by Frédéric Chopin and the Ãrard firm manufactured those used by Franz Liszt. In 1821, Sébastien Ãrard invented the double escapement action, which permitted a note to be repeated even if the key had not yet risen to its maximum vertical position. This facilitated rapid playing of repeated notes - and this musical device was pioneered by Liszt. When the invention became public, as revised by Henri Herz, the double escapement action gradually became standard in grand pianos, and is still incorporated into all grand pianos currently produced.
One of the major technical innovations that helped to create the sound of the modern piano was the use of a strong iron frame. Also called the "plate", the iron frame sits atop the soundboard, and serves as the primary bulwark against the force of string tension. The increased structural integrity of the iron frame allowed the use of thicker, tenser, and more numerous strings. In a modern grand the total string tension can exceed 20 tons. The single piece cast iron frame was patented in 1825 in Boston by Alpheus Babcock, combining the metal hitch pin plate (1821, claimed by Broadwood on behalf of Samuel Hervé) and resisting bars (Thom and Allen, 1820, but also claimed by Broadwood and Ãrard). Babcock later worked for the Chickering & Mackays firm who patented the first full iron frame for grand pianos in 1843. Composite forged metal frames were preferred by many European makers until the American system was fully adopted by the early 20th century.
Other innovations for the mechanism included the use of felt hammer coverings instead of layered leather hammers. Felt hammers, which were first introduced by Henri Pape in 1826, were a more consistent material, permitting wider dynamic ranges as hammer weights and string tension increased. The sostenuto pedal (see below), invented in 1844 by Jean Louis Boisselot and improved by the Steinway firm in 1874, allowed a wider range of effects.
Other important technical innovations of this era included changes to the way the piano was strung, such as the use of a "choir" of three strings rather than two for all but the lower notes, and the use of different stringing methods. With the over strung scale, also called "cross-stringing", the strings are placed in a vertically overlapping slanted arrangement, with two heights of bridges on the soundboard instead of just one. This permits larger, but not necessarily longer, strings to fit within the case of the piano. Over stringing was invented by Jean-Henri Pape during the 1820s, and first patented for use in grand pianos in the United States by Henry Steinway Jr. in 1859.
Duplex scaling: Treble strings of a 182 cm. grand piano. From lower left to upper right: dampers, main sounding length of strings, treble bridge, duplex string length, duplex bridge (long bar perpendicular to strings), hitchpins. With duplexes or aliquot scales, which was patented in 1872 by Theodore Steinway, the different components of string vibrations are controlled by tuning their secondary parts in octave relationships with the sounding lengths. Similar systems developed by Blüthner (1872), as well as Taskin (1788), and Collard (1821) used more distinctly ringing undamped vibrations to modify tone.
Some early pianos had shapes and designs that are no longer in use. The square piano had horizontal strings arranged diagonally across the rectangular case above the hammers and with the keyboard set in the long side. This design is attributed to Gottfried Silbermann or Christian Ernst Friderici on the continent, and Johannes Zumpe or Harman Vietor in England and it was improved by changes first introduced by Guillaume-Lebrecht Petzold in France and Alpheus Babcock in the United States. Square pianos were built in great numbers through the 1840s in Europe and the 1890s in America, and saw the most visible changes of any type of piano: the celebrated iron framed over strung squares manufactured by Steinway & Sons were more than two and a half times the size of Zumpe's wood framed instruments from a century before. Their overwhelming popularity was due to inexpensive construction and price, although their performance and tone were often limited by simple actions and closely spaced strings.
The mechanism in upright pianos is perpendicular to the keys.
The tall, vertically strung upright grand was arranged like a grand set on end, with the soundboard and bridges above the keys, and tuning pins below them. The term was later revived by many manufacturers for advertising purposes. Giraffe, pyramid and lyre pianos were arranged in a somewhat similar fashion in evocatively shaped cases.
The very tall cabinet piano was introduced about 1805 and was built through the 1840s. It had strings arranged vertically on a continuous frame with bridges extended nearly to the floor, behind the keyboard and very large sticker action. The short cottage upright or pianino with vertical stringing, made popular by Robert Wornum around 1815, was built into the 20th century. They are informally called birdcage pianos because of their prominent damper mechanism. Pianinos were distinguished from the oblique, or diagonally strung upright made popular in France by Roller & Blanchet during the late 1820s. The tiny spinet upright was manufactured from the mid-1930s until recent times. The low position of the hammers required the use of a "drop action" to preserve a reasonable keyboard height.
Modern upright and grand pianos attained their present forms by the end of the 19th century. Improvements have been made in manufacturing processes, and many individual details of the instrument continue to receive attention.
Much of the most widely admired piano repertoire, for example, that of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, was composed for a type of instrument that is rather different from the modern instruments on which this music is normally performed today. Even the music of the Romantics, including Liszt, Chopin, Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn and Johannes Brahms, was written for pianos substantially different from ours.
A schematic depiction of the construction of a pianoforte.
Modern pianos come in two basic configurations (with subcategories): the grand piano and the upright piano.
Grand piano
In grand pianos, the frame and strings are horizontal, with the strings extending away from the keyboard. There are several sizes of grand piano. A rough generalization distinguishes the "concert grand" (between about and long) from the "parlor grand" or "boudoir grand" (about to ) and the smaller "baby grand".
All else being equal, longer pianos with longer strings have better sound and lower inharmonicity of the strings. Inharmonicity is the degree to which the frequencies of overtones (known as partials, partial tones, or harmonics) depart from whole multiples of the fundamental frequency. Pianos with shorter, thicker, and stiffer strings (e.g., baby grands) have more inharmonicity. The longer strings on a concert grand can vibrate more freely than the shorter, thicker strings on a baby grand, which means that a concert grand's strings will have truer overtones. This is partly because the strings will be tuned closer to equal temperament in relation to the standard pitch with less "stretching" in the piano tuning (See: Piano tuning). Full-size grands are usually used for public concerts, whereas smaller grands, introduced by Sohmer & Co. in 1884, are often chosen for domestic use where space and cost are considerations.
Upright piano
Upright pianos, also called vertical pianos, are more compact because the frame and strings are vertical. It is considered harder to produce a sensitive piano action when the hammers move horizontally, as the vertical hammer return is dependent on springs which are prone to wear and tear. However, a well-regulated vertical piano will probably play more smoothly than a poorly regulated grand piano, and the very best upright pianos approach the level of some grand pianos of the same size in tone quality and responsiveness.
One noticeable advantage that the grand piano action has over the vertical action is that all grand pianos have a special repetition lever in the playing action that is absent in all verticals. This repetition lever, a separate one for every key, catches the hammer close to the strings as long as the keys are played repeatedly and fairly quickly. In this position, with the hammer resting on the lever, a pianist can play repeated notes, staccato, and trills with much more speed and control than is possible on a vertical piano.
Upright pianos with unusually tall frames and long strings are sometimes called "upright grand" pianos.
Some authors classify modern pianos according to their height and, to modifications of the action that are necessary to accomodate the height.
* Studio pianos are around 42 to 45 inches tall. This is the shortest cabinet that can accomodate a 'full-sized' action located above the keyboard.
* Console pianos have a compact action (shorter hammers), and are a few inches shorter than studio models.
* The top of a Spinet model barely rises above the keyboard. The action is located below, operated by vertical wires that are attached to the backs of the keys.
* Anything taller than a studio piano is called an upright.
Player piano
Toy pianos began to be manufactured in the 19th century. In 1863, Henri Fourneaux invented the player piano, which "plays itself" from a piano roll without the need for a pianist. The player piano is a piano that records a performance using rolls of paper with perforations, and then replays the performance using pneumatic devices. A modern equivalent for the player piano is the Yamaha Disklavier system, which uses solenoids and midi instead of pneumatics and rolls. Silent pianos, which allow a regular piano to be used converted to a digital instrument, are a recent innovation and are becoming more popular.
Irving Berlin played a special piano called the transposing piano, which was invented in 1801 by Edward Ryley. It had a lever under the keyboard used to alter the music to any key. One of Berlin's pianos is in the Smithsonian Museum. For much of his career, Berlin only knew how to play the black keys. But with his 'trick piano' he was no longer limited to the key of F-sharp.
A relatively recent development is the prepared piano, which is used in contemporary art music. A prepared piano is a standard grand piano which has had objects placed inside it before a performance in order to alter its sound, or which has had its mechanism changed in some way. The scores for music for prepared piano often instruct the pianist to insert pieces of rubber or small pieces of metal (screws or washers) in between the strings. These added items either mute the strings or create unusual vibrating sounds.
Since the 1980s, digital pianos have been available, which use digital sampling technology to reproduce the sound of each piano note. The best digital pianos are sophisticated, with features including working pedals, weighted keys, multiple voices, and MIDI interfaces. However, with such technology, it is difficult to duplicate one particular aspect of acoustic pianos, namely that when the damper pedal (see below) is depressed, the strings not struck vibrate sympathetically when other strings are struck, as well as the unique instrument-specific mathematical non-linearity of partials on any given unison. Since this sympathetic vibration is considered central to piano tone, many digital pianos do not sound the same as the best acoustic pianos. Progress is being made in this area by including physical models of sympathetic vibration in the synthesis software. Some higher end digital pianos, such as the Yamaha Clavinova series, or the KAWAI MP8 series, produced in the last few years incorporate string resonance technology to overcome this limitation.
With the advent of powerful desktop computers, highly realistic sampled digital grand pianos have become available as affordable software modules. Some use multi-gigabyte piano sample sets with as many as 90 recordings, each lasting many seconds, for each of the 88 keys under different conditions, augmented by additional samples to emulate sympathetic resonance, key release, the drop of the dampers, and simulations of piano techniques like re-pedaling.
Keyboard
Almost every modern piano has 36 black keys and 52 white keys for a total of 88 keys (seven octaves plus a minor third, from A0 to C8). Many older pianos only have 85 keys (seven octaves from A0 to A7), while some manufacturers extend the range further in one or both directions.
Some Bösendorfer pianos extend the normal range downwards to F0, with one other model going as far as a bottom C0, making a full eight octave range. These extra keys are sometimes hidden under a small hinged lid that can be flipped down to cover the keys in order to avoid visual disorientation in a pianist unfamiliar with the extended keyboard. On others, the colours of the extra white keys are reversed (black instead of white).
The extra keys are added primarily for increased resonance from the associated strings; that is, they vibrate sympathetically with other strings whenever the damper pedal is depressed and thus give a fuller tone. Only a very small number of works composed for piano actually use these notes. More recently, the Stuart and Sons company has also manufactured extended-range pianos. On their instruments, the range is extended both down the bass to F0 and up the treble to F8 for a full eight octaves. The extra keys are the same as the other keys in appearance.
Small studio upright acoustical pianos with only 65 keys have been manufactured for use by roving pianists. Known as "gig" pianos and still containing a cast iron harp, these are comparatively lightweight and can be easily transported to and from engagements by only two men. As their harp is longer than that of a spinet or console piano, they have a stronger bass sound that to some pianists is well worth the trade-off in range that a reduced key-set offers.
Piano pedals from left to right: una corda, sostenuto, and damper.
Pianos have had pedals, or some close equivalent, since the earliest days. (In the 18th century, some pianos used levers pressed upward by the player's knee instead of pedals.) Most grand pianos have three pedals: soft pedal (una corda), sostenuto, and sustain pedal (from left to right, respectively). Most modern upright pianos have three pedals: soft pedal, practice pedal and sustain pedal, though older or cheaper models may lack the practice pedal.
The sustain pedal (or, damper pedal) is often simply called "the pedal", since it is the most frequently used. It is placed as the rightmost pedal in the group. It lifts the dampers from all keys, sustaining all played notes, and altering the overall tone.
The soft pedal or una corda pedal is placed leftmost in the row of pedals. In grand pianos, it shifts the entire action, including the keyboard, to the right, so that the hammers hit only one of the three strings for each note (hence the name una corda, or 'one string'). The effect is to soften the note as well as to change the tone. In uprights, this action is not possible, and so the pedal moves the hammers closer to the strings, allowing the hammers to hit the strings with less kinetic energy to produce a softer sound.
On grand pianos, the middle pedal is a sostenuto pedal. This pedal keeps raised any damper that was already raised at the moment the pedal is depressed. This makes it possible to sustain some notes (by depressing the sostenuto pedal before notes to be sustained are released) while the player's hands are free to play other notes. This can be useful for musical passages with pedal points and other otherwise tricky or impossible situations.
On many upright pianos, there is a middle pedal called the 'practice' or celeste pedal. This drops a piece of felt between the hammers and strings, greatly muting the sounds.
There are also non-standard variants. On vertical pianos, the middle pedal can be a bass sustain pedal: that is, when it is depressed, the dampers lift off the strings only in the bass section. This pedal would be used only when a pianist needs to sustain a single bass note or chord over many measures, while playing the melody in the treble section. On the largest Fazioli piano, there is a fourth pedal to the left of the principal three. This fourth pedal works in the same way as the soft pedal of an upright piano, moving the hammers closer to the strings.
An upright pedal piano
The rare transposing piano, of which Irving Berlin possessed an example, had a middle pedal that functioned as a clutch which disengages the keyboard from the mechanism, enabling the keyboard to be moved to the left or right with a lever. The entire action of the piano is thus shifted to allow the pianist to play music written in one key so that it sounds in a different key. The pedalier piano, or pedal piano, is a rare type of piano that includes a pedalboard, enabling bass register notes to be played with the feet, as is standard on the organ. There are two types of pedal piano: the pedal board may be an integral part of the instrument, using the same strings and mechanism as the manual keyboard, or, less frequently, it may consist of two independent pianos (each with its separate mechanics and strings) which are placed one above the other, a regular piano played by the hands and a bass-register piano played by the feet.
Many parts of a piano are made of materials selected for sturdiness. In quality pianos, the outer rim of the piano is made of a hardwood, normally maple or beech. According to Harold A. Conklin, the purpose of a sturdy rim is so that "the vibrational energy will stay as much as possible in the soundboard instead of dissipating uselessly in the case parts, which are inefficient radiators of sound."
View from below of a 182-cm grand piano. In order of distance from viewer: softwood braces, tapered soundboard ribs, soundboard. The metal rod at lower right is a humidity control device.
The rim is normally made by laminating flexible strips of hardwood to the desired shape, a system that was developed by Theodore Steinway in 1880. The thick wooden braces at the bottom (grands) or back (uprights) of the piano are not as acoustically important as the rim, and are often made of a softwood, even in top-quality pianos, in order to save weight. The requirement of structural strength, fulfilled with stout hardwood and thick metal, makes a piano heavy; even a small upright can weigh 136 kg (300 lb), and the Steinway concert grand (Model D) weighs 480 kg (990 lb). The largest piano built, the Fazioli F308, weighs 691 kg (1520 lb).
The pinblock, which holds the tuning pins in place, is another area of the piano where toughness is important. It is made of hardwood, (often maple) and generally is laminated (built of multiple layers) for additional strength and gripping power. Piano strings (also called piano wire), which must endure years of extreme tension and hard blows, are made of high quality steel. They are manufactured to vary as little as possible in diameter, since all deviations from uniformity introduce tonal distortion. The bass strings of a piano are made of a steel core wrapped with copper wire, to increase their mass whilst retaining flexibility.
The plate, or metal frame, of a piano is usually made of cast iron. It is advantageous for the plate to be quite massive. Since the strings are attached to the plate at one end, any vibrations transmitted to the plate will result in loss of energy to the desired (efficient) channel of sound transmission, namely the bridge and the soundboard. Some manufacturers now use cast steel in their plates, for greater strength. The casting of the plate is a delicate art, since the dimensions are crucial and the iron shrinks by about one percent during cooling.
The inclusion in a piano of an extremely large piece of metal is potentially an aesthetic handicap, which piano makers overcome by polishing, painting and decorating the plate. Plates often include the manufacturer's ornamental medallion and can be strikingly attractive. In an effort to make pianos lighter, Alcoa worked with Winter and Company piano manufacturers to make pianos using an aluminum plate during the 1940s. The use of aluminum for piano plates, however, did not become widely accepted and was discontinued.
The numerous grand parts and upright parts of a piano action are generally hardwood (e.g. maple, beech. hornbeam). However, since World War II, plastics have become available. Early plastics were incorporated into some pianos in the late 1940s and 1950s, but proved disastrous because they crystallized and lost their strength after only a few decades of use. The Steinway firm once incorporated Teflon, a synthetic material developed by DuPont, for some grand action parts in place of cloth, but ultimately abandoned the experiment due to an inherent "clicking" which invariably developed over time. (Also Teflon is "humidity stable" whereas the wood adjacent to the Teflon will swell and shrink with humidity changes, causing problems.) More recently, the Kawai firm has built pianos with action parts made of more modern and effective plastics such as carbon fiber; these parts have held up better and have generally received the respect of piano technicians .
Ivorite and ebony keys on a modern Steinway & Sons concert grand piano.
The part of the piano where materials probably matter more than anywhere else is the soundboard. In quality pianos, this is made of solid spruce (that is, spruce boards glued together at their edges). Spruce is chosen for its high ratio of strength to weight. The best piano makers use close-grained, quarter-sawn, defect-free spruce, and make sure that it has been carefully dried over a long period of time before making it into soundboards. In cheap pianos, the soundboard is often made of plywood.
Piano keys are generally made of spruce or basswood, for lightness. Spruce is normally used in high-quality pianos. Traditionally, the black keys were made from ebony and the white keys were covered with strips of ivory, but since ivory-yielding species are now endangered and protected by treaty, plastics are now almost exclusively used. Also, ivory tends to chip more easily than plastic. Legal ivory can still be obtained in limited quantities. At one time, the Yamaha firm innovated a plastic called "Ivorine" or "Ivorite", since imitated by other makers, that mimics the look and feel of ivory.
A piano tuner
Pianos need regular tuning to keep them up to pitch, which is usually the internationally recognized standard concert pitch of A4 = 440 Hz. The hammers of pianos are voiced to compensate for gradual hardening, and other parts also need periodic regulation. Aged and worn pianos can be rebuilt or reconditioned. Often, by replacing a great number of their parts, they can be made to perform as well as new pianos. Older pianos are often more settled and produce a warmer tone.
Piano moving should be done by trained piano movers using adequate manpower and the correct equipment for any particular piano's size and weight. Pianos are heavy yet delicate instruments. Over the years, professional piano movers have developed special techniques for transporting both grands and uprights which prevent damage to the case and to the piano's mechanics.
The piano at the social center in the 19th century (Moritz von Schwind, 1868). The man at the piano is Franz Schubert.
The piano is a crucial instrument in Western classical music, jazz, film, television, and most other complex western musical genres. Since a large number of composers are proficient pianists â and because the piano keyboard offers an easy means of complex melodic and harmonic interplay â the piano is often used as a tool for composition.
Pianos were, and still are, popular instruments for private household ownership. Hence, pianos have gained a place in the popular consciousness, and are sometimes referred to by nicknames including: "the ivories", "the joanna", "the eighty-eight", and "the black(s) and white(s)", "the little joe(s)". Playing the piano is sometimes referred to as "tickling the ivories".
;General
* Innovations in the piano
* Jazz piano
* Piano acoustics
* Piano key frequencies (in equal temperament)
* Piano trio
* String piano
;Related lists
* List of films about pianists
* Lists of solo piano pieces
* List of piano makers
* List of piano brand names
* List of classical pianists (recorded)
;Related instruments
* Hammered dulcimer
* Harp
* Clavichord
* Harpsichord
* Organ and Pipe organ
* Electric piano
* Electronic piano
* The authoritative New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (available online by subscription), contains a wealth of information. Main article: "Pianoforte".
* The Encyclopædia Britannica (available online by subscription) also includes much information on the piano. In the 1988 edition, the primary article can be found in "Musical Instruments".
* The Piano Book by Larry Fine (4th ed. Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts: Brookside Press, 2001; ISBN 1-929145-01-2) gives the basics of how pianos work, and a thorough evaluative survey of current pianos and their manufacturers. It also includes advice on buying and owning pianos.
*Giraffes, black dragons, and other pianos: a technological history from Cristofori to the modern concert grand by Edwin M. Good (1982, second ed., 2001, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press) is a standard reference on the history of the piano.
*The Early Pianoforte by Stewart Pollens (1995, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) is an authoritative work covering the ancestry of the piano, its invention by Cristofori, and the early stages of its subsequent evolution.
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;Information
* Yamaha Musician - Yamaha piano reviews and enthusiast site
* Grand Piano information and images
* The Piano Page Lots of information from the Piano Technicians Guild
* WikiRecording's Guide to Recording Pianos
;History
* History of the Piano Forte, Association of Blind Piano Tuners, UK
* The Frederick Historical Piano Collection
;Piano Technique
* Principles of Piano Technique
;Sheet music for Piano
* All Piano Scores Free printable classical sheet music for piano + audio
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Piano | What kind of piano did Irving Berlin play? | The transposing piano. | data/set2/a1 | Piano
Baby Grand Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard that produces sound by striking steel strings with felt covered hammers. The hammers immediately rebound, allowing the strings to continue vibrating at their resonant frequency. " Hammer Time" by John Kiehl, Wolfram Demonstrations Project. These vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a soundboard that couples the acoustic energy to the air so that it can be heard as sound.
The piano is widely used in Western music for solo performance, ensemble use, chamber music, and accompaniment. It is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal. Although not portable and often expensive, the piano's versatility and ubiquity have made it one of the most familiar musical instruments. It is sometimes classified as both a percussion and a stringed instrument. According to the Hornbostel-Sachs method of music classification, it is grouped with Chordophones.
The word piano is a shortened form of the word pianoforte, which is seldom used except in formal language and derived from the original Italian name for the instrument, clavicembalo [or gravicembalo] col piano e forte (literally harpsichord with soft and loud). This refers to the instrument's responsiveness to keyboard touch, which allows the pianist to produce notes at different dynamic levels by controlling the speed with which the hammers hit the strings.
Early piano replica by the modern builder Paul McNulty, after Walter & Sohn, 1805
The piano was originally founded on earlier technological innovations. The first string instruments with struck strings were the hammered dulcimers originating from the Persian traditional musical instrument santur. David R. Peterson (1994), "Acoustics of the hammered dulcimer, its history, and recent developments", Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 95 (5), p. 3002. During the Middle Ages, there were several attempts at creating stringed keyboard instruments with struck strings, Pollens, 1995. chp. 1 the earliest being the hurdy gurdy which has uncertain origins. By the 17th century, 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.
Grand piano by Louis Bas of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, France, 1781. Earliest French grand piano known to survive; includes an inverted wrestplank and action derived from the work of Bartolomeo Cristofiori (ca. 1700) with ornately decorated soundboard.
The invention of the modern piano is credited to Bartolomeo Cristofori of Padua, Italy, who was employed by Prince Ferdinand de Medici as the Keeper of the Instruments. He was an expert harpsichord maker and was well acquainted with the previous body of knowledge on stringed keyboard instruments. It is not known exactly when Cristofori first built a piano. An inventory made by his employers, the Medici family, indicates the existence of a piano by the year 1700; another document of doubtful authenticity indicates a date of 1698. The three Cristofori pianos that survive today date from the 1720s.
Cristofori's great success was in solving, without any prior example, the fundamental mechanical problem of piano design: the hammer must strike the string, but not remain in contact with it (as a tangent remains in contact with a clavichord string) because this would damp the sound. Moreover, the hammer must return to its rest position without bouncing violently, and it must be possible to repeat a note rapidly. Cristofori's piano action served as a model for the many different approaches to piano actions that followed. While Cristofori's early instruments were made with thin strings and were much quieter than the modern piano, compared to the clavichord (the only previous keyboard instrument capable of minutely controlled dynamic nuance through the keyboard) they were considerably louder and had more sustaining power.
Cristofori's new instrument remained relatively unknown until an Italian writer, Scipione Maffei, wrote an enthusiastic article about it (1711), including a diagram of the mechanism. This article was widely distributed, and most of the next generation of piano builders started their work because of reading it. One of these builders was Gottfried Silbermann, better known as an organ builder. Silbermann's pianos were virtually direct copies of Cristofori's, with one important addition: Silbermann invented the forerunner of the modern damper pedal, which lifts all the dampers from the strings at once.
Silbermann showed Johann Sebastian Bach one of his early instruments in the 1730s, but Bach did not like it at that time, claiming that the higher notes were too soft to allow a full dynamic range. Although this earned him some animosity from Silbermann, the criticism was apparently heeded. Bach did approve of a later instrument he saw in 1747, and even served as an agent in selling Silbermann's pianos.
Piano making flourished during the late 18th century in the Viennese school, which included Johann Andreas Stein (who worked in Augsburg, Germany) and the Viennese makers Nannette Streicher (daughter of Johann Andreas Stein) and Anton Walter. Viennese-style pianos were built with wood frames, two strings per note, and had leather-covered hammers. Some of these Viennese pianos had the opposite coloring of modern-day pianos; the natural keys were black and the accidental keys white. It was for such instruments that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed his concertos and sonatas, and replicas of them are built today for use in authentic-instrument performance of his music. The pianos of Mozart's day had a softer, clearer tone than today's pianos or English pianos, with less sustaining power. The term fortepiano is nowadays often used to distinguish the 18th-century instrument from later pianos.
In the period lasting from about 1790 to 1860, the Mozart-era piano underwent tremendous changes that led to the modern form of the instrument. This revolution was in response to a consistent preference by composers and pianists for a more powerful, sustained piano sound, and made possible by the ongoing Industrial Revolution with technological resources such as high-quality steel, called piano wire, for strings, and precision casting for the production of iron frames. Over time, the tonal range of the piano was also increased from the five octaves of Mozart's day to the 7â
or more octaves found on modern pianos.
Broadwood square action
Early technological progress owed much to the English firm of Broadwood, who already had a reputation for the splendour and powerful tone of its harpsichords. Broadwood constructed instruments that were progressively larger, louder, and more robustly constructed. They sent pianos to both Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven, and were the first firm to build pianos with a range of more than five octaves: five octaves and a fifth during the 1790s, six octaves by 1810 (Beethoven used the extra notes in his later works), and seven octaves by 1820. The Viennese makers similarly followed these trends, however the two schools used different piano actions: Broadwoods were more robust, Viennese instruments were more sensitive.
Erard square action
By the 1820s, the center of innovation had shifted to Paris, where the Pleyel firm manufactured pianos used by Frédéric Chopin and the Ãrard firm manufactured those used by Franz Liszt. In 1821, Sébastien Ãrard invented the double escapement action, which permitted a note to be repeated even if the key had not yet risen to its maximum vertical position. This facilitated rapid playing of repeated notes - and this musical device was pioneered by Liszt. When the invention became public, as revised by Henri Herz, the double escapement action gradually became standard in grand pianos, and is still incorporated into all grand pianos currently produced.
One of the major technical innovations that helped to create the sound of the modern piano was the use of a strong iron frame. Also called the "plate", the iron frame sits atop the soundboard, and serves as the primary bulwark against the force of string tension. The increased structural integrity of the iron frame allowed the use of thicker, tenser, and more numerous strings. In a modern grand the total string tension can exceed 20 tons. The single piece cast iron frame was patented in 1825 in Boston by Alpheus Babcock, combining the metal hitch pin plate (1821, claimed by Broadwood on behalf of Samuel Hervé) and resisting bars (Thom and Allen, 1820, but also claimed by Broadwood and Ãrard). Babcock later worked for the Chickering & Mackays firm who patented the first full iron frame for grand pianos in 1843. Composite forged metal frames were preferred by many European makers until the American system was fully adopted by the early 20th century.
Other innovations for the mechanism included the use of felt hammer coverings instead of layered leather hammers. Felt hammers, which were first introduced by Henri Pape in 1826, were a more consistent material, permitting wider dynamic ranges as hammer weights and string tension increased. The sostenuto pedal (see below), invented in 1844 by Jean Louis Boisselot and improved by the Steinway firm in 1874, allowed a wider range of effects.
Other important technical innovations of this era included changes to the way the piano was strung, such as the use of a "choir" of three strings rather than two for all but the lower notes, and the use of different stringing methods. With the over strung scale, also called "cross-stringing", the strings are placed in a vertically overlapping slanted arrangement, with two heights of bridges on the soundboard instead of just one. This permits larger, but not necessarily longer, strings to fit within the case of the piano. Over stringing was invented by Jean-Henri Pape during the 1820s, and first patented for use in grand pianos in the United States by Henry Steinway Jr. in 1859.
Duplex scaling: Treble strings of a 182 cm. grand piano. From lower left to upper right: dampers, main sounding length of strings, treble bridge, duplex string length, duplex bridge (long bar perpendicular to strings), hitchpins. With duplexes or aliquot scales, which was patented in 1872 by Theodore Steinway, the different components of string vibrations are controlled by tuning their secondary parts in octave relationships with the sounding lengths. Similar systems developed by Blüthner (1872), as well as Taskin (1788), and Collard (1821) used more distinctly ringing undamped vibrations to modify tone.
Some early pianos had shapes and designs that are no longer in use. The square piano had horizontal strings arranged diagonally across the rectangular case above the hammers and with the keyboard set in the long side. This design is attributed to Gottfried Silbermann or Christian Ernst Friderici on the continent, and Johannes Zumpe or Harman Vietor in England and it was improved by changes first introduced by Guillaume-Lebrecht Petzold in France and Alpheus Babcock in the United States. Square pianos were built in great numbers through the 1840s in Europe and the 1890s in America, and saw the most visible changes of any type of piano: the celebrated iron framed over strung squares manufactured by Steinway & Sons were more than two and a half times the size of Zumpe's wood framed instruments from a century before. Their overwhelming popularity was due to inexpensive construction and price, although their performance and tone were often limited by simple actions and closely spaced strings.
The mechanism in upright pianos is perpendicular to the keys.
The tall, vertically strung upright grand was arranged like a grand set on end, with the soundboard and bridges above the keys, and tuning pins below them. The term was later revived by many manufacturers for advertising purposes. Giraffe, pyramid and lyre pianos were arranged in a somewhat similar fashion in evocatively shaped cases.
The very tall cabinet piano was introduced about 1805 and was built through the 1840s. It had strings arranged vertically on a continuous frame with bridges extended nearly to the floor, behind the keyboard and very large sticker action. The short cottage upright or pianino with vertical stringing, made popular by Robert Wornum around 1815, was built into the 20th century. They are informally called birdcage pianos because of their prominent damper mechanism. Pianinos were distinguished from the oblique, or diagonally strung upright made popular in France by Roller & Blanchet during the late 1820s. The tiny spinet upright was manufactured from the mid-1930s until recent times. The low position of the hammers required the use of a "drop action" to preserve a reasonable keyboard height.
Modern upright and grand pianos attained their present forms by the end of the 19th century. Improvements have been made in manufacturing processes, and many individual details of the instrument continue to receive attention.
Much of the most widely admired piano repertoire, for example, that of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, was composed for a type of instrument that is rather different from the modern instruments on which this music is normally performed today. Even the music of the Romantics, including Liszt, Chopin, Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn and Johannes Brahms, was written for pianos substantially different from ours.
A schematic depiction of the construction of a pianoforte.
Modern pianos come in two basic configurations (with subcategories): the grand piano and the upright piano.
Grand piano
In grand pianos, the frame and strings are horizontal, with the strings extending away from the keyboard. There are several sizes of grand piano. A rough generalization distinguishes the "concert grand" (between about and long) from the "parlor grand" or "boudoir grand" (about to ) and the smaller "baby grand".
All else being equal, longer pianos with longer strings have better sound and lower inharmonicity of the strings. Inharmonicity is the degree to which the frequencies of overtones (known as partials, partial tones, or harmonics) depart from whole multiples of the fundamental frequency. Pianos with shorter, thicker, and stiffer strings (e.g., baby grands) have more inharmonicity. The longer strings on a concert grand can vibrate more freely than the shorter, thicker strings on a baby grand, which means that a concert grand's strings will have truer overtones. This is partly because the strings will be tuned closer to equal temperament in relation to the standard pitch with less "stretching" in the piano tuning (See: Piano tuning). Full-size grands are usually used for public concerts, whereas smaller grands, introduced by Sohmer & Co. in 1884, are often chosen for domestic use where space and cost are considerations.
Upright piano
Upright pianos, also called vertical pianos, are more compact because the frame and strings are vertical. It is considered harder to produce a sensitive piano action when the hammers move horizontally, as the vertical hammer return is dependent on springs which are prone to wear and tear. However, a well-regulated vertical piano will probably play more smoothly than a poorly regulated grand piano, and the very best upright pianos approach the level of some grand pianos of the same size in tone quality and responsiveness.
One noticeable advantage that the grand piano action has over the vertical action is that all grand pianos have a special repetition lever in the playing action that is absent in all verticals. This repetition lever, a separate one for every key, catches the hammer close to the strings as long as the keys are played repeatedly and fairly quickly. In this position, with the hammer resting on the lever, a pianist can play repeated notes, staccato, and trills with much more speed and control than is possible on a vertical piano.
Upright pianos with unusually tall frames and long strings are sometimes called "upright grand" pianos.
Some authors classify modern pianos according to their height and, to modifications of the action that are necessary to accomodate the height.
* Studio pianos are around 42 to 45 inches tall. This is the shortest cabinet that can accomodate a 'full-sized' action located above the keyboard.
* Console pianos have a compact action (shorter hammers), and are a few inches shorter than studio models.
* The top of a Spinet model barely rises above the keyboard. The action is located below, operated by vertical wires that are attached to the backs of the keys.
* Anything taller than a studio piano is called an upright.
Player piano
Toy pianos began to be manufactured in the 19th century. In 1863, Henri Fourneaux invented the player piano, which "plays itself" from a piano roll without the need for a pianist. The player piano is a piano that records a performance using rolls of paper with perforations, and then replays the performance using pneumatic devices. A modern equivalent for the player piano is the Yamaha Disklavier system, which uses solenoids and midi instead of pneumatics and rolls. Silent pianos, which allow a regular piano to be used converted to a digital instrument, are a recent innovation and are becoming more popular.
Irving Berlin played a special piano called the transposing piano, which was invented in 1801 by Edward Ryley. It had a lever under the keyboard used to alter the music to any key. One of Berlin's pianos is in the Smithsonian Museum. For much of his career, Berlin only knew how to play the black keys. But with his 'trick piano' he was no longer limited to the key of F-sharp.
A relatively recent development is the prepared piano, which is used in contemporary art music. A prepared piano is a standard grand piano which has had objects placed inside it before a performance in order to alter its sound, or which has had its mechanism changed in some way. The scores for music for prepared piano often instruct the pianist to insert pieces of rubber or small pieces of metal (screws or washers) in between the strings. These added items either mute the strings or create unusual vibrating sounds.
Since the 1980s, digital pianos have been available, which use digital sampling technology to reproduce the sound of each piano note. The best digital pianos are sophisticated, with features including working pedals, weighted keys, multiple voices, and MIDI interfaces. However, with such technology, it is difficult to duplicate one particular aspect of acoustic pianos, namely that when the damper pedal (see below) is depressed, the strings not struck vibrate sympathetically when other strings are struck, as well as the unique instrument-specific mathematical non-linearity of partials on any given unison. Since this sympathetic vibration is considered central to piano tone, many digital pianos do not sound the same as the best acoustic pianos. Progress is being made in this area by including physical models of sympathetic vibration in the synthesis software. Some higher end digital pianos, such as the Yamaha Clavinova series, or the KAWAI MP8 series, produced in the last few years incorporate string resonance technology to overcome this limitation.
With the advent of powerful desktop computers, highly realistic sampled digital grand pianos have become available as affordable software modules. Some use multi-gigabyte piano sample sets with as many as 90 recordings, each lasting many seconds, for each of the 88 keys under different conditions, augmented by additional samples to emulate sympathetic resonance, key release, the drop of the dampers, and simulations of piano techniques like re-pedaling.
Keyboard
Almost every modern piano has 36 black keys and 52 white keys for a total of 88 keys (seven octaves plus a minor third, from A0 to C8). Many older pianos only have 85 keys (seven octaves from A0 to A7), while some manufacturers extend the range further in one or both directions.
Some Bösendorfer pianos extend the normal range downwards to F0, with one other model going as far as a bottom C0, making a full eight octave range. These extra keys are sometimes hidden under a small hinged lid that can be flipped down to cover the keys in order to avoid visual disorientation in a pianist unfamiliar with the extended keyboard. On others, the colours of the extra white keys are reversed (black instead of white).
The extra keys are added primarily for increased resonance from the associated strings; that is, they vibrate sympathetically with other strings whenever the damper pedal is depressed and thus give a fuller tone. Only a very small number of works composed for piano actually use these notes. More recently, the Stuart and Sons company has also manufactured extended-range pianos. On their instruments, the range is extended both down the bass to F0 and up the treble to F8 for a full eight octaves. The extra keys are the same as the other keys in appearance.
Small studio upright acoustical pianos with only 65 keys have been manufactured for use by roving pianists. Known as "gig" pianos and still containing a cast iron harp, these are comparatively lightweight and can be easily transported to and from engagements by only two men. As their harp is longer than that of a spinet or console piano, they have a stronger bass sound that to some pianists is well worth the trade-off in range that a reduced key-set offers.
Piano pedals from left to right: una corda, sostenuto, and damper.
Pianos have had pedals, or some close equivalent, since the earliest days. (In the 18th century, some pianos used levers pressed upward by the player's knee instead of pedals.) Most grand pianos have three pedals: soft pedal (una corda), sostenuto, and sustain pedal (from left to right, respectively). Most modern upright pianos have three pedals: soft pedal, practice pedal and sustain pedal, though older or cheaper models may lack the practice pedal.
The sustain pedal (or, damper pedal) is often simply called "the pedal", since it is the most frequently used. It is placed as the rightmost pedal in the group. It lifts the dampers from all keys, sustaining all played notes, and altering the overall tone.
The soft pedal or una corda pedal is placed leftmost in the row of pedals. In grand pianos, it shifts the entire action, including the keyboard, to the right, so that the hammers hit only one of the three strings for each note (hence the name una corda, or 'one string'). The effect is to soften the note as well as to change the tone. In uprights, this action is not possible, and so the pedal moves the hammers closer to the strings, allowing the hammers to hit the strings with less kinetic energy to produce a softer sound.
On grand pianos, the middle pedal is a sostenuto pedal. This pedal keeps raised any damper that was already raised at the moment the pedal is depressed. This makes it possible to sustain some notes (by depressing the sostenuto pedal before notes to be sustained are released) while the player's hands are free to play other notes. This can be useful for musical passages with pedal points and other otherwise tricky or impossible situations.
On many upright pianos, there is a middle pedal called the 'practice' or celeste pedal. This drops a piece of felt between the hammers and strings, greatly muting the sounds.
There are also non-standard variants. On vertical pianos, the middle pedal can be a bass sustain pedal: that is, when it is depressed, the dampers lift off the strings only in the bass section. This pedal would be used only when a pianist needs to sustain a single bass note or chord over many measures, while playing the melody in the treble section. On the largest Fazioli piano, there is a fourth pedal to the left of the principal three. This fourth pedal works in the same way as the soft pedal of an upright piano, moving the hammers closer to the strings.
An upright pedal piano
The rare transposing piano, of which Irving Berlin possessed an example, had a middle pedal that functioned as a clutch which disengages the keyboard from the mechanism, enabling the keyboard to be moved to the left or right with a lever. The entire action of the piano is thus shifted to allow the pianist to play music written in one key so that it sounds in a different key. The pedalier piano, or pedal piano, is a rare type of piano that includes a pedalboard, enabling bass register notes to be played with the feet, as is standard on the organ. There are two types of pedal piano: the pedal board may be an integral part of the instrument, using the same strings and mechanism as the manual keyboard, or, less frequently, it may consist of two independent pianos (each with its separate mechanics and strings) which are placed one above the other, a regular piano played by the hands and a bass-register piano played by the feet.
Many parts of a piano are made of materials selected for sturdiness. In quality pianos, the outer rim of the piano is made of a hardwood, normally maple or beech. According to Harold A. Conklin, the purpose of a sturdy rim is so that "the vibrational energy will stay as much as possible in the soundboard instead of dissipating uselessly in the case parts, which are inefficient radiators of sound."
View from below of a 182-cm grand piano. In order of distance from viewer: softwood braces, tapered soundboard ribs, soundboard. The metal rod at lower right is a humidity control device.
The rim is normally made by laminating flexible strips of hardwood to the desired shape, a system that was developed by Theodore Steinway in 1880. The thick wooden braces at the bottom (grands) or back (uprights) of the piano are not as acoustically important as the rim, and are often made of a softwood, even in top-quality pianos, in order to save weight. The requirement of structural strength, fulfilled with stout hardwood and thick metal, makes a piano heavy; even a small upright can weigh 136 kg (300 lb), and the Steinway concert grand (Model D) weighs 480 kg (990 lb). The largest piano built, the Fazioli F308, weighs 691 kg (1520 lb).
The pinblock, which holds the tuning pins in place, is another area of the piano where toughness is important. It is made of hardwood, (often maple) and generally is laminated (built of multiple layers) for additional strength and gripping power. Piano strings (also called piano wire), which must endure years of extreme tension and hard blows, are made of high quality steel. They are manufactured to vary as little as possible in diameter, since all deviations from uniformity introduce tonal distortion. The bass strings of a piano are made of a steel core wrapped with copper wire, to increase their mass whilst retaining flexibility.
The plate, or metal frame, of a piano is usually made of cast iron. It is advantageous for the plate to be quite massive. Since the strings are attached to the plate at one end, any vibrations transmitted to the plate will result in loss of energy to the desired (efficient) channel of sound transmission, namely the bridge and the soundboard. Some manufacturers now use cast steel in their plates, for greater strength. The casting of the plate is a delicate art, since the dimensions are crucial and the iron shrinks by about one percent during cooling.
The inclusion in a piano of an extremely large piece of metal is potentially an aesthetic handicap, which piano makers overcome by polishing, painting and decorating the plate. Plates often include the manufacturer's ornamental medallion and can be strikingly attractive. In an effort to make pianos lighter, Alcoa worked with Winter and Company piano manufacturers to make pianos using an aluminum plate during the 1940s. The use of aluminum for piano plates, however, did not become widely accepted and was discontinued.
The numerous grand parts and upright parts of a piano action are generally hardwood (e.g. maple, beech. hornbeam). However, since World War II, plastics have become available. Early plastics were incorporated into some pianos in the late 1940s and 1950s, but proved disastrous because they crystallized and lost their strength after only a few decades of use. The Steinway firm once incorporated Teflon, a synthetic material developed by DuPont, for some grand action parts in place of cloth, but ultimately abandoned the experiment due to an inherent "clicking" which invariably developed over time. (Also Teflon is "humidity stable" whereas the wood adjacent to the Teflon will swell and shrink with humidity changes, causing problems.) More recently, the Kawai firm has built pianos with action parts made of more modern and effective plastics such as carbon fiber; these parts have held up better and have generally received the respect of piano technicians .
Ivorite and ebony keys on a modern Steinway & Sons concert grand piano.
The part of the piano where materials probably matter more than anywhere else is the soundboard. In quality pianos, this is made of solid spruce (that is, spruce boards glued together at their edges). Spruce is chosen for its high ratio of strength to weight. The best piano makers use close-grained, quarter-sawn, defect-free spruce, and make sure that it has been carefully dried over a long period of time before making it into soundboards. In cheap pianos, the soundboard is often made of plywood.
Piano keys are generally made of spruce or basswood, for lightness. Spruce is normally used in high-quality pianos. Traditionally, the black keys were made from ebony and the white keys were covered with strips of ivory, but since ivory-yielding species are now endangered and protected by treaty, plastics are now almost exclusively used. Also, ivory tends to chip more easily than plastic. Legal ivory can still be obtained in limited quantities. At one time, the Yamaha firm innovated a plastic called "Ivorine" or "Ivorite", since imitated by other makers, that mimics the look and feel of ivory.
A piano tuner
Pianos need regular tuning to keep them up to pitch, which is usually the internationally recognized standard concert pitch of A4 = 440 Hz. The hammers of pianos are voiced to compensate for gradual hardening, and other parts also need periodic regulation. Aged and worn pianos can be rebuilt or reconditioned. Often, by replacing a great number of their parts, they can be made to perform as well as new pianos. Older pianos are often more settled and produce a warmer tone.
Piano moving should be done by trained piano movers using adequate manpower and the correct equipment for any particular piano's size and weight. Pianos are heavy yet delicate instruments. Over the years, professional piano movers have developed special techniques for transporting both grands and uprights which prevent damage to the case and to the piano's mechanics.
The piano at the social center in the 19th century (Moritz von Schwind, 1868). The man at the piano is Franz Schubert.
The piano is a crucial instrument in Western classical music, jazz, film, television, and most other complex western musical genres. Since a large number of composers are proficient pianists â and because the piano keyboard offers an easy means of complex melodic and harmonic interplay â the piano is often used as a tool for composition.
Pianos were, and still are, popular instruments for private household ownership. Hence, pianos have gained a place in the popular consciousness, and are sometimes referred to by nicknames including: "the ivories", "the joanna", "the eighty-eight", and "the black(s) and white(s)", "the little joe(s)". Playing the piano is sometimes referred to as "tickling the ivories".
;General
* Innovations in the piano
* Jazz piano
* Piano acoustics
* Piano key frequencies (in equal temperament)
* Piano trio
* String piano
;Related lists
* List of films about pianists
* Lists of solo piano pieces
* List of piano makers
* List of piano brand names
* List of classical pianists (recorded)
;Related instruments
* Hammered dulcimer
* Harp
* Clavichord
* Harpsichord
* Organ and Pipe organ
* Electric piano
* Electronic piano
* The authoritative New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (available online by subscription), contains a wealth of information. Main article: "Pianoforte".
* The Encyclopædia Britannica (available online by subscription) also includes much information on the piano. In the 1988 edition, the primary article can be found in "Musical Instruments".
* The Piano Book by Larry Fine (4th ed. Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts: Brookside Press, 2001; ISBN 1-929145-01-2) gives the basics of how pianos work, and a thorough evaluative survey of current pianos and their manufacturers. It also includes advice on buying and owning pianos.
*Giraffes, black dragons, and other pianos: a technological history from Cristofori to the modern concert grand by Edwin M. Good (1982, second ed., 2001, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press) is a standard reference on the history of the piano.
*The Early Pianoforte by Stewart Pollens (1995, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) is an authoritative work covering the ancestry of the piano, its invention by Cristofori, and the early stages of its subsequent evolution.
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;Information
* Yamaha Musician - Yamaha piano reviews and enthusiast site
* Grand Piano information and images
* The Piano Page Lots of information from the Piano Technicians Guild
* WikiRecording's Guide to Recording Pianos
;History
* History of the Piano Forte, Association of Blind Piano Tuners, UK
* The Frederick Historical Piano Collection
;Piano Technique
* Principles of Piano Technique
;Sheet music for Piano
* All Piano Scores Free printable classical sheet music for piano + audio
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Baby Grand Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard that produces sound by striking steel strings with felt covered hammers. The hammers immediately rebound, allowing the strings to continue vibrating at their resonant frequency. " Hammer Time" by John Kiehl, Wolfram Demonstrations Project. These vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a soundboard that couples the acoustic energy to the air so that it can be heard as sound.
The piano is widely used in Western music for solo performance, ensemble use, chamber music, and accompaniment. It is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal. Although not portable and often expensive, the piano's versatility and ubiquity have made it one of the most familiar musical instruments. It is sometimes classified as both a percussion and a stringed instrument. According to the Hornbostel-Sachs method of music classification, it is grouped with Chordophones.
The word piano is a shortened form of the word pianoforte, which is seldom used except in formal language and derived from the original Italian name for the instrument, clavicembalo [or gravicembalo] col piano e forte (literally harpsichord with soft and loud). This refers to the instrument's responsiveness to keyboard touch, which allows the pianist to produce notes at different dynamic levels by controlling the speed with which the hammers hit the strings.
Early piano replica by the modern builder Paul McNulty, after Walter & Sohn, 1805
The piano was originally founded on earlier technological innovations. The first string instruments with struck strings were the hammered dulcimers originating from the Persian traditional musical instrument santur. David R. Peterson (1994), "Acoustics of the hammered dulcimer, its history, and recent developments", Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 95 (5), p. 3002. During the Middle Ages, there were several attempts at creating stringed keyboard instruments with struck strings, Pollens, 1995. chp. 1 the earliest being the hurdy gurdy which has uncertain origins. By the 17th century, 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.
Grand piano by Louis Bas of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, France, 1781. Earliest French grand piano known to survive; includes an inverted wrestplank and action derived from the work of Bartolomeo Cristofiori (ca. 1700) with ornately decorated soundboard.
The invention of the modern piano is credited to Bartolomeo Cristofori of Padua, Italy, who was employed by Prince Ferdinand de Medici as the Keeper of the Instruments. He was an expert harpsichord maker and was well acquainted with the previous body of knowledge on stringed keyboard instruments. It is not known exactly when Cristofori first built a piano. An inventory made by his employers, the Medici family, indicates the existence of a piano by the year 1700; another document of doubtful authenticity indicates a date of 1698. The three Cristofori pianos that survive today date from the 1720s.
Cristofori's great success was in solving, without any prior example, the fundamental mechanical problem of piano design: the hammer must strike the string, but not remain in contact with it (as a tangent remains in contact with a clavichord string) because this would damp the sound. Moreover, the hammer must return to its rest position without bouncing violently, and it must be possible to repeat a note rapidly. Cristofori's piano action served as a model for the many different approaches to piano actions that followed. While Cristofori's early instruments were made with thin strings and were much quieter than the modern piano, compared to the clavichord (the only previous keyboard instrument capable of minutely controlled dynamic nuance through the keyboard) they were considerably louder and had more sustaining power.
Cristofori's new instrument remained relatively unknown until an Italian writer, Scipione Maffei, wrote an enthusiastic article about it (1711), including a diagram of the mechanism. This article was widely distributed, and most of the next generation of piano builders started their work because of reading it. One of these builders was Gottfried Silbermann, better known as an organ builder. Silbermann's pianos were virtually direct copies of Cristofori's, with one important addition: Silbermann invented the forerunner of the modern damper pedal, which lifts all the dampers from the strings at once.
Silbermann showed Johann Sebastian Bach one of his early instruments in the 1730s, but Bach did not like it at that time, claiming that the higher notes were too soft to allow a full dynamic range. Although this earned him some animosity from Silbermann, the criticism was apparently heeded. Bach did approve of a later instrument he saw in 1747, and even served as an agent in selling Silbermann's pianos.
Piano making flourished during the late 18th century in the Viennese school, which included Johann Andreas Stein (who worked in Augsburg, Germany) and the Viennese makers Nannette Streicher (daughter of Johann Andreas Stein) and Anton Walter. Viennese-style pianos were built with wood frames, two strings per note, and had leather-covered hammers. Some of these Viennese pianos had the opposite coloring of modern-day pianos; the natural keys were black and the accidental keys white. It was for such instruments that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed his concertos and sonatas, and replicas of them are built today for use in authentic-instrument performance of his music. The pianos of Mozart's day had a softer, clearer tone than today's pianos or English pianos, with less sustaining power. The term fortepiano is nowadays often used to distinguish the 18th-century instrument from later pianos.
In the period lasting from about 1790 to 1860, the Mozart-era piano underwent tremendous changes that led to the modern form of the instrument. This revolution was in response to a consistent preference by composers and pianists for a more powerful, sustained piano sound, and made possible by the ongoing Industrial Revolution with technological resources such as high-quality steel, called piano wire, for strings, and precision casting for the production of iron frames. Over time, the tonal range of the piano was also increased from the five octaves of Mozart's day to the 7â
or more octaves found on modern pianos.
Broadwood square action
Early technological progress owed much to the English firm of Broadwood, who already had a reputation for the splendour and powerful tone of its harpsichords. Broadwood constructed instruments that were progressively larger, louder, and more robustly constructed. They sent pianos to both Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven, and were the first firm to build pianos with a range of more than five octaves: five octaves and a fifth during the 1790s, six octaves by 1810 (Beethoven used the extra notes in his later works), and seven octaves by 1820. The Viennese makers similarly followed these trends, however the two schools used different piano actions: Broadwoods were more robust, Viennese instruments were more sensitive.
Erard square action
By the 1820s, the center of innovation had shifted to Paris, where the Pleyel firm manufactured pianos used by Frédéric Chopin and the Ãrard firm manufactured those used by Franz Liszt. In 1821, Sébastien Ãrard invented the double escapement action, which permitted a note to be repeated even if the key had not yet risen to its maximum vertical position. This facilitated rapid playing of repeated notes - and this musical device was pioneered by Liszt. When the invention became public, as revised by Henri Herz, the double escapement action gradually became standard in grand pianos, and is still incorporated into all grand pianos currently produced.
One of the major technical innovations that helped to create the sound of the modern piano was the use of a strong iron frame. Also called the "plate", the iron frame sits atop the soundboard, and serves as the primary bulwark against the force of string tension. The increased structural integrity of the iron frame allowed the use of thicker, tenser, and more numerous strings. In a modern grand the total string tension can exceed 20 tons. The single piece cast iron frame was patented in 1825 in Boston by Alpheus Babcock, combining the metal hitch pin plate (1821, claimed by Broadwood on behalf of Samuel Hervé) and resisting bars (Thom and Allen, 1820, but also claimed by Broadwood and Ãrard). Babcock later worked for the Chickering & Mackays firm who patented the first full iron frame for grand pianos in 1843. Composite forged metal frames were preferred by many European makers until the American system was fully adopted by the early 20th century.
Other innovations for the mechanism included the use of felt hammer coverings instead of layered leather hammers. Felt hammers, which were first introduced by Henri Pape in 1826, were a more consistent material, permitting wider dynamic ranges as hammer weights and string tension increased. The sostenuto pedal (see below), invented in 1844 by Jean Louis Boisselot and improved by the Steinway firm in 1874, allowed a wider range of effects.
Other important technical innovations of this era included changes to the way the piano was strung, such as the use of a "choir" of three strings rather than two for all but the lower notes, and the use of different stringing methods. With the over strung scale, also called "cross-stringing", the strings are placed in a vertically overlapping slanted arrangement, with two heights of bridges on the soundboard instead of just one. This permits larger, but not necessarily longer, strings to fit within the case of the piano. Over stringing was invented by Jean-Henri Pape during the 1820s, and first patented for use in grand pianos in the United States by Henry Steinway Jr. in 1859.
Duplex scaling: Treble strings of a 182 cm. grand piano. From lower left to upper right: dampers, main sounding length of strings, treble bridge, duplex string length, duplex bridge (long bar perpendicular to strings), hitchpins. With duplexes or aliquot scales, which was patented in 1872 by Theodore Steinway, the different components of string vibrations are controlled by tuning their secondary parts in octave relationships with the sounding lengths. Similar systems developed by Blüthner (1872), as well as Taskin (1788), and Collard (1821) used more distinctly ringing undamped vibrations to modify tone.
Some early pianos had shapes and designs that are no longer in use. The square piano had horizontal strings arranged diagonally across the rectangular case above the hammers and with the keyboard set in the long side. This design is attributed to Gottfried Silbermann or Christian Ernst Friderici on the continent, and Johannes Zumpe or Harman Vietor in England and it was improved by changes first introduced by Guillaume-Lebrecht Petzold in France and Alpheus Babcock in the United States. Square pianos were built in great numbers through the 1840s in Europe and the 1890s in America, and saw the most visible changes of any type of piano: the celebrated iron framed over strung squares manufactured by Steinway & Sons were more than two and a half times the size of Zumpe's wood framed instruments from a century before. Their overwhelming popularity was due to inexpensive construction and price, although their performance and tone were often limited by simple actions and closely spaced strings.
The mechanism in upright pianos is perpendicular to the keys.
The tall, vertically strung upright grand was arranged like a grand set on end, with the soundboard and bridges above the keys, and tuning pins below them. The term was later revived by many manufacturers for advertising purposes. Giraffe, pyramid and lyre pianos were arranged in a somewhat similar fashion in evocatively shaped cases.
The very tall cabinet piano was introduced about 1805 and was built through the 1840s. It had strings arranged vertically on a continuous frame with bridges extended nearly to the floor, behind the keyboard and very large sticker action. The short cottage upright or pianino with vertical stringing, made popular by Robert Wornum around 1815, was built into the 20th century. They are informally called birdcage pianos because of their prominent damper mechanism. Pianinos were distinguished from the oblique, or diagonally strung upright made popular in France by Roller & Blanchet during the late 1820s. The tiny spinet upright was manufactured from the mid-1930s until recent times. The low position of the hammers required the use of a "drop action" to preserve a reasonable keyboard height.
Modern upright and grand pianos attained their present forms by the end of the 19th century. Improvements have been made in manufacturing processes, and many individual details of the instrument continue to receive attention.
Much of the most widely admired piano repertoire, for example, that of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, was composed for a type of instrument that is rather different from the modern instruments on which this music is normally performed today. Even the music of the Romantics, including Liszt, Chopin, Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn and Johannes Brahms, was written for pianos substantially different from ours.
A schematic depiction of the construction of a pianoforte.
Modern pianos come in two basic configurations (with subcategories): the grand piano and the upright piano.
Grand piano
In grand pianos, the frame and strings are horizontal, with the strings extending away from the keyboard. There are several sizes of grand piano. A rough generalization distinguishes the "concert grand" (between about and long) from the "parlor grand" or "boudoir grand" (about to ) and the smaller "baby grand".
All else being equal, longer pianos with longer strings have better sound and lower inharmonicity of the strings. Inharmonicity is the degree to which the frequencies of overtones (known as partials, partial tones, or harmonics) depart from whole multiples of the fundamental frequency. Pianos with shorter, thicker, and stiffer strings (e.g., baby grands) have more inharmonicity. The longer strings on a concert grand can vibrate more freely than the shorter, thicker strings on a baby grand, which means that a concert grand's strings will have truer overtones. This is partly because the strings will be tuned closer to equal temperament in relation to the standard pitch with less "stretching" in the piano tuning (See: Piano tuning). Full-size grands are usually used for public concerts, whereas smaller grands, introduced by Sohmer & Co. in 1884, are often chosen for domestic use where space and cost are considerations.
Upright piano
Upright pianos, also called vertical pianos, are more compact because the frame and strings are vertical. It is considered harder to produce a sensitive piano action when the hammers move horizontally, as the vertical hammer return is dependent on springs which are prone to wear and tear. However, a well-regulated vertical piano will probably play more smoothly than a poorly regulated grand piano, and the very best upright pianos approach the level of some grand pianos of the same size in tone quality and responsiveness.
One noticeable advantage that the grand piano action has over the vertical action is that all grand pianos have a special repetition lever in the playing action that is absent in all verticals. This repetition lever, a separate one for every key, catches the hammer close to the strings as long as the keys are played repeatedly and fairly quickly. In this position, with the hammer resting on the lever, a pianist can play repeated notes, staccato, and trills with much more speed and control than is possible on a vertical piano.
Upright pianos with unusually tall frames and long strings are sometimes called "upright grand" pianos.
Some authors classify modern pianos according to their height and, to modifications of the action that are necessary to accomodate the height.
* Studio pianos are around 42 to 45 inches tall. This is the shortest cabinet that can accomodate a 'full-sized' action located above the keyboard.
* Console pianos have a compact action (shorter hammers), and are a few inches shorter than studio models.
* The top of a Spinet model barely rises above the keyboard. The action is located below, operated by vertical wires that are attached to the backs of the keys.
* Anything taller than a studio piano is called an upright.
Player piano
Toy pianos began to be manufactured in the 19th century. In 1863, Henri Fourneaux invented the player piano, which "plays itself" from a piano roll without the need for a pianist. The player piano is a piano that records a performance using rolls of paper with perforations, and then replays the performance using pneumatic devices. A modern equivalent for the player piano is the Yamaha Disklavier system, which uses solenoids and midi instead of pneumatics and rolls. Silent pianos, which allow a regular piano to be used converted to a digital instrument, are a recent innovation and are becoming more popular.
Irving Berlin played a special piano called the transposing piano, which was invented in 1801 by Edward Ryley. It had a lever under the keyboard used to alter the music to any key. One of Berlin's pianos is in the Smithsonian Museum. For much of his career, Berlin only knew how to play the black keys. But with his 'trick piano' he was no longer limited to the key of F-sharp.
A relatively recent development is the prepared piano, which is used in contemporary art music. A prepared piano is a standard grand piano which has had objects placed inside it before a performance in order to alter its sound, or which has had its mechanism changed in some way. The scores for music for prepared piano often instruct the pianist to insert pieces of rubber or small pieces of metal (screws or washers) in between the strings. These added items either mute the strings or create unusual vibrating sounds.
Since the 1980s, digital pianos have been available, which use digital sampling technology to reproduce the sound of each piano note. The best digital pianos are sophisticated, with features including working pedals, weighted keys, multiple voices, and MIDI interfaces. However, with such technology, it is difficult to duplicate one particular aspect of acoustic pianos, namely that when the damper pedal (see below) is depressed, the strings not struck vibrate sympathetically when other strings are struck, as well as the unique instrument-specific mathematical non-linearity of partials on any given unison. Since this sympathetic vibration is considered central to piano tone, many digital pianos do not sound the same as the best acoustic pianos. Progress is being made in this area by including physical models of sympathetic vibration in the synthesis software. Some higher end digital pianos, such as the Yamaha Clavinova series, or the KAWAI MP8 series, produced in the last few years incorporate string resonance technology to overcome this limitation.
With the advent of powerful desktop computers, highly realistic sampled digital grand pianos have become available as affordable software modules. Some use multi-gigabyte piano sample sets with as many as 90 recordings, each lasting many seconds, for each of the 88 keys under different conditions, augmented by additional samples to emulate sympathetic resonance, key release, the drop of the dampers, and simulations of piano techniques like re-pedaling.
Keyboard
Almost every modern piano has 36 black keys and 52 white keys for a total of 88 keys (seven octaves plus a minor third, from A0 to C8). Many older pianos only have 85 keys (seven octaves from A0 to A7), while some manufacturers extend the range further in one or both directions.
Some Bösendorfer pianos extend the normal range downwards to F0, with one other model going as far as a bottom C0, making a full eight octave range. These extra keys are sometimes hidden under a small hinged lid that can be flipped down to cover the keys in order to avoid visual disorientation in a pianist unfamiliar with the extended keyboard. On others, the colours of the extra white keys are reversed (black instead of white).
The extra keys are added primarily for increased resonance from the associated strings; that is, they vibrate sympathetically with other strings whenever the damper pedal is depressed and thus give a fuller tone. Only a very small number of works composed for piano actually use these notes. More recently, the Stuart and Sons company has also manufactured extended-range pianos. On their instruments, the range is extended both down the bass to F0 and up the treble to F8 for a full eight octaves. The extra keys are the same as the other keys in appearance.
Small studio upright acoustical pianos with only 65 keys have been manufactured for use by roving pianists. Known as "gig" pianos and still containing a cast iron harp, these are comparatively lightweight and can be easily transported to and from engagements by only two men. As their harp is longer than that of a spinet or console piano, they have a stronger bass sound that to some pianists is well worth the trade-off in range that a reduced key-set offers.
Piano pedals from left to right: una corda, sostenuto, and damper.
Pianos have had pedals, or some close equivalent, since the earliest days. (In the 18th century, some pianos used levers pressed upward by the player's knee instead of pedals.) Most grand pianos have three pedals: soft pedal (una corda), sostenuto, and sustain pedal (from left to right, respectively). Most modern upright pianos have three pedals: soft pedal, practice pedal and sustain pedal, though older or cheaper models may lack the practice pedal.
The sustain pedal (or, damper pedal) is often simply called "the pedal", since it is the most frequently used. It is placed as the rightmost pedal in the group. It lifts the dampers from all keys, sustaining all played notes, and altering the overall tone.
The soft pedal or una corda pedal is placed leftmost in the row of pedals. In grand pianos, it shifts the entire action, including the keyboard, to the right, so that the hammers hit only one of the three strings for each note (hence the name una corda, or 'one string'). The effect is to soften the note as well as to change the tone. In uprights, this action is not possible, and so the pedal moves the hammers closer to the strings, allowing the hammers to hit the strings with less kinetic energy to produce a softer sound.
On grand pianos, the middle pedal is a sostenuto pedal. This pedal keeps raised any damper that was already raised at the moment the pedal is depressed. This makes it possible to sustain some notes (by depressing the sostenuto pedal before notes to be sustained are released) while the player's hands are free to play other notes. This can be useful for musical passages with pedal points and other otherwise tricky or impossible situations.
On many upright pianos, there is a middle pedal called the 'practice' or celeste pedal. This drops a piece of felt between the hammers and strings, greatly muting the sounds.
There are also non-standard variants. On vertical pianos, the middle pedal can be a bass sustain pedal: that is, when it is depressed, the dampers lift off the strings only in the bass section. This pedal would be used only when a pianist needs to sustain a single bass note or chord over many measures, while playing the melody in the treble section. On the largest Fazioli piano, there is a fourth pedal to the left of the principal three. This fourth pedal works in the same way as the soft pedal of an upright piano, moving the hammers closer to the strings.
An upright pedal piano
The rare transposing piano, of which Irving Berlin possessed an example, had a middle pedal that functioned as a clutch which disengages the keyboard from the mechanism, enabling the keyboard to be moved to the left or right with a lever. The entire action of the piano is thus shifted to allow the pianist to play music written in one key so that it sounds in a different key. The pedalier piano, or pedal piano, is a rare type of piano that includes a pedalboard, enabling bass register notes to be played with the feet, as is standard on the organ. There are two types of pedal piano: the pedal board may be an integral part of the instrument, using the same strings and mechanism as the manual keyboard, or, less frequently, it may consist of two independent pianos (each with its separate mechanics and strings) which are placed one above the other, a regular piano played by the hands and a bass-register piano played by the feet.
Many parts of a piano are made of materials selected for sturdiness. In quality pianos, the outer rim of the piano is made of a hardwood, normally maple or beech. According to Harold A. Conklin, the purpose of a sturdy rim is so that "the vibrational energy will stay as much as possible in the soundboard instead of dissipating uselessly in the case parts, which are inefficient radiators of sound."
View from below of a 182-cm grand piano. In order of distance from viewer: softwood braces, tapered soundboard ribs, soundboard. The metal rod at lower right is a humidity control device.
The rim is normally made by laminating flexible strips of hardwood to the desired shape, a system that was developed by Theodore Steinway in 1880. The thick wooden braces at the bottom (grands) or back (uprights) of the piano are not as acoustically important as the rim, and are often made of a softwood, even in top-quality pianos, in order to save weight. The requirement of structural strength, fulfilled with stout hardwood and thick metal, makes a piano heavy; even a small upright can weigh 136 kg (300 lb), and the Steinway concert grand (Model D) weighs 480 kg (990 lb). The largest piano built, the Fazioli F308, weighs 691 kg (1520 lb).
The pinblock, which holds the tuning pins in place, is another area of the piano where toughness is important. It is made of hardwood, (often maple) and generally is laminated (built of multiple layers) for additional strength and gripping power. Piano strings (also called piano wire), which must endure years of extreme tension and hard blows, are made of high quality steel. They are manufactured to vary as little as possible in diameter, since all deviations from uniformity introduce tonal distortion. The bass strings of a piano are made of a steel core wrapped with copper wire, to increase their mass whilst retaining flexibility.
The plate, or metal frame, of a piano is usually made of cast iron. It is advantageous for the plate to be quite massive. Since the strings are attached to the plate at one end, any vibrations transmitted to the plate will result in loss of energy to the desired (efficient) channel of sound transmission, namely the bridge and the soundboard. Some manufacturers now use cast steel in their plates, for greater strength. The casting of the plate is a delicate art, since the dimensions are crucial and the iron shrinks by about one percent during cooling.
The inclusion in a piano of an extremely large piece of metal is potentially an aesthetic handicap, which piano makers overcome by polishing, painting and decorating the plate. Plates often include the manufacturer's ornamental medallion and can be strikingly attractive. In an effort to make pianos lighter, Alcoa worked with Winter and Company piano manufacturers to make pianos using an aluminum plate during the 1940s. The use of aluminum for piano plates, however, did not become widely accepted and was discontinued.
The numerous grand parts and upright parts of a piano action are generally hardwood (e.g. maple, beech. hornbeam). However, since World War II, plastics have become available. Early plastics were incorporated into some pianos in the late 1940s and 1950s, but proved disastrous because they crystallized and lost their strength after only a few decades of use. The Steinway firm once incorporated Teflon, a synthetic material developed by DuPont, for some grand action parts in place of cloth, but ultimately abandoned the experiment due to an inherent "clicking" which invariably developed over time. (Also Teflon is "humidity stable" whereas the wood adjacent to the Teflon will swell and shrink with humidity changes, causing problems.) More recently, the Kawai firm has built pianos with action parts made of more modern and effective plastics such as carbon fiber; these parts have held up better and have generally received the respect of piano technicians .
Ivorite and ebony keys on a modern Steinway & Sons concert grand piano.
The part of the piano where materials probably matter more than anywhere else is the soundboard. In quality pianos, this is made of solid spruce (that is, spruce boards glued together at their edges). Spruce is chosen for its high ratio of strength to weight. The best piano makers use close-grained, quarter-sawn, defect-free spruce, and make sure that it has been carefully dried over a long period of time before making it into soundboards. In cheap pianos, the soundboard is often made of plywood.
Piano keys are generally made of spruce or basswood, for lightness. Spruce is normally used in high-quality pianos. Traditionally, the black keys were made from ebony and the white keys were covered with strips of ivory, but since ivory-yielding species are now endangered and protected by treaty, plastics are now almost exclusively used. Also, ivory tends to chip more easily than plastic. Legal ivory can still be obtained in limited quantities. At one time, the Yamaha firm innovated a plastic called "Ivorine" or "Ivorite", since imitated by other makers, that mimics the look and feel of ivory.
A piano tuner
Pianos need regular tuning to keep them up to pitch, which is usually the internationally recognized standard concert pitch of A4 = 440 Hz. The hammers of pianos are voiced to compensate for gradual hardening, and other parts also need periodic regulation. Aged and worn pianos can be rebuilt or reconditioned. Often, by replacing a great number of their parts, they can be made to perform as well as new pianos. Older pianos are often more settled and produce a warmer tone.
Piano moving should be done by trained piano movers using adequate manpower and the correct equipment for any particular piano's size and weight. Pianos are heavy yet delicate instruments. Over the years, professional piano movers have developed special techniques for transporting both grands and uprights which prevent damage to the case and to the piano's mechanics.
The piano at the social center in the 19th century (Moritz von Schwind, 1868). The man at the piano is Franz Schubert.
The piano is a crucial instrument in Western classical music, jazz, film, television, and most other complex western musical genres. Since a large number of composers are proficient pianists â and because the piano keyboard offers an easy means of complex melodic and harmonic interplay â the piano is often used as a tool for composition.
Pianos were, and still are, popular instruments for private household ownership. Hence, pianos have gained a place in the popular consciousness, and are sometimes referred to by nicknames including: "the ivories", "the joanna", "the eighty-eight", and "the black(s) and white(s)", "the little joe(s)". Playing the piano is sometimes referred to as "tickling the ivories".
;General
* Innovations in the piano
* Jazz piano
* Piano acoustics
* Piano key frequencies (in equal temperament)
* Piano trio
* String piano
;Related lists
* List of films about pianists
* Lists of solo piano pieces
* List of piano makers
* List of piano brand names
* List of classical pianists (recorded)
;Related instruments
* Hammered dulcimer
* Harp
* Clavichord
* Harpsichord
* Organ and Pipe organ
* Electric piano
* Electronic piano
* The authoritative New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (available online by subscription), contains a wealth of information. Main article: "Pianoforte".
* The Encyclopædia Britannica (available online by subscription) also includes much information on the piano. In the 1988 edition, the primary article can be found in "Musical Instruments".
* The Piano Book by Larry Fine (4th ed. Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts: Brookside Press, 2001; ISBN 1-929145-01-2) gives the basics of how pianos work, and a thorough evaluative survey of current pianos and their manufacturers. It also includes advice on buying and owning pianos.
*Giraffes, black dragons, and other pianos: a technological history from Cristofori to the modern concert grand by Edwin M. Good (1982, second ed., 2001, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press) is a standard reference on the history of the piano.
*The Early Pianoforte by Stewart Pollens (1995, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) is an authoritative work covering the ancestry of the piano, its invention by Cristofori, and the early stages of its subsequent evolution.
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;Information
* Yamaha Musician - Yamaha piano reviews and enthusiast site
* Grand Piano information and images
* The Piano Page Lots of information from the Piano Technicians Guild
* WikiRecording's Guide to Recording Pianos
;History
* History of the Piano Forte, Association of Blind Piano Tuners, UK
* The Frederick Historical Piano Collection
;Piano Technique
* Principles of Piano Technique
;Sheet music for Piano
* All Piano Scores Free printable classical sheet music for piano + audio
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Piano | Is the left-most pedal on a grand piano called the una corda? | yes | data/set2/a1 | Piano
Baby Grand Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard that produces sound by striking steel strings with felt covered hammers. The hammers immediately rebound, allowing the strings to continue vibrating at their resonant frequency. " Hammer Time" by John Kiehl, Wolfram Demonstrations Project. These vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a soundboard that couples the acoustic energy to the air so that it can be heard as sound.
The piano is widely used in Western music for solo performance, ensemble use, chamber music, and accompaniment. It is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal. Although not portable and often expensive, the piano's versatility and ubiquity have made it one of the most familiar musical instruments. It is sometimes classified as both a percussion and a stringed instrument. According to the Hornbostel-Sachs method of music classification, it is grouped with Chordophones.
The word piano is a shortened form of the word pianoforte, which is seldom used except in formal language and derived from the original Italian name for the instrument, clavicembalo [or gravicembalo] col piano e forte (literally harpsichord with soft and loud). This refers to the instrument's responsiveness to keyboard touch, which allows the pianist to produce notes at different dynamic levels by controlling the speed with which the hammers hit the strings.
Early piano replica by the modern builder Paul McNulty, after Walter & Sohn, 1805
The piano was originally founded on earlier technological innovations. The first string instruments with struck strings were the hammered dulcimers originating from the Persian traditional musical instrument santur. David R. Peterson (1994), "Acoustics of the hammered dulcimer, its history, and recent developments", Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 95 (5), p. 3002. During the Middle Ages, there were several attempts at creating stringed keyboard instruments with struck strings, Pollens, 1995. chp. 1 the earliest being the hurdy gurdy which has uncertain origins. By the 17th century, 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.
Grand piano by Louis Bas of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, France, 1781. Earliest French grand piano known to survive; includes an inverted wrestplank and action derived from the work of Bartolomeo Cristofiori (ca. 1700) with ornately decorated soundboard.
The invention of the modern piano is credited to Bartolomeo Cristofori of Padua, Italy, who was employed by Prince Ferdinand de Medici as the Keeper of the Instruments. He was an expert harpsichord maker and was well acquainted with the previous body of knowledge on stringed keyboard instruments. It is not known exactly when Cristofori first built a piano. An inventory made by his employers, the Medici family, indicates the existence of a piano by the year 1700; another document of doubtful authenticity indicates a date of 1698. The three Cristofori pianos that survive today date from the 1720s.
Cristofori's great success was in solving, without any prior example, the fundamental mechanical problem of piano design: the hammer must strike the string, but not remain in contact with it (as a tangent remains in contact with a clavichord string) because this would damp the sound. Moreover, the hammer must return to its rest position without bouncing violently, and it must be possible to repeat a note rapidly. Cristofori's piano action served as a model for the many different approaches to piano actions that followed. While Cristofori's early instruments were made with thin strings and were much quieter than the modern piano, compared to the clavichord (the only previous keyboard instrument capable of minutely controlled dynamic nuance through the keyboard) they were considerably louder and had more sustaining power.
Cristofori's new instrument remained relatively unknown until an Italian writer, Scipione Maffei, wrote an enthusiastic article about it (1711), including a diagram of the mechanism. This article was widely distributed, and most of the next generation of piano builders started their work because of reading it. One of these builders was Gottfried Silbermann, better known as an organ builder. Silbermann's pianos were virtually direct copies of Cristofori's, with one important addition: Silbermann invented the forerunner of the modern damper pedal, which lifts all the dampers from the strings at once.
Silbermann showed Johann Sebastian Bach one of his early instruments in the 1730s, but Bach did not like it at that time, claiming that the higher notes were too soft to allow a full dynamic range. Although this earned him some animosity from Silbermann, the criticism was apparently heeded. Bach did approve of a later instrument he saw in 1747, and even served as an agent in selling Silbermann's pianos.
Piano making flourished during the late 18th century in the Viennese school, which included Johann Andreas Stein (who worked in Augsburg, Germany) and the Viennese makers Nannette Streicher (daughter of Johann Andreas Stein) and Anton Walter. Viennese-style pianos were built with wood frames, two strings per note, and had leather-covered hammers. Some of these Viennese pianos had the opposite coloring of modern-day pianos; the natural keys were black and the accidental keys white. It was for such instruments that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed his concertos and sonatas, and replicas of them are built today for use in authentic-instrument performance of his music. The pianos of Mozart's day had a softer, clearer tone than today's pianos or English pianos, with less sustaining power. The term fortepiano is nowadays often used to distinguish the 18th-century instrument from later pianos.
In the period lasting from about 1790 to 1860, the Mozart-era piano underwent tremendous changes that led to the modern form of the instrument. This revolution was in response to a consistent preference by composers and pianists for a more powerful, sustained piano sound, and made possible by the ongoing Industrial Revolution with technological resources such as high-quality steel, called piano wire, for strings, and precision casting for the production of iron frames. Over time, the tonal range of the piano was also increased from the five octaves of Mozart's day to the 7â
or more octaves found on modern pianos.
Broadwood square action
Early technological progress owed much to the English firm of Broadwood, who already had a reputation for the splendour and powerful tone of its harpsichords. Broadwood constructed instruments that were progressively larger, louder, and more robustly constructed. They sent pianos to both Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven, and were the first firm to build pianos with a range of more than five octaves: five octaves and a fifth during the 1790s, six octaves by 1810 (Beethoven used the extra notes in his later works), and seven octaves by 1820. The Viennese makers similarly followed these trends, however the two schools used different piano actions: Broadwoods were more robust, Viennese instruments were more sensitive.
Erard square action
By the 1820s, the center of innovation had shifted to Paris, where the Pleyel firm manufactured pianos used by Frédéric Chopin and the Ãrard firm manufactured those used by Franz Liszt. In 1821, Sébastien Ãrard invented the double escapement action, which permitted a note to be repeated even if the key had not yet risen to its maximum vertical position. This facilitated rapid playing of repeated notes - and this musical device was pioneered by Liszt. When the invention became public, as revised by Henri Herz, the double escapement action gradually became standard in grand pianos, and is still incorporated into all grand pianos currently produced.
One of the major technical innovations that helped to create the sound of the modern piano was the use of a strong iron frame. Also called the "plate", the iron frame sits atop the soundboard, and serves as the primary bulwark against the force of string tension. The increased structural integrity of the iron frame allowed the use of thicker, tenser, and more numerous strings. In a modern grand the total string tension can exceed 20 tons. The single piece cast iron frame was patented in 1825 in Boston by Alpheus Babcock, combining the metal hitch pin plate (1821, claimed by Broadwood on behalf of Samuel Hervé) and resisting bars (Thom and Allen, 1820, but also claimed by Broadwood and Ãrard). Babcock later worked for the Chickering & Mackays firm who patented the first full iron frame for grand pianos in 1843. Composite forged metal frames were preferred by many European makers until the American system was fully adopted by the early 20th century.
Other innovations for the mechanism included the use of felt hammer coverings instead of layered leather hammers. Felt hammers, which were first introduced by Henri Pape in 1826, were a more consistent material, permitting wider dynamic ranges as hammer weights and string tension increased. The sostenuto pedal (see below), invented in 1844 by Jean Louis Boisselot and improved by the Steinway firm in 1874, allowed a wider range of effects.
Other important technical innovations of this era included changes to the way the piano was strung, such as the use of a "choir" of three strings rather than two for all but the lower notes, and the use of different stringing methods. With the over strung scale, also called "cross-stringing", the strings are placed in a vertically overlapping slanted arrangement, with two heights of bridges on the soundboard instead of just one. This permits larger, but not necessarily longer, strings to fit within the case of the piano. Over stringing was invented by Jean-Henri Pape during the 1820s, and first patented for use in grand pianos in the United States by Henry Steinway Jr. in 1859.
Duplex scaling: Treble strings of a 182 cm. grand piano. From lower left to upper right: dampers, main sounding length of strings, treble bridge, duplex string length, duplex bridge (long bar perpendicular to strings), hitchpins. With duplexes or aliquot scales, which was patented in 1872 by Theodore Steinway, the different components of string vibrations are controlled by tuning their secondary parts in octave relationships with the sounding lengths. Similar systems developed by Blüthner (1872), as well as Taskin (1788), and Collard (1821) used more distinctly ringing undamped vibrations to modify tone.
Some early pianos had shapes and designs that are no longer in use. The square piano had horizontal strings arranged diagonally across the rectangular case above the hammers and with the keyboard set in the long side. This design is attributed to Gottfried Silbermann or Christian Ernst Friderici on the continent, and Johannes Zumpe or Harman Vietor in England and it was improved by changes first introduced by Guillaume-Lebrecht Petzold in France and Alpheus Babcock in the United States. Square pianos were built in great numbers through the 1840s in Europe and the 1890s in America, and saw the most visible changes of any type of piano: the celebrated iron framed over strung squares manufactured by Steinway & Sons were more than two and a half times the size of Zumpe's wood framed instruments from a century before. Their overwhelming popularity was due to inexpensive construction and price, although their performance and tone were often limited by simple actions and closely spaced strings.
The mechanism in upright pianos is perpendicular to the keys.
The tall, vertically strung upright grand was arranged like a grand set on end, with the soundboard and bridges above the keys, and tuning pins below them. The term was later revived by many manufacturers for advertising purposes. Giraffe, pyramid and lyre pianos were arranged in a somewhat similar fashion in evocatively shaped cases.
The very tall cabinet piano was introduced about 1805 and was built through the 1840s. It had strings arranged vertically on a continuous frame with bridges extended nearly to the floor, behind the keyboard and very large sticker action. The short cottage upright or pianino with vertical stringing, made popular by Robert Wornum around 1815, was built into the 20th century. They are informally called birdcage pianos because of their prominent damper mechanism. Pianinos were distinguished from the oblique, or diagonally strung upright made popular in France by Roller & Blanchet during the late 1820s. The tiny spinet upright was manufactured from the mid-1930s until recent times. The low position of the hammers required the use of a "drop action" to preserve a reasonable keyboard height.
Modern upright and grand pianos attained their present forms by the end of the 19th century. Improvements have been made in manufacturing processes, and many individual details of the instrument continue to receive attention.
Much of the most widely admired piano repertoire, for example, that of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, was composed for a type of instrument that is rather different from the modern instruments on which this music is normally performed today. Even the music of the Romantics, including Liszt, Chopin, Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn and Johannes Brahms, was written for pianos substantially different from ours.
A schematic depiction of the construction of a pianoforte.
Modern pianos come in two basic configurations (with subcategories): the grand piano and the upright piano.
Grand piano
In grand pianos, the frame and strings are horizontal, with the strings extending away from the keyboard. There are several sizes of grand piano. A rough generalization distinguishes the "concert grand" (between about and long) from the "parlor grand" or "boudoir grand" (about to ) and the smaller "baby grand".
All else being equal, longer pianos with longer strings have better sound and lower inharmonicity of the strings. Inharmonicity is the degree to which the frequencies of overtones (known as partials, partial tones, or harmonics) depart from whole multiples of the fundamental frequency. Pianos with shorter, thicker, and stiffer strings (e.g., baby grands) have more inharmonicity. The longer strings on a concert grand can vibrate more freely than the shorter, thicker strings on a baby grand, which means that a concert grand's strings will have truer overtones. This is partly because the strings will be tuned closer to equal temperament in relation to the standard pitch with less "stretching" in the piano tuning (See: Piano tuning). Full-size grands are usually used for public concerts, whereas smaller grands, introduced by Sohmer & Co. in 1884, are often chosen for domestic use where space and cost are considerations.
Upright piano
Upright pianos, also called vertical pianos, are more compact because the frame and strings are vertical. It is considered harder to produce a sensitive piano action when the hammers move horizontally, as the vertical hammer return is dependent on springs which are prone to wear and tear. However, a well-regulated vertical piano will probably play more smoothly than a poorly regulated grand piano, and the very best upright pianos approach the level of some grand pianos of the same size in tone quality and responsiveness.
One noticeable advantage that the grand piano action has over the vertical action is that all grand pianos have a special repetition lever in the playing action that is absent in all verticals. This repetition lever, a separate one for every key, catches the hammer close to the strings as long as the keys are played repeatedly and fairly quickly. In this position, with the hammer resting on the lever, a pianist can play repeated notes, staccato, and trills with much more speed and control than is possible on a vertical piano.
Upright pianos with unusually tall frames and long strings are sometimes called "upright grand" pianos.
Some authors classify modern pianos according to their height and, to modifications of the action that are necessary to accomodate the height.
* Studio pianos are around 42 to 45 inches tall. This is the shortest cabinet that can accomodate a 'full-sized' action located above the keyboard.
* Console pianos have a compact action (shorter hammers), and are a few inches shorter than studio models.
* The top of a Spinet model barely rises above the keyboard. The action is located below, operated by vertical wires that are attached to the backs of the keys.
* Anything taller than a studio piano is called an upright.
Player piano
Toy pianos began to be manufactured in the 19th century. In 1863, Henri Fourneaux invented the player piano, which "plays itself" from a piano roll without the need for a pianist. The player piano is a piano that records a performance using rolls of paper with perforations, and then replays the performance using pneumatic devices. A modern equivalent for the player piano is the Yamaha Disklavier system, which uses solenoids and midi instead of pneumatics and rolls. Silent pianos, which allow a regular piano to be used converted to a digital instrument, are a recent innovation and are becoming more popular.
Irving Berlin played a special piano called the transposing piano, which was invented in 1801 by Edward Ryley. It had a lever under the keyboard used to alter the music to any key. One of Berlin's pianos is in the Smithsonian Museum. For much of his career, Berlin only knew how to play the black keys. But with his 'trick piano' he was no longer limited to the key of F-sharp.
A relatively recent development is the prepared piano, which is used in contemporary art music. A prepared piano is a standard grand piano which has had objects placed inside it before a performance in order to alter its sound, or which has had its mechanism changed in some way. The scores for music for prepared piano often instruct the pianist to insert pieces of rubber or small pieces of metal (screws or washers) in between the strings. These added items either mute the strings or create unusual vibrating sounds.
Since the 1980s, digital pianos have been available, which use digital sampling technology to reproduce the sound of each piano note. The best digital pianos are sophisticated, with features including working pedals, weighted keys, multiple voices, and MIDI interfaces. However, with such technology, it is difficult to duplicate one particular aspect of acoustic pianos, namely that when the damper pedal (see below) is depressed, the strings not struck vibrate sympathetically when other strings are struck, as well as the unique instrument-specific mathematical non-linearity of partials on any given unison. Since this sympathetic vibration is considered central to piano tone, many digital pianos do not sound the same as the best acoustic pianos. Progress is being made in this area by including physical models of sympathetic vibration in the synthesis software. Some higher end digital pianos, such as the Yamaha Clavinova series, or the KAWAI MP8 series, produced in the last few years incorporate string resonance technology to overcome this limitation.
With the advent of powerful desktop computers, highly realistic sampled digital grand pianos have become available as affordable software modules. Some use multi-gigabyte piano sample sets with as many as 90 recordings, each lasting many seconds, for each of the 88 keys under different conditions, augmented by additional samples to emulate sympathetic resonance, key release, the drop of the dampers, and simulations of piano techniques like re-pedaling.
Keyboard
Almost every modern piano has 36 black keys and 52 white keys for a total of 88 keys (seven octaves plus a minor third, from A0 to C8). Many older pianos only have 85 keys (seven octaves from A0 to A7), while some manufacturers extend the range further in one or both directions.
Some Bösendorfer pianos extend the normal range downwards to F0, with one other model going as far as a bottom C0, making a full eight octave range. These extra keys are sometimes hidden under a small hinged lid that can be flipped down to cover the keys in order to avoid visual disorientation in a pianist unfamiliar with the extended keyboard. On others, the colours of the extra white keys are reversed (black instead of white).
The extra keys are added primarily for increased resonance from the associated strings; that is, they vibrate sympathetically with other strings whenever the damper pedal is depressed and thus give a fuller tone. Only a very small number of works composed for piano actually use these notes. More recently, the Stuart and Sons company has also manufactured extended-range pianos. On their instruments, the range is extended both down the bass to F0 and up the treble to F8 for a full eight octaves. The extra keys are the same as the other keys in appearance.
Small studio upright acoustical pianos with only 65 keys have been manufactured for use by roving pianists. Known as "gig" pianos and still containing a cast iron harp, these are comparatively lightweight and can be easily transported to and from engagements by only two men. As their harp is longer than that of a spinet or console piano, they have a stronger bass sound that to some pianists is well worth the trade-off in range that a reduced key-set offers.
Piano pedals from left to right: una corda, sostenuto, and damper.
Pianos have had pedals, or some close equivalent, since the earliest days. (In the 18th century, some pianos used levers pressed upward by the player's knee instead of pedals.) Most grand pianos have three pedals: soft pedal (una corda), sostenuto, and sustain pedal (from left to right, respectively). Most modern upright pianos have three pedals: soft pedal, practice pedal and sustain pedal, though older or cheaper models may lack the practice pedal.
The sustain pedal (or, damper pedal) is often simply called "the pedal", since it is the most frequently used. It is placed as the rightmost pedal in the group. It lifts the dampers from all keys, sustaining all played notes, and altering the overall tone.
The soft pedal or una corda pedal is placed leftmost in the row of pedals. In grand pianos, it shifts the entire action, including the keyboard, to the right, so that the hammers hit only one of the three strings for each note (hence the name una corda, or 'one string'). The effect is to soften the note as well as to change the tone. In uprights, this action is not possible, and so the pedal moves the hammers closer to the strings, allowing the hammers to hit the strings with less kinetic energy to produce a softer sound.
On grand pianos, the middle pedal is a sostenuto pedal. This pedal keeps raised any damper that was already raised at the moment the pedal is depressed. This makes it possible to sustain some notes (by depressing the sostenuto pedal before notes to be sustained are released) while the player's hands are free to play other notes. This can be useful for musical passages with pedal points and other otherwise tricky or impossible situations.
On many upright pianos, there is a middle pedal called the 'practice' or celeste pedal. This drops a piece of felt between the hammers and strings, greatly muting the sounds.
There are also non-standard variants. On vertical pianos, the middle pedal can be a bass sustain pedal: that is, when it is depressed, the dampers lift off the strings only in the bass section. This pedal would be used only when a pianist needs to sustain a single bass note or chord over many measures, while playing the melody in the treble section. On the largest Fazioli piano, there is a fourth pedal to the left of the principal three. This fourth pedal works in the same way as the soft pedal of an upright piano, moving the hammers closer to the strings.
An upright pedal piano
The rare transposing piano, of which Irving Berlin possessed an example, had a middle pedal that functioned as a clutch which disengages the keyboard from the mechanism, enabling the keyboard to be moved to the left or right with a lever. The entire action of the piano is thus shifted to allow the pianist to play music written in one key so that it sounds in a different key. The pedalier piano, or pedal piano, is a rare type of piano that includes a pedalboard, enabling bass register notes to be played with the feet, as is standard on the organ. There are two types of pedal piano: the pedal board may be an integral part of the instrument, using the same strings and mechanism as the manual keyboard, or, less frequently, it may consist of two independent pianos (each with its separate mechanics and strings) which are placed one above the other, a regular piano played by the hands and a bass-register piano played by the feet.
Many parts of a piano are made of materials selected for sturdiness. In quality pianos, the outer rim of the piano is made of a hardwood, normally maple or beech. According to Harold A. Conklin, the purpose of a sturdy rim is so that "the vibrational energy will stay as much as possible in the soundboard instead of dissipating uselessly in the case parts, which are inefficient radiators of sound."
View from below of a 182-cm grand piano. In order of distance from viewer: softwood braces, tapered soundboard ribs, soundboard. The metal rod at lower right is a humidity control device.
The rim is normally made by laminating flexible strips of hardwood to the desired shape, a system that was developed by Theodore Steinway in 1880. The thick wooden braces at the bottom (grands) or back (uprights) of the piano are not as acoustically important as the rim, and are often made of a softwood, even in top-quality pianos, in order to save weight. The requirement of structural strength, fulfilled with stout hardwood and thick metal, makes a piano heavy; even a small upright can weigh 136 kg (300 lb), and the Steinway concert grand (Model D) weighs 480 kg (990 lb). The largest piano built, the Fazioli F308, weighs 691 kg (1520 lb).
The pinblock, which holds the tuning pins in place, is another area of the piano where toughness is important. It is made of hardwood, (often maple) and generally is laminated (built of multiple layers) for additional strength and gripping power. Piano strings (also called piano wire), which must endure years of extreme tension and hard blows, are made of high quality steel. They are manufactured to vary as little as possible in diameter, since all deviations from uniformity introduce tonal distortion. The bass strings of a piano are made of a steel core wrapped with copper wire, to increase their mass whilst retaining flexibility.
The plate, or metal frame, of a piano is usually made of cast iron. It is advantageous for the plate to be quite massive. Since the strings are attached to the plate at one end, any vibrations transmitted to the plate will result in loss of energy to the desired (efficient) channel of sound transmission, namely the bridge and the soundboard. Some manufacturers now use cast steel in their plates, for greater strength. The casting of the plate is a delicate art, since the dimensions are crucial and the iron shrinks by about one percent during cooling.
The inclusion in a piano of an extremely large piece of metal is potentially an aesthetic handicap, which piano makers overcome by polishing, painting and decorating the plate. Plates often include the manufacturer's ornamental medallion and can be strikingly attractive. In an effort to make pianos lighter, Alcoa worked with Winter and Company piano manufacturers to make pianos using an aluminum plate during the 1940s. The use of aluminum for piano plates, however, did not become widely accepted and was discontinued.
The numerous grand parts and upright parts of a piano action are generally hardwood (e.g. maple, beech. hornbeam). However, since World War II, plastics have become available. Early plastics were incorporated into some pianos in the late 1940s and 1950s, but proved disastrous because they crystallized and lost their strength after only a few decades of use. The Steinway firm once incorporated Teflon, a synthetic material developed by DuPont, for some grand action parts in place of cloth, but ultimately abandoned the experiment due to an inherent "clicking" which invariably developed over time. (Also Teflon is "humidity stable" whereas the wood adjacent to the Teflon will swell and shrink with humidity changes, causing problems.) More recently, the Kawai firm has built pianos with action parts made of more modern and effective plastics such as carbon fiber; these parts have held up better and have generally received the respect of piano technicians .
Ivorite and ebony keys on a modern Steinway & Sons concert grand piano.
The part of the piano where materials probably matter more than anywhere else is the soundboard. In quality pianos, this is made of solid spruce (that is, spruce boards glued together at their edges). Spruce is chosen for its high ratio of strength to weight. The best piano makers use close-grained, quarter-sawn, defect-free spruce, and make sure that it has been carefully dried over a long period of time before making it into soundboards. In cheap pianos, the soundboard is often made of plywood.
Piano keys are generally made of spruce or basswood, for lightness. Spruce is normally used in high-quality pianos. Traditionally, the black keys were made from ebony and the white keys were covered with strips of ivory, but since ivory-yielding species are now endangered and protected by treaty, plastics are now almost exclusively used. Also, ivory tends to chip more easily than plastic. Legal ivory can still be obtained in limited quantities. At one time, the Yamaha firm innovated a plastic called "Ivorine" or "Ivorite", since imitated by other makers, that mimics the look and feel of ivory.
A piano tuner
Pianos need regular tuning to keep them up to pitch, which is usually the internationally recognized standard concert pitch of A4 = 440 Hz. The hammers of pianos are voiced to compensate for gradual hardening, and other parts also need periodic regulation. Aged and worn pianos can be rebuilt or reconditioned. Often, by replacing a great number of their parts, they can be made to perform as well as new pianos. Older pianos are often more settled and produce a warmer tone.
Piano moving should be done by trained piano movers using adequate manpower and the correct equipment for any particular piano's size and weight. Pianos are heavy yet delicate instruments. Over the years, professional piano movers have developed special techniques for transporting both grands and uprights which prevent damage to the case and to the piano's mechanics.
The piano at the social center in the 19th century (Moritz von Schwind, 1868). The man at the piano is Franz Schubert.
The piano is a crucial instrument in Western classical music, jazz, film, television, and most other complex western musical genres. Since a large number of composers are proficient pianists â and because the piano keyboard offers an easy means of complex melodic and harmonic interplay â the piano is often used as a tool for composition.
Pianos were, and still are, popular instruments for private household ownership. Hence, pianos have gained a place in the popular consciousness, and are sometimes referred to by nicknames including: "the ivories", "the joanna", "the eighty-eight", and "the black(s) and white(s)", "the little joe(s)". Playing the piano is sometimes referred to as "tickling the ivories".
;General
* Innovations in the piano
* Jazz piano
* Piano acoustics
* Piano key frequencies (in equal temperament)
* Piano trio
* String piano
;Related lists
* List of films about pianists
* Lists of solo piano pieces
* List of piano makers
* List of piano brand names
* List of classical pianists (recorded)
;Related instruments
* Hammered dulcimer
* Harp
* Clavichord
* Harpsichord
* Organ and Pipe organ
* Electric piano
* Electronic piano
* The authoritative New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (available online by subscription), contains a wealth of information. Main article: "Pianoforte".
* The Encyclopædia Britannica (available online by subscription) also includes much information on the piano. In the 1988 edition, the primary article can be found in "Musical Instruments".
* The Piano Book by Larry Fine (4th ed. Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts: Brookside Press, 2001; ISBN 1-929145-01-2) gives the basics of how pianos work, and a thorough evaluative survey of current pianos and their manufacturers. It also includes advice on buying and owning pianos.
*Giraffes, black dragons, and other pianos: a technological history from Cristofori to the modern concert grand by Edwin M. Good (1982, second ed., 2001, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press) is a standard reference on the history of the piano.
*The Early Pianoforte by Stewart Pollens (1995, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) is an authoritative work covering the ancestry of the piano, its invention by Cristofori, and the early stages of its subsequent evolution.
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;Information
* Yamaha Musician - Yamaha piano reviews and enthusiast site
* Grand Piano information and images
* The Piano Page Lots of information from the Piano Technicians Guild
* WikiRecording's Guide to Recording Pianos
;History
* History of the Piano Forte, Association of Blind Piano Tuners, UK
* The Frederick Historical Piano Collection
;Piano Technique
* Principles of Piano Technique
;Sheet music for Piano
* All Piano Scores Free printable classical sheet music for piano + audio
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Piano | Is the left-most pedal on a grand piano called the una corda? | Yes, the left-most pedal on a grand piano is called the una corda. | data/set2/a1 | Piano
Baby Grand Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard that produces sound by striking steel strings with felt covered hammers. The hammers immediately rebound, allowing the strings to continue vibrating at their resonant frequency. " Hammer Time" by John Kiehl, Wolfram Demonstrations Project. These vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a soundboard that couples the acoustic energy to the air so that it can be heard as sound.
The piano is widely used in Western music for solo performance, ensemble use, chamber music, and accompaniment. It is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal. Although not portable and often expensive, the piano's versatility and ubiquity have made it one of the most familiar musical instruments. It is sometimes classified as both a percussion and a stringed instrument. According to the Hornbostel-Sachs method of music classification, it is grouped with Chordophones.
The word piano is a shortened form of the word pianoforte, which is seldom used except in formal language and derived from the original Italian name for the instrument, clavicembalo [or gravicembalo] col piano e forte (literally harpsichord with soft and loud). This refers to the instrument's responsiveness to keyboard touch, which allows the pianist to produce notes at different dynamic levels by controlling the speed with which the hammers hit the strings.
Early piano replica by the modern builder Paul McNulty, after Walter & Sohn, 1805
The piano was originally founded on earlier technological innovations. The first string instruments with struck strings were the hammered dulcimers originating from the Persian traditional musical instrument santur. David R. Peterson (1994), "Acoustics of the hammered dulcimer, its history, and recent developments", Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 95 (5), p. 3002. During the Middle Ages, there were several attempts at creating stringed keyboard instruments with struck strings, Pollens, 1995. chp. 1 the earliest being the hurdy gurdy which has uncertain origins. By the 17th century, 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.
Grand piano by Louis Bas of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, France, 1781. Earliest French grand piano known to survive; includes an inverted wrestplank and action derived from the work of Bartolomeo Cristofiori (ca. 1700) with ornately decorated soundboard.
The invention of the modern piano is credited to Bartolomeo Cristofori of Padua, Italy, who was employed by Prince Ferdinand de Medici as the Keeper of the Instruments. He was an expert harpsichord maker and was well acquainted with the previous body of knowledge on stringed keyboard instruments. It is not known exactly when Cristofori first built a piano. An inventory made by his employers, the Medici family, indicates the existence of a piano by the year 1700; another document of doubtful authenticity indicates a date of 1698. The three Cristofori pianos that survive today date from the 1720s.
Cristofori's great success was in solving, without any prior example, the fundamental mechanical problem of piano design: the hammer must strike the string, but not remain in contact with it (as a tangent remains in contact with a clavichord string) because this would damp the sound. Moreover, the hammer must return to its rest position without bouncing violently, and it must be possible to repeat a note rapidly. Cristofori's piano action served as a model for the many different approaches to piano actions that followed. While Cristofori's early instruments were made with thin strings and were much quieter than the modern piano, compared to the clavichord (the only previous keyboard instrument capable of minutely controlled dynamic nuance through the keyboard) they were considerably louder and had more sustaining power.
Cristofori's new instrument remained relatively unknown until an Italian writer, Scipione Maffei, wrote an enthusiastic article about it (1711), including a diagram of the mechanism. This article was widely distributed, and most of the next generation of piano builders started their work because of reading it. One of these builders was Gottfried Silbermann, better known as an organ builder. Silbermann's pianos were virtually direct copies of Cristofori's, with one important addition: Silbermann invented the forerunner of the modern damper pedal, which lifts all the dampers from the strings at once.
Silbermann showed Johann Sebastian Bach one of his early instruments in the 1730s, but Bach did not like it at that time, claiming that the higher notes were too soft to allow a full dynamic range. Although this earned him some animosity from Silbermann, the criticism was apparently heeded. Bach did approve of a later instrument he saw in 1747, and even served as an agent in selling Silbermann's pianos.
Piano making flourished during the late 18th century in the Viennese school, which included Johann Andreas Stein (who worked in Augsburg, Germany) and the Viennese makers Nannette Streicher (daughter of Johann Andreas Stein) and Anton Walter. Viennese-style pianos were built with wood frames, two strings per note, and had leather-covered hammers. Some of these Viennese pianos had the opposite coloring of modern-day pianos; the natural keys were black and the accidental keys white. It was for such instruments that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed his concertos and sonatas, and replicas of them are built today for use in authentic-instrument performance of his music. The pianos of Mozart's day had a softer, clearer tone than today's pianos or English pianos, with less sustaining power. The term fortepiano is nowadays often used to distinguish the 18th-century instrument from later pianos.
In the period lasting from about 1790 to 1860, the Mozart-era piano underwent tremendous changes that led to the modern form of the instrument. This revolution was in response to a consistent preference by composers and pianists for a more powerful, sustained piano sound, and made possible by the ongoing Industrial Revolution with technological resources such as high-quality steel, called piano wire, for strings, and precision casting for the production of iron frames. Over time, the tonal range of the piano was also increased from the five octaves of Mozart's day to the 7â
or more octaves found on modern pianos.
Broadwood square action
Early technological progress owed much to the English firm of Broadwood, who already had a reputation for the splendour and powerful tone of its harpsichords. Broadwood constructed instruments that were progressively larger, louder, and more robustly constructed. They sent pianos to both Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven, and were the first firm to build pianos with a range of more than five octaves: five octaves and a fifth during the 1790s, six octaves by 1810 (Beethoven used the extra notes in his later works), and seven octaves by 1820. The Viennese makers similarly followed these trends, however the two schools used different piano actions: Broadwoods were more robust, Viennese instruments were more sensitive.
Erard square action
By the 1820s, the center of innovation had shifted to Paris, where the Pleyel firm manufactured pianos used by Frédéric Chopin and the Ãrard firm manufactured those used by Franz Liszt. In 1821, Sébastien Ãrard invented the double escapement action, which permitted a note to be repeated even if the key had not yet risen to its maximum vertical position. This facilitated rapid playing of repeated notes - and this musical device was pioneered by Liszt. When the invention became public, as revised by Henri Herz, the double escapement action gradually became standard in grand pianos, and is still incorporated into all grand pianos currently produced.
One of the major technical innovations that helped to create the sound of the modern piano was the use of a strong iron frame. Also called the "plate", the iron frame sits atop the soundboard, and serves as the primary bulwark against the force of string tension. The increased structural integrity of the iron frame allowed the use of thicker, tenser, and more numerous strings. In a modern grand the total string tension can exceed 20 tons. The single piece cast iron frame was patented in 1825 in Boston by Alpheus Babcock, combining the metal hitch pin plate (1821, claimed by Broadwood on behalf of Samuel Hervé) and resisting bars (Thom and Allen, 1820, but also claimed by Broadwood and Ãrard). Babcock later worked for the Chickering & Mackays firm who patented the first full iron frame for grand pianos in 1843. Composite forged metal frames were preferred by many European makers until the American system was fully adopted by the early 20th century.
Other innovations for the mechanism included the use of felt hammer coverings instead of layered leather hammers. Felt hammers, which were first introduced by Henri Pape in 1826, were a more consistent material, permitting wider dynamic ranges as hammer weights and string tension increased. The sostenuto pedal (see below), invented in 1844 by Jean Louis Boisselot and improved by the Steinway firm in 1874, allowed a wider range of effects.
Other important technical innovations of this era included changes to the way the piano was strung, such as the use of a "choir" of three strings rather than two for all but the lower notes, and the use of different stringing methods. With the over strung scale, also called "cross-stringing", the strings are placed in a vertically overlapping slanted arrangement, with two heights of bridges on the soundboard instead of just one. This permits larger, but not necessarily longer, strings to fit within the case of the piano. Over stringing was invented by Jean-Henri Pape during the 1820s, and first patented for use in grand pianos in the United States by Henry Steinway Jr. in 1859.
Duplex scaling: Treble strings of a 182 cm. grand piano. From lower left to upper right: dampers, main sounding length of strings, treble bridge, duplex string length, duplex bridge (long bar perpendicular to strings), hitchpins. With duplexes or aliquot scales, which was patented in 1872 by Theodore Steinway, the different components of string vibrations are controlled by tuning their secondary parts in octave relationships with the sounding lengths. Similar systems developed by Blüthner (1872), as well as Taskin (1788), and Collard (1821) used more distinctly ringing undamped vibrations to modify tone.
Some early pianos had shapes and designs that are no longer in use. The square piano had horizontal strings arranged diagonally across the rectangular case above the hammers and with the keyboard set in the long side. This design is attributed to Gottfried Silbermann or Christian Ernst Friderici on the continent, and Johannes Zumpe or Harman Vietor in England and it was improved by changes first introduced by Guillaume-Lebrecht Petzold in France and Alpheus Babcock in the United States. Square pianos were built in great numbers through the 1840s in Europe and the 1890s in America, and saw the most visible changes of any type of piano: the celebrated iron framed over strung squares manufactured by Steinway & Sons were more than two and a half times the size of Zumpe's wood framed instruments from a century before. Their overwhelming popularity was due to inexpensive construction and price, although their performance and tone were often limited by simple actions and closely spaced strings.
The mechanism in upright pianos is perpendicular to the keys.
The tall, vertically strung upright grand was arranged like a grand set on end, with the soundboard and bridges above the keys, and tuning pins below them. The term was later revived by many manufacturers for advertising purposes. Giraffe, pyramid and lyre pianos were arranged in a somewhat similar fashion in evocatively shaped cases.
The very tall cabinet piano was introduced about 1805 and was built through the 1840s. It had strings arranged vertically on a continuous frame with bridges extended nearly to the floor, behind the keyboard and very large sticker action. The short cottage upright or pianino with vertical stringing, made popular by Robert Wornum around 1815, was built into the 20th century. They are informally called birdcage pianos because of their prominent damper mechanism. Pianinos were distinguished from the oblique, or diagonally strung upright made popular in France by Roller & Blanchet during the late 1820s. The tiny spinet upright was manufactured from the mid-1930s until recent times. The low position of the hammers required the use of a "drop action" to preserve a reasonable keyboard height.
Modern upright and grand pianos attained their present forms by the end of the 19th century. Improvements have been made in manufacturing processes, and many individual details of the instrument continue to receive attention.
Much of the most widely admired piano repertoire, for example, that of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, was composed for a type of instrument that is rather different from the modern instruments on which this music is normally performed today. Even the music of the Romantics, including Liszt, Chopin, Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn and Johannes Brahms, was written for pianos substantially different from ours.
A schematic depiction of the construction of a pianoforte.
Modern pianos come in two basic configurations (with subcategories): the grand piano and the upright piano.
Grand piano
In grand pianos, the frame and strings are horizontal, with the strings extending away from the keyboard. There are several sizes of grand piano. A rough generalization distinguishes the "concert grand" (between about and long) from the "parlor grand" or "boudoir grand" (about to ) and the smaller "baby grand".
All else being equal, longer pianos with longer strings have better sound and lower inharmonicity of the strings. Inharmonicity is the degree to which the frequencies of overtones (known as partials, partial tones, or harmonics) depart from whole multiples of the fundamental frequency. Pianos with shorter, thicker, and stiffer strings (e.g., baby grands) have more inharmonicity. The longer strings on a concert grand can vibrate more freely than the shorter, thicker strings on a baby grand, which means that a concert grand's strings will have truer overtones. This is partly because the strings will be tuned closer to equal temperament in relation to the standard pitch with less "stretching" in the piano tuning (See: Piano tuning). Full-size grands are usually used for public concerts, whereas smaller grands, introduced by Sohmer & Co. in 1884, are often chosen for domestic use where space and cost are considerations.
Upright piano
Upright pianos, also called vertical pianos, are more compact because the frame and strings are vertical. It is considered harder to produce a sensitive piano action when the hammers move horizontally, as the vertical hammer return is dependent on springs which are prone to wear and tear. However, a well-regulated vertical piano will probably play more smoothly than a poorly regulated grand piano, and the very best upright pianos approach the level of some grand pianos of the same size in tone quality and responsiveness.
One noticeable advantage that the grand piano action has over the vertical action is that all grand pianos have a special repetition lever in the playing action that is absent in all verticals. This repetition lever, a separate one for every key, catches the hammer close to the strings as long as the keys are played repeatedly and fairly quickly. In this position, with the hammer resting on the lever, a pianist can play repeated notes, staccato, and trills with much more speed and control than is possible on a vertical piano.
Upright pianos with unusually tall frames and long strings are sometimes called "upright grand" pianos.
Some authors classify modern pianos according to their height and, to modifications of the action that are necessary to accomodate the height.
* Studio pianos are around 42 to 45 inches tall. This is the shortest cabinet that can accomodate a 'full-sized' action located above the keyboard.
* Console pianos have a compact action (shorter hammers), and are a few inches shorter than studio models.
* The top of a Spinet model barely rises above the keyboard. The action is located below, operated by vertical wires that are attached to the backs of the keys.
* Anything taller than a studio piano is called an upright.
Player piano
Toy pianos began to be manufactured in the 19th century. In 1863, Henri Fourneaux invented the player piano, which "plays itself" from a piano roll without the need for a pianist. The player piano is a piano that records a performance using rolls of paper with perforations, and then replays the performance using pneumatic devices. A modern equivalent for the player piano is the Yamaha Disklavier system, which uses solenoids and midi instead of pneumatics and rolls. Silent pianos, which allow a regular piano to be used converted to a digital instrument, are a recent innovation and are becoming more popular.
Irving Berlin played a special piano called the transposing piano, which was invented in 1801 by Edward Ryley. It had a lever under the keyboard used to alter the music to any key. One of Berlin's pianos is in the Smithsonian Museum. For much of his career, Berlin only knew how to play the black keys. But with his 'trick piano' he was no longer limited to the key of F-sharp.
A relatively recent development is the prepared piano, which is used in contemporary art music. A prepared piano is a standard grand piano which has had objects placed inside it before a performance in order to alter its sound, or which has had its mechanism changed in some way. The scores for music for prepared piano often instruct the pianist to insert pieces of rubber or small pieces of metal (screws or washers) in between the strings. These added items either mute the strings or create unusual vibrating sounds.
Since the 1980s, digital pianos have been available, which use digital sampling technology to reproduce the sound of each piano note. The best digital pianos are sophisticated, with features including working pedals, weighted keys, multiple voices, and MIDI interfaces. However, with such technology, it is difficult to duplicate one particular aspect of acoustic pianos, namely that when the damper pedal (see below) is depressed, the strings not struck vibrate sympathetically when other strings are struck, as well as the unique instrument-specific mathematical non-linearity of partials on any given unison. Since this sympathetic vibration is considered central to piano tone, many digital pianos do not sound the same as the best acoustic pianos. Progress is being made in this area by including physical models of sympathetic vibration in the synthesis software. Some higher end digital pianos, such as the Yamaha Clavinova series, or the KAWAI MP8 series, produced in the last few years incorporate string resonance technology to overcome this limitation.
With the advent of powerful desktop computers, highly realistic sampled digital grand pianos have become available as affordable software modules. Some use multi-gigabyte piano sample sets with as many as 90 recordings, each lasting many seconds, for each of the 88 keys under different conditions, augmented by additional samples to emulate sympathetic resonance, key release, the drop of the dampers, and simulations of piano techniques like re-pedaling.
Keyboard
Almost every modern piano has 36 black keys and 52 white keys for a total of 88 keys (seven octaves plus a minor third, from A0 to C8). Many older pianos only have 85 keys (seven octaves from A0 to A7), while some manufacturers extend the range further in one or both directions.
Some Bösendorfer pianos extend the normal range downwards to F0, with one other model going as far as a bottom C0, making a full eight octave range. These extra keys are sometimes hidden under a small hinged lid that can be flipped down to cover the keys in order to avoid visual disorientation in a pianist unfamiliar with the extended keyboard. On others, the colours of the extra white keys are reversed (black instead of white).
The extra keys are added primarily for increased resonance from the associated strings; that is, they vibrate sympathetically with other strings whenever the damper pedal is depressed and thus give a fuller tone. Only a very small number of works composed for piano actually use these notes. More recently, the Stuart and Sons company has also manufactured extended-range pianos. On their instruments, the range is extended both down the bass to F0 and up the treble to F8 for a full eight octaves. The extra keys are the same as the other keys in appearance.
Small studio upright acoustical pianos with only 65 keys have been manufactured for use by roving pianists. Known as "gig" pianos and still containing a cast iron harp, these are comparatively lightweight and can be easily transported to and from engagements by only two men. As their harp is longer than that of a spinet or console piano, they have a stronger bass sound that to some pianists is well worth the trade-off in range that a reduced key-set offers.
Piano pedals from left to right: una corda, sostenuto, and damper.
Pianos have had pedals, or some close equivalent, since the earliest days. (In the 18th century, some pianos used levers pressed upward by the player's knee instead of pedals.) Most grand pianos have three pedals: soft pedal (una corda), sostenuto, and sustain pedal (from left to right, respectively). Most modern upright pianos have three pedals: soft pedal, practice pedal and sustain pedal, though older or cheaper models may lack the practice pedal.
The sustain pedal (or, damper pedal) is often simply called "the pedal", since it is the most frequently used. It is placed as the rightmost pedal in the group. It lifts the dampers from all keys, sustaining all played notes, and altering the overall tone.
The soft pedal or una corda pedal is placed leftmost in the row of pedals. In grand pianos, it shifts the entire action, including the keyboard, to the right, so that the hammers hit only one of the three strings for each note (hence the name una corda, or 'one string'). The effect is to soften the note as well as to change the tone. In uprights, this action is not possible, and so the pedal moves the hammers closer to the strings, allowing the hammers to hit the strings with less kinetic energy to produce a softer sound.
On grand pianos, the middle pedal is a sostenuto pedal. This pedal keeps raised any damper that was already raised at the moment the pedal is depressed. This makes it possible to sustain some notes (by depressing the sostenuto pedal before notes to be sustained are released) while the player's hands are free to play other notes. This can be useful for musical passages with pedal points and other otherwise tricky or impossible situations.
On many upright pianos, there is a middle pedal called the 'practice' or celeste pedal. This drops a piece of felt between the hammers and strings, greatly muting the sounds.
There are also non-standard variants. On vertical pianos, the middle pedal can be a bass sustain pedal: that is, when it is depressed, the dampers lift off the strings only in the bass section. This pedal would be used only when a pianist needs to sustain a single bass note or chord over many measures, while playing the melody in the treble section. On the largest Fazioli piano, there is a fourth pedal to the left of the principal three. This fourth pedal works in the same way as the soft pedal of an upright piano, moving the hammers closer to the strings.
An upright pedal piano
The rare transposing piano, of which Irving Berlin possessed an example, had a middle pedal that functioned as a clutch which disengages the keyboard from the mechanism, enabling the keyboard to be moved to the left or right with a lever. The entire action of the piano is thus shifted to allow the pianist to play music written in one key so that it sounds in a different key. The pedalier piano, or pedal piano, is a rare type of piano that includes a pedalboard, enabling bass register notes to be played with the feet, as is standard on the organ. There are two types of pedal piano: the pedal board may be an integral part of the instrument, using the same strings and mechanism as the manual keyboard, or, less frequently, it may consist of two independent pianos (each with its separate mechanics and strings) which are placed one above the other, a regular piano played by the hands and a bass-register piano played by the feet.
Many parts of a piano are made of materials selected for sturdiness. In quality pianos, the outer rim of the piano is made of a hardwood, normally maple or beech. According to Harold A. Conklin, the purpose of a sturdy rim is so that "the vibrational energy will stay as much as possible in the soundboard instead of dissipating uselessly in the case parts, which are inefficient radiators of sound."
View from below of a 182-cm grand piano. In order of distance from viewer: softwood braces, tapered soundboard ribs, soundboard. The metal rod at lower right is a humidity control device.
The rim is normally made by laminating flexible strips of hardwood to the desired shape, a system that was developed by Theodore Steinway in 1880. The thick wooden braces at the bottom (grands) or back (uprights) of the piano are not as acoustically important as the rim, and are often made of a softwood, even in top-quality pianos, in order to save weight. The requirement of structural strength, fulfilled with stout hardwood and thick metal, makes a piano heavy; even a small upright can weigh 136 kg (300 lb), and the Steinway concert grand (Model D) weighs 480 kg (990 lb). The largest piano built, the Fazioli F308, weighs 691 kg (1520 lb).
The pinblock, which holds the tuning pins in place, is another area of the piano where toughness is important. It is made of hardwood, (often maple) and generally is laminated (built of multiple layers) for additional strength and gripping power. Piano strings (also called piano wire), which must endure years of extreme tension and hard blows, are made of high quality steel. They are manufactured to vary as little as possible in diameter, since all deviations from uniformity introduce tonal distortion. The bass strings of a piano are made of a steel core wrapped with copper wire, to increase their mass whilst retaining flexibility.
The plate, or metal frame, of a piano is usually made of cast iron. It is advantageous for the plate to be quite massive. Since the strings are attached to the plate at one end, any vibrations transmitted to the plate will result in loss of energy to the desired (efficient) channel of sound transmission, namely the bridge and the soundboard. Some manufacturers now use cast steel in their plates, for greater strength. The casting of the plate is a delicate art, since the dimensions are crucial and the iron shrinks by about one percent during cooling.
The inclusion in a piano of an extremely large piece of metal is potentially an aesthetic handicap, which piano makers overcome by polishing, painting and decorating the plate. Plates often include the manufacturer's ornamental medallion and can be strikingly attractive. In an effort to make pianos lighter, Alcoa worked with Winter and Company piano manufacturers to make pianos using an aluminum plate during the 1940s. The use of aluminum for piano plates, however, did not become widely accepted and was discontinued.
The numerous grand parts and upright parts of a piano action are generally hardwood (e.g. maple, beech. hornbeam). However, since World War II, plastics have become available. Early plastics were incorporated into some pianos in the late 1940s and 1950s, but proved disastrous because they crystallized and lost their strength after only a few decades of use. The Steinway firm once incorporated Teflon, a synthetic material developed by DuPont, for some grand action parts in place of cloth, but ultimately abandoned the experiment due to an inherent "clicking" which invariably developed over time. (Also Teflon is "humidity stable" whereas the wood adjacent to the Teflon will swell and shrink with humidity changes, causing problems.) More recently, the Kawai firm has built pianos with action parts made of more modern and effective plastics such as carbon fiber; these parts have held up better and have generally received the respect of piano technicians .
Ivorite and ebony keys on a modern Steinway & Sons concert grand piano.
The part of the piano where materials probably matter more than anywhere else is the soundboard. In quality pianos, this is made of solid spruce (that is, spruce boards glued together at their edges). Spruce is chosen for its high ratio of strength to weight. The best piano makers use close-grained, quarter-sawn, defect-free spruce, and make sure that it has been carefully dried over a long period of time before making it into soundboards. In cheap pianos, the soundboard is often made of plywood.
Piano keys are generally made of spruce or basswood, for lightness. Spruce is normally used in high-quality pianos. Traditionally, the black keys were made from ebony and the white keys were covered with strips of ivory, but since ivory-yielding species are now endangered and protected by treaty, plastics are now almost exclusively used. Also, ivory tends to chip more easily than plastic. Legal ivory can still be obtained in limited quantities. At one time, the Yamaha firm innovated a plastic called "Ivorine" or "Ivorite", since imitated by other makers, that mimics the look and feel of ivory.
A piano tuner
Pianos need regular tuning to keep them up to pitch, which is usually the internationally recognized standard concert pitch of A4 = 440 Hz. The hammers of pianos are voiced to compensate for gradual hardening, and other parts also need periodic regulation. Aged and worn pianos can be rebuilt or reconditioned. Often, by replacing a great number of their parts, they can be made to perform as well as new pianos. Older pianos are often more settled and produce a warmer tone.
Piano moving should be done by trained piano movers using adequate manpower and the correct equipment for any particular piano's size and weight. Pianos are heavy yet delicate instruments. Over the years, professional piano movers have developed special techniques for transporting both grands and uprights which prevent damage to the case and to the piano's mechanics.
The piano at the social center in the 19th century (Moritz von Schwind, 1868). The man at the piano is Franz Schubert.
The piano is a crucial instrument in Western classical music, jazz, film, television, and most other complex western musical genres. Since a large number of composers are proficient pianists â and because the piano keyboard offers an easy means of complex melodic and harmonic interplay â the piano is often used as a tool for composition.
Pianos were, and still are, popular instruments for private household ownership. Hence, pianos have gained a place in the popular consciousness, and are sometimes referred to by nicknames including: "the ivories", "the joanna", "the eighty-eight", and "the black(s) and white(s)", "the little joe(s)". Playing the piano is sometimes referred to as "tickling the ivories".
;General
* Innovations in the piano
* Jazz piano
* Piano acoustics
* Piano key frequencies (in equal temperament)
* Piano trio
* String piano
;Related lists
* List of films about pianists
* Lists of solo piano pieces
* List of piano makers
* List of piano brand names
* List of classical pianists (recorded)
;Related instruments
* Hammered dulcimer
* Harp
* Clavichord
* Harpsichord
* Organ and Pipe organ
* Electric piano
* Electronic piano
* The authoritative New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (available online by subscription), contains a wealth of information. Main article: "Pianoforte".
* The Encyclopædia Britannica (available online by subscription) also includes much information on the piano. In the 1988 edition, the primary article can be found in "Musical Instruments".
* The Piano Book by Larry Fine (4th ed. Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts: Brookside Press, 2001; ISBN 1-929145-01-2) gives the basics of how pianos work, and a thorough evaluative survey of current pianos and their manufacturers. It also includes advice on buying and owning pianos.
*Giraffes, black dragons, and other pianos: a technological history from Cristofori to the modern concert grand by Edwin M. Good (1982, second ed., 2001, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press) is a standard reference on the history of the piano.
*The Early Pianoforte by Stewart Pollens (1995, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) is an authoritative work covering the ancestry of the piano, its invention by Cristofori, and the early stages of its subsequent evolution.
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;Information
* Yamaha Musician - Yamaha piano reviews and enthusiast site
* Grand Piano information and images
* The Piano Page Lots of information from the Piano Technicians Guild
* WikiRecording's Guide to Recording Pianos
;History
* History of the Piano Forte, Association of Blind Piano Tuners, UK
* The Frederick Historical Piano Collection
;Piano Technique
* Principles of Piano Technique
;Sheet music for Piano
* All Piano Scores Free printable classical sheet music for piano + audio
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Piano | Is it advantageous for a grand piano's metal plate to be quite massive? | yes | data/set2/a1 | Piano
Baby Grand Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard that produces sound by striking steel strings with felt covered hammers. The hammers immediately rebound, allowing the strings to continue vibrating at their resonant frequency. " Hammer Time" by John Kiehl, Wolfram Demonstrations Project. These vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a soundboard that couples the acoustic energy to the air so that it can be heard as sound.
The piano is widely used in Western music for solo performance, ensemble use, chamber music, and accompaniment. It is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal. Although not portable and often expensive, the piano's versatility and ubiquity have made it one of the most familiar musical instruments. It is sometimes classified as both a percussion and a stringed instrument. According to the Hornbostel-Sachs method of music classification, it is grouped with Chordophones.
The word piano is a shortened form of the word pianoforte, which is seldom used except in formal language and derived from the original Italian name for the instrument, clavicembalo [or gravicembalo] col piano e forte (literally harpsichord with soft and loud). This refers to the instrument's responsiveness to keyboard touch, which allows the pianist to produce notes at different dynamic levels by controlling the speed with which the hammers hit the strings.
Early piano replica by the modern builder Paul McNulty, after Walter & Sohn, 1805
The piano was originally founded on earlier technological innovations. The first string instruments with struck strings were the hammered dulcimers originating from the Persian traditional musical instrument santur. David R. Peterson (1994), "Acoustics of the hammered dulcimer, its history, and recent developments", Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 95 (5), p. 3002. During the Middle Ages, there were several attempts at creating stringed keyboard instruments with struck strings, Pollens, 1995. chp. 1 the earliest being the hurdy gurdy which has uncertain origins. By the 17th century, 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.
Grand piano by Louis Bas of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, France, 1781. Earliest French grand piano known to survive; includes an inverted wrestplank and action derived from the work of Bartolomeo Cristofiori (ca. 1700) with ornately decorated soundboard.
The invention of the modern piano is credited to Bartolomeo Cristofori of Padua, Italy, who was employed by Prince Ferdinand de Medici as the Keeper of the Instruments. He was an expert harpsichord maker and was well acquainted with the previous body of knowledge on stringed keyboard instruments. It is not known exactly when Cristofori first built a piano. An inventory made by his employers, the Medici family, indicates the existence of a piano by the year 1700; another document of doubtful authenticity indicates a date of 1698. The three Cristofori pianos that survive today date from the 1720s.
Cristofori's great success was in solving, without any prior example, the fundamental mechanical problem of piano design: the hammer must strike the string, but not remain in contact with it (as a tangent remains in contact with a clavichord string) because this would damp the sound. Moreover, the hammer must return to its rest position without bouncing violently, and it must be possible to repeat a note rapidly. Cristofori's piano action served as a model for the many different approaches to piano actions that followed. While Cristofori's early instruments were made with thin strings and were much quieter than the modern piano, compared to the clavichord (the only previous keyboard instrument capable of minutely controlled dynamic nuance through the keyboard) they were considerably louder and had more sustaining power.
Cristofori's new instrument remained relatively unknown until an Italian writer, Scipione Maffei, wrote an enthusiastic article about it (1711), including a diagram of the mechanism. This article was widely distributed, and most of the next generation of piano builders started their work because of reading it. One of these builders was Gottfried Silbermann, better known as an organ builder. Silbermann's pianos were virtually direct copies of Cristofori's, with one important addition: Silbermann invented the forerunner of the modern damper pedal, which lifts all the dampers from the strings at once.
Silbermann showed Johann Sebastian Bach one of his early instruments in the 1730s, but Bach did not like it at that time, claiming that the higher notes were too soft to allow a full dynamic range. Although this earned him some animosity from Silbermann, the criticism was apparently heeded. Bach did approve of a later instrument he saw in 1747, and even served as an agent in selling Silbermann's pianos.
Piano making flourished during the late 18th century in the Viennese school, which included Johann Andreas Stein (who worked in Augsburg, Germany) and the Viennese makers Nannette Streicher (daughter of Johann Andreas Stein) and Anton Walter. Viennese-style pianos were built with wood frames, two strings per note, and had leather-covered hammers. Some of these Viennese pianos had the opposite coloring of modern-day pianos; the natural keys were black and the accidental keys white. It was for such instruments that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed his concertos and sonatas, and replicas of them are built today for use in authentic-instrument performance of his music. The pianos of Mozart's day had a softer, clearer tone than today's pianos or English pianos, with less sustaining power. The term fortepiano is nowadays often used to distinguish the 18th-century instrument from later pianos.
In the period lasting from about 1790 to 1860, the Mozart-era piano underwent tremendous changes that led to the modern form of the instrument. This revolution was in response to a consistent preference by composers and pianists for a more powerful, sustained piano sound, and made possible by the ongoing Industrial Revolution with technological resources such as high-quality steel, called piano wire, for strings, and precision casting for the production of iron frames. Over time, the tonal range of the piano was also increased from the five octaves of Mozart's day to the 7â
or more octaves found on modern pianos.
Broadwood square action
Early technological progress owed much to the English firm of Broadwood, who already had a reputation for the splendour and powerful tone of its harpsichords. Broadwood constructed instruments that were progressively larger, louder, and more robustly constructed. They sent pianos to both Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven, and were the first firm to build pianos with a range of more than five octaves: five octaves and a fifth during the 1790s, six octaves by 1810 (Beethoven used the extra notes in his later works), and seven octaves by 1820. The Viennese makers similarly followed these trends, however the two schools used different piano actions: Broadwoods were more robust, Viennese instruments were more sensitive.
Erard square action
By the 1820s, the center of innovation had shifted to Paris, where the Pleyel firm manufactured pianos used by Frédéric Chopin and the Ãrard firm manufactured those used by Franz Liszt. In 1821, Sébastien Ãrard invented the double escapement action, which permitted a note to be repeated even if the key had not yet risen to its maximum vertical position. This facilitated rapid playing of repeated notes - and this musical device was pioneered by Liszt. When the invention became public, as revised by Henri Herz, the double escapement action gradually became standard in grand pianos, and is still incorporated into all grand pianos currently produced.
One of the major technical innovations that helped to create the sound of the modern piano was the use of a strong iron frame. Also called the "plate", the iron frame sits atop the soundboard, and serves as the primary bulwark against the force of string tension. The increased structural integrity of the iron frame allowed the use of thicker, tenser, and more numerous strings. In a modern grand the total string tension can exceed 20 tons. The single piece cast iron frame was patented in 1825 in Boston by Alpheus Babcock, combining the metal hitch pin plate (1821, claimed by Broadwood on behalf of Samuel Hervé) and resisting bars (Thom and Allen, 1820, but also claimed by Broadwood and Ãrard). Babcock later worked for the Chickering & Mackays firm who patented the first full iron frame for grand pianos in 1843. Composite forged metal frames were preferred by many European makers until the American system was fully adopted by the early 20th century.
Other innovations for the mechanism included the use of felt hammer coverings instead of layered leather hammers. Felt hammers, which were first introduced by Henri Pape in 1826, were a more consistent material, permitting wider dynamic ranges as hammer weights and string tension increased. The sostenuto pedal (see below), invented in 1844 by Jean Louis Boisselot and improved by the Steinway firm in 1874, allowed a wider range of effects.
Other important technical innovations of this era included changes to the way the piano was strung, such as the use of a "choir" of three strings rather than two for all but the lower notes, and the use of different stringing methods. With the over strung scale, also called "cross-stringing", the strings are placed in a vertically overlapping slanted arrangement, with two heights of bridges on the soundboard instead of just one. This permits larger, but not necessarily longer, strings to fit within the case of the piano. Over stringing was invented by Jean-Henri Pape during the 1820s, and first patented for use in grand pianos in the United States by Henry Steinway Jr. in 1859.
Duplex scaling: Treble strings of a 182 cm. grand piano. From lower left to upper right: dampers, main sounding length of strings, treble bridge, duplex string length, duplex bridge (long bar perpendicular to strings), hitchpins. With duplexes or aliquot scales, which was patented in 1872 by Theodore Steinway, the different components of string vibrations are controlled by tuning their secondary parts in octave relationships with the sounding lengths. Similar systems developed by Blüthner (1872), as well as Taskin (1788), and Collard (1821) used more distinctly ringing undamped vibrations to modify tone.
Some early pianos had shapes and designs that are no longer in use. The square piano had horizontal strings arranged diagonally across the rectangular case above the hammers and with the keyboard set in the long side. This design is attributed to Gottfried Silbermann or Christian Ernst Friderici on the continent, and Johannes Zumpe or Harman Vietor in England and it was improved by changes first introduced by Guillaume-Lebrecht Petzold in France and Alpheus Babcock in the United States. Square pianos were built in great numbers through the 1840s in Europe and the 1890s in America, and saw the most visible changes of any type of piano: the celebrated iron framed over strung squares manufactured by Steinway & Sons were more than two and a half times the size of Zumpe's wood framed instruments from a century before. Their overwhelming popularity was due to inexpensive construction and price, although their performance and tone were often limited by simple actions and closely spaced strings.
The mechanism in upright pianos is perpendicular to the keys.
The tall, vertically strung upright grand was arranged like a grand set on end, with the soundboard and bridges above the keys, and tuning pins below them. The term was later revived by many manufacturers for advertising purposes. Giraffe, pyramid and lyre pianos were arranged in a somewhat similar fashion in evocatively shaped cases.
The very tall cabinet piano was introduced about 1805 and was built through the 1840s. It had strings arranged vertically on a continuous frame with bridges extended nearly to the floor, behind the keyboard and very large sticker action. The short cottage upright or pianino with vertical stringing, made popular by Robert Wornum around 1815, was built into the 20th century. They are informally called birdcage pianos because of their prominent damper mechanism. Pianinos were distinguished from the oblique, or diagonally strung upright made popular in France by Roller & Blanchet during the late 1820s. The tiny spinet upright was manufactured from the mid-1930s until recent times. The low position of the hammers required the use of a "drop action" to preserve a reasonable keyboard height.
Modern upright and grand pianos attained their present forms by the end of the 19th century. Improvements have been made in manufacturing processes, and many individual details of the instrument continue to receive attention.
Much of the most widely admired piano repertoire, for example, that of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, was composed for a type of instrument that is rather different from the modern instruments on which this music is normally performed today. Even the music of the Romantics, including Liszt, Chopin, Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn and Johannes Brahms, was written for pianos substantially different from ours.
A schematic depiction of the construction of a pianoforte.
Modern pianos come in two basic configurations (with subcategories): the grand piano and the upright piano.
Grand piano
In grand pianos, the frame and strings are horizontal, with the strings extending away from the keyboard. There are several sizes of grand piano. A rough generalization distinguishes the "concert grand" (between about and long) from the "parlor grand" or "boudoir grand" (about to ) and the smaller "baby grand".
All else being equal, longer pianos with longer strings have better sound and lower inharmonicity of the strings. Inharmonicity is the degree to which the frequencies of overtones (known as partials, partial tones, or harmonics) depart from whole multiples of the fundamental frequency. Pianos with shorter, thicker, and stiffer strings (e.g., baby grands) have more inharmonicity. The longer strings on a concert grand can vibrate more freely than the shorter, thicker strings on a baby grand, which means that a concert grand's strings will have truer overtones. This is partly because the strings will be tuned closer to equal temperament in relation to the standard pitch with less "stretching" in the piano tuning (See: Piano tuning). Full-size grands are usually used for public concerts, whereas smaller grands, introduced by Sohmer & Co. in 1884, are often chosen for domestic use where space and cost are considerations.
Upright piano
Upright pianos, also called vertical pianos, are more compact because the frame and strings are vertical. It is considered harder to produce a sensitive piano action when the hammers move horizontally, as the vertical hammer return is dependent on springs which are prone to wear and tear. However, a well-regulated vertical piano will probably play more smoothly than a poorly regulated grand piano, and the very best upright pianos approach the level of some grand pianos of the same size in tone quality and responsiveness.
One noticeable advantage that the grand piano action has over the vertical action is that all grand pianos have a special repetition lever in the playing action that is absent in all verticals. This repetition lever, a separate one for every key, catches the hammer close to the strings as long as the keys are played repeatedly and fairly quickly. In this position, with the hammer resting on the lever, a pianist can play repeated notes, staccato, and trills with much more speed and control than is possible on a vertical piano.
Upright pianos with unusually tall frames and long strings are sometimes called "upright grand" pianos.
Some authors classify modern pianos according to their height and, to modifications of the action that are necessary to accomodate the height.
* Studio pianos are around 42 to 45 inches tall. This is the shortest cabinet that can accomodate a 'full-sized' action located above the keyboard.
* Console pianos have a compact action (shorter hammers), and are a few inches shorter than studio models.
* The top of a Spinet model barely rises above the keyboard. The action is located below, operated by vertical wires that are attached to the backs of the keys.
* Anything taller than a studio piano is called an upright.
Player piano
Toy pianos began to be manufactured in the 19th century. In 1863, Henri Fourneaux invented the player piano, which "plays itself" from a piano roll without the need for a pianist. The player piano is a piano that records a performance using rolls of paper with perforations, and then replays the performance using pneumatic devices. A modern equivalent for the player piano is the Yamaha Disklavier system, which uses solenoids and midi instead of pneumatics and rolls. Silent pianos, which allow a regular piano to be used converted to a digital instrument, are a recent innovation and are becoming more popular.
Irving Berlin played a special piano called the transposing piano, which was invented in 1801 by Edward Ryley. It had a lever under the keyboard used to alter the music to any key. One of Berlin's pianos is in the Smithsonian Museum. For much of his career, Berlin only knew how to play the black keys. But with his 'trick piano' he was no longer limited to the key of F-sharp.
A relatively recent development is the prepared piano, which is used in contemporary art music. A prepared piano is a standard grand piano which has had objects placed inside it before a performance in order to alter its sound, or which has had its mechanism changed in some way. The scores for music for prepared piano often instruct the pianist to insert pieces of rubber or small pieces of metal (screws or washers) in between the strings. These added items either mute the strings or create unusual vibrating sounds.
Since the 1980s, digital pianos have been available, which use digital sampling technology to reproduce the sound of each piano note. The best digital pianos are sophisticated, with features including working pedals, weighted keys, multiple voices, and MIDI interfaces. However, with such technology, it is difficult to duplicate one particular aspect of acoustic pianos, namely that when the damper pedal (see below) is depressed, the strings not struck vibrate sympathetically when other strings are struck, as well as the unique instrument-specific mathematical non-linearity of partials on any given unison. Since this sympathetic vibration is considered central to piano tone, many digital pianos do not sound the same as the best acoustic pianos. Progress is being made in this area by including physical models of sympathetic vibration in the synthesis software. Some higher end digital pianos, such as the Yamaha Clavinova series, or the KAWAI MP8 series, produced in the last few years incorporate string resonance technology to overcome this limitation.
With the advent of powerful desktop computers, highly realistic sampled digital grand pianos have become available as affordable software modules. Some use multi-gigabyte piano sample sets with as many as 90 recordings, each lasting many seconds, for each of the 88 keys under different conditions, augmented by additional samples to emulate sympathetic resonance, key release, the drop of the dampers, and simulations of piano techniques like re-pedaling.
Keyboard
Almost every modern piano has 36 black keys and 52 white keys for a total of 88 keys (seven octaves plus a minor third, from A0 to C8). Many older pianos only have 85 keys (seven octaves from A0 to A7), while some manufacturers extend the range further in one or both directions.
Some Bösendorfer pianos extend the normal range downwards to F0, with one other model going as far as a bottom C0, making a full eight octave range. These extra keys are sometimes hidden under a small hinged lid that can be flipped down to cover the keys in order to avoid visual disorientation in a pianist unfamiliar with the extended keyboard. On others, the colours of the extra white keys are reversed (black instead of white).
The extra keys are added primarily for increased resonance from the associated strings; that is, they vibrate sympathetically with other strings whenever the damper pedal is depressed and thus give a fuller tone. Only a very small number of works composed for piano actually use these notes. More recently, the Stuart and Sons company has also manufactured extended-range pianos. On their instruments, the range is extended both down the bass to F0 and up the treble to F8 for a full eight octaves. The extra keys are the same as the other keys in appearance.
Small studio upright acoustical pianos with only 65 keys have been manufactured for use by roving pianists. Known as "gig" pianos and still containing a cast iron harp, these are comparatively lightweight and can be easily transported to and from engagements by only two men. As their harp is longer than that of a spinet or console piano, they have a stronger bass sound that to some pianists is well worth the trade-off in range that a reduced key-set offers.
Piano pedals from left to right: una corda, sostenuto, and damper.
Pianos have had pedals, or some close equivalent, since the earliest days. (In the 18th century, some pianos used levers pressed upward by the player's knee instead of pedals.) Most grand pianos have three pedals: soft pedal (una corda), sostenuto, and sustain pedal (from left to right, respectively). Most modern upright pianos have three pedals: soft pedal, practice pedal and sustain pedal, though older or cheaper models may lack the practice pedal.
The sustain pedal (or, damper pedal) is often simply called "the pedal", since it is the most frequently used. It is placed as the rightmost pedal in the group. It lifts the dampers from all keys, sustaining all played notes, and altering the overall tone.
The soft pedal or una corda pedal is placed leftmost in the row of pedals. In grand pianos, it shifts the entire action, including the keyboard, to the right, so that the hammers hit only one of the three strings for each note (hence the name una corda, or 'one string'). The effect is to soften the note as well as to change the tone. In uprights, this action is not possible, and so the pedal moves the hammers closer to the strings, allowing the hammers to hit the strings with less kinetic energy to produce a softer sound.
On grand pianos, the middle pedal is a sostenuto pedal. This pedal keeps raised any damper that was already raised at the moment the pedal is depressed. This makes it possible to sustain some notes (by depressing the sostenuto pedal before notes to be sustained are released) while the player's hands are free to play other notes. This can be useful for musical passages with pedal points and other otherwise tricky or impossible situations.
On many upright pianos, there is a middle pedal called the 'practice' or celeste pedal. This drops a piece of felt between the hammers and strings, greatly muting the sounds.
There are also non-standard variants. On vertical pianos, the middle pedal can be a bass sustain pedal: that is, when it is depressed, the dampers lift off the strings only in the bass section. This pedal would be used only when a pianist needs to sustain a single bass note or chord over many measures, while playing the melody in the treble section. On the largest Fazioli piano, there is a fourth pedal to the left of the principal three. This fourth pedal works in the same way as the soft pedal of an upright piano, moving the hammers closer to the strings.
An upright pedal piano
The rare transposing piano, of which Irving Berlin possessed an example, had a middle pedal that functioned as a clutch which disengages the keyboard from the mechanism, enabling the keyboard to be moved to the left or right with a lever. The entire action of the piano is thus shifted to allow the pianist to play music written in one key so that it sounds in a different key. The pedalier piano, or pedal piano, is a rare type of piano that includes a pedalboard, enabling bass register notes to be played with the feet, as is standard on the organ. There are two types of pedal piano: the pedal board may be an integral part of the instrument, using the same strings and mechanism as the manual keyboard, or, less frequently, it may consist of two independent pianos (each with its separate mechanics and strings) which are placed one above the other, a regular piano played by the hands and a bass-register piano played by the feet.
Many parts of a piano are made of materials selected for sturdiness. In quality pianos, the outer rim of the piano is made of a hardwood, normally maple or beech. According to Harold A. Conklin, the purpose of a sturdy rim is so that "the vibrational energy will stay as much as possible in the soundboard instead of dissipating uselessly in the case parts, which are inefficient radiators of sound."
View from below of a 182-cm grand piano. In order of distance from viewer: softwood braces, tapered soundboard ribs, soundboard. The metal rod at lower right is a humidity control device.
The rim is normally made by laminating flexible strips of hardwood to the desired shape, a system that was developed by Theodore Steinway in 1880. The thick wooden braces at the bottom (grands) or back (uprights) of the piano are not as acoustically important as the rim, and are often made of a softwood, even in top-quality pianos, in order to save weight. The requirement of structural strength, fulfilled with stout hardwood and thick metal, makes a piano heavy; even a small upright can weigh 136 kg (300 lb), and the Steinway concert grand (Model D) weighs 480 kg (990 lb). The largest piano built, the Fazioli F308, weighs 691 kg (1520 lb).
The pinblock, which holds the tuning pins in place, is another area of the piano where toughness is important. It is made of hardwood, (often maple) and generally is laminated (built of multiple layers) for additional strength and gripping power. Piano strings (also called piano wire), which must endure years of extreme tension and hard blows, are made of high quality steel. They are manufactured to vary as little as possible in diameter, since all deviations from uniformity introduce tonal distortion. The bass strings of a piano are made of a steel core wrapped with copper wire, to increase their mass whilst retaining flexibility.
The plate, or metal frame, of a piano is usually made of cast iron. It is advantageous for the plate to be quite massive. Since the strings are attached to the plate at one end, any vibrations transmitted to the plate will result in loss of energy to the desired (efficient) channel of sound transmission, namely the bridge and the soundboard. Some manufacturers now use cast steel in their plates, for greater strength. The casting of the plate is a delicate art, since the dimensions are crucial and the iron shrinks by about one percent during cooling.
The inclusion in a piano of an extremely large piece of metal is potentially an aesthetic handicap, which piano makers overcome by polishing, painting and decorating the plate. Plates often include the manufacturer's ornamental medallion and can be strikingly attractive. In an effort to make pianos lighter, Alcoa worked with Winter and Company piano manufacturers to make pianos using an aluminum plate during the 1940s. The use of aluminum for piano plates, however, did not become widely accepted and was discontinued.
The numerous grand parts and upright parts of a piano action are generally hardwood (e.g. maple, beech. hornbeam). However, since World War II, plastics have become available. Early plastics were incorporated into some pianos in the late 1940s and 1950s, but proved disastrous because they crystallized and lost their strength after only a few decades of use. The Steinway firm once incorporated Teflon, a synthetic material developed by DuPont, for some grand action parts in place of cloth, but ultimately abandoned the experiment due to an inherent "clicking" which invariably developed over time. (Also Teflon is "humidity stable" whereas the wood adjacent to the Teflon will swell and shrink with humidity changes, causing problems.) More recently, the Kawai firm has built pianos with action parts made of more modern and effective plastics such as carbon fiber; these parts have held up better and have generally received the respect of piano technicians .
Ivorite and ebony keys on a modern Steinway & Sons concert grand piano.
The part of the piano where materials probably matter more than anywhere else is the soundboard. In quality pianos, this is made of solid spruce (that is, spruce boards glued together at their edges). Spruce is chosen for its high ratio of strength to weight. The best piano makers use close-grained, quarter-sawn, defect-free spruce, and make sure that it has been carefully dried over a long period of time before making it into soundboards. In cheap pianos, the soundboard is often made of plywood.
Piano keys are generally made of spruce or basswood, for lightness. Spruce is normally used in high-quality pianos. Traditionally, the black keys were made from ebony and the white keys were covered with strips of ivory, but since ivory-yielding species are now endangered and protected by treaty, plastics are now almost exclusively used. Also, ivory tends to chip more easily than plastic. Legal ivory can still be obtained in limited quantities. At one time, the Yamaha firm innovated a plastic called "Ivorine" or "Ivorite", since imitated by other makers, that mimics the look and feel of ivory.
A piano tuner
Pianos need regular tuning to keep them up to pitch, which is usually the internationally recognized standard concert pitch of A4 = 440 Hz. The hammers of pianos are voiced to compensate for gradual hardening, and other parts also need periodic regulation. Aged and worn pianos can be rebuilt or reconditioned. Often, by replacing a great number of their parts, they can be made to perform as well as new pianos. Older pianos are often more settled and produce a warmer tone.
Piano moving should be done by trained piano movers using adequate manpower and the correct equipment for any particular piano's size and weight. Pianos are heavy yet delicate instruments. Over the years, professional piano movers have developed special techniques for transporting both grands and uprights which prevent damage to the case and to the piano's mechanics.
The piano at the social center in the 19th century (Moritz von Schwind, 1868). The man at the piano is Franz Schubert.
The piano is a crucial instrument in Western classical music, jazz, film, television, and most other complex western musical genres. Since a large number of composers are proficient pianists â and because the piano keyboard offers an easy means of complex melodic and harmonic interplay â the piano is often used as a tool for composition.
Pianos were, and still are, popular instruments for private household ownership. Hence, pianos have gained a place in the popular consciousness, and are sometimes referred to by nicknames including: "the ivories", "the joanna", "the eighty-eight", and "the black(s) and white(s)", "the little joe(s)". Playing the piano is sometimes referred to as "tickling the ivories".
;General
* Innovations in the piano
* Jazz piano
* Piano acoustics
* Piano key frequencies (in equal temperament)
* Piano trio
* String piano
;Related lists
* List of films about pianists
* Lists of solo piano pieces
* List of piano makers
* List of piano brand names
* List of classical pianists (recorded)
;Related instruments
* Hammered dulcimer
* Harp
* Clavichord
* Harpsichord
* Organ and Pipe organ
* Electric piano
* Electronic piano
* The authoritative New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (available online by subscription), contains a wealth of information. Main article: "Pianoforte".
* The Encyclopædia Britannica (available online by subscription) also includes much information on the piano. In the 1988 edition, the primary article can be found in "Musical Instruments".
* The Piano Book by Larry Fine (4th ed. Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts: Brookside Press, 2001; ISBN 1-929145-01-2) gives the basics of how pianos work, and a thorough evaluative survey of current pianos and their manufacturers. It also includes advice on buying and owning pianos.
*Giraffes, black dragons, and other pianos: a technological history from Cristofori to the modern concert grand by Edwin M. Good (1982, second ed., 2001, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press) is a standard reference on the history of the piano.
*The Early Pianoforte by Stewart Pollens (1995, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) is an authoritative work covering the ancestry of the piano, its invention by Cristofori, and the early stages of its subsequent evolution.
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;Information
* Yamaha Musician - Yamaha piano reviews and enthusiast site
* Grand Piano information and images
* The Piano Page Lots of information from the Piano Technicians Guild
* WikiRecording's Guide to Recording Pianos
;History
* History of the Piano Forte, Association of Blind Piano Tuners, UK
* The Frederick Historical Piano Collection
;Piano Technique
* Principles of Piano Technique
;Sheet music for Piano
* All Piano Scores Free printable classical sheet music for piano + audio
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Piano | Is it advantageous for a grand piano's metal plate to be quite massive? | It is advantageous for the plate to be quite massive. | data/set2/a1 | Piano
Baby Grand Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard that produces sound by striking steel strings with felt covered hammers. The hammers immediately rebound, allowing the strings to continue vibrating at their resonant frequency. " Hammer Time" by John Kiehl, Wolfram Demonstrations Project. These vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a soundboard that couples the acoustic energy to the air so that it can be heard as sound.
The piano is widely used in Western music for solo performance, ensemble use, chamber music, and accompaniment. It is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal. Although not portable and often expensive, the piano's versatility and ubiquity have made it one of the most familiar musical instruments. It is sometimes classified as both a percussion and a stringed instrument. According to the Hornbostel-Sachs method of music classification, it is grouped with Chordophones.
The word piano is a shortened form of the word pianoforte, which is seldom used except in formal language and derived from the original Italian name for the instrument, clavicembalo [or gravicembalo] col piano e forte (literally harpsichord with soft and loud). This refers to the instrument's responsiveness to keyboard touch, which allows the pianist to produce notes at different dynamic levels by controlling the speed with which the hammers hit the strings.
Early piano replica by the modern builder Paul McNulty, after Walter & Sohn, 1805
The piano was originally founded on earlier technological innovations. The first string instruments with struck strings were the hammered dulcimers originating from the Persian traditional musical instrument santur. David R. Peterson (1994), "Acoustics of the hammered dulcimer, its history, and recent developments", Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 95 (5), p. 3002. During the Middle Ages, there were several attempts at creating stringed keyboard instruments with struck strings, Pollens, 1995. chp. 1 the earliest being the hurdy gurdy which has uncertain origins. By the 17th century, 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.
Grand piano by Louis Bas of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, France, 1781. Earliest French grand piano known to survive; includes an inverted wrestplank and action derived from the work of Bartolomeo Cristofiori (ca. 1700) with ornately decorated soundboard.
The invention of the modern piano is credited to Bartolomeo Cristofori of Padua, Italy, who was employed by Prince Ferdinand de Medici as the Keeper of the Instruments. He was an expert harpsichord maker and was well acquainted with the previous body of knowledge on stringed keyboard instruments. It is not known exactly when Cristofori first built a piano. An inventory made by his employers, the Medici family, indicates the existence of a piano by the year 1700; another document of doubtful authenticity indicates a date of 1698. The three Cristofori pianos that survive today date from the 1720s.
Cristofori's great success was in solving, without any prior example, the fundamental mechanical problem of piano design: the hammer must strike the string, but not remain in contact with it (as a tangent remains in contact with a clavichord string) because this would damp the sound. Moreover, the hammer must return to its rest position without bouncing violently, and it must be possible to repeat a note rapidly. Cristofori's piano action served as a model for the many different approaches to piano actions that followed. While Cristofori's early instruments were made with thin strings and were much quieter than the modern piano, compared to the clavichord (the only previous keyboard instrument capable of minutely controlled dynamic nuance through the keyboard) they were considerably louder and had more sustaining power.
Cristofori's new instrument remained relatively unknown until an Italian writer, Scipione Maffei, wrote an enthusiastic article about it (1711), including a diagram of the mechanism. This article was widely distributed, and most of the next generation of piano builders started their work because of reading it. One of these builders was Gottfried Silbermann, better known as an organ builder. Silbermann's pianos were virtually direct copies of Cristofori's, with one important addition: Silbermann invented the forerunner of the modern damper pedal, which lifts all the dampers from the strings at once.
Silbermann showed Johann Sebastian Bach one of his early instruments in the 1730s, but Bach did not like it at that time, claiming that the higher notes were too soft to allow a full dynamic range. Although this earned him some animosity from Silbermann, the criticism was apparently heeded. Bach did approve of a later instrument he saw in 1747, and even served as an agent in selling Silbermann's pianos.
Piano making flourished during the late 18th century in the Viennese school, which included Johann Andreas Stein (who worked in Augsburg, Germany) and the Viennese makers Nannette Streicher (daughter of Johann Andreas Stein) and Anton Walter. Viennese-style pianos were built with wood frames, two strings per note, and had leather-covered hammers. Some of these Viennese pianos had the opposite coloring of modern-day pianos; the natural keys were black and the accidental keys white. It was for such instruments that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed his concertos and sonatas, and replicas of them are built today for use in authentic-instrument performance of his music. The pianos of Mozart's day had a softer, clearer tone than today's pianos or English pianos, with less sustaining power. The term fortepiano is nowadays often used to distinguish the 18th-century instrument from later pianos.
In the period lasting from about 1790 to 1860, the Mozart-era piano underwent tremendous changes that led to the modern form of the instrument. This revolution was in response to a consistent preference by composers and pianists for a more powerful, sustained piano sound, and made possible by the ongoing Industrial Revolution with technological resources such as high-quality steel, called piano wire, for strings, and precision casting for the production of iron frames. Over time, the tonal range of the piano was also increased from the five octaves of Mozart's day to the 7â
or more octaves found on modern pianos.
Broadwood square action
Early technological progress owed much to the English firm of Broadwood, who already had a reputation for the splendour and powerful tone of its harpsichords. Broadwood constructed instruments that were progressively larger, louder, and more robustly constructed. They sent pianos to both Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven, and were the first firm to build pianos with a range of more than five octaves: five octaves and a fifth during the 1790s, six octaves by 1810 (Beethoven used the extra notes in his later works), and seven octaves by 1820. The Viennese makers similarly followed these trends, however the two schools used different piano actions: Broadwoods were more robust, Viennese instruments were more sensitive.
Erard square action
By the 1820s, the center of innovation had shifted to Paris, where the Pleyel firm manufactured pianos used by Frédéric Chopin and the Ãrard firm manufactured those used by Franz Liszt. In 1821, Sébastien Ãrard invented the double escapement action, which permitted a note to be repeated even if the key had not yet risen to its maximum vertical position. This facilitated rapid playing of repeated notes - and this musical device was pioneered by Liszt. When the invention became public, as revised by Henri Herz, the double escapement action gradually became standard in grand pianos, and is still incorporated into all grand pianos currently produced.
One of the major technical innovations that helped to create the sound of the modern piano was the use of a strong iron frame. Also called the "plate", the iron frame sits atop the soundboard, and serves as the primary bulwark against the force of string tension. The increased structural integrity of the iron frame allowed the use of thicker, tenser, and more numerous strings. In a modern grand the total string tension can exceed 20 tons. The single piece cast iron frame was patented in 1825 in Boston by Alpheus Babcock, combining the metal hitch pin plate (1821, claimed by Broadwood on behalf of Samuel Hervé) and resisting bars (Thom and Allen, 1820, but also claimed by Broadwood and Ãrard). Babcock later worked for the Chickering & Mackays firm who patented the first full iron frame for grand pianos in 1843. Composite forged metal frames were preferred by many European makers until the American system was fully adopted by the early 20th century.
Other innovations for the mechanism included the use of felt hammer coverings instead of layered leather hammers. Felt hammers, which were first introduced by Henri Pape in 1826, were a more consistent material, permitting wider dynamic ranges as hammer weights and string tension increased. The sostenuto pedal (see below), invented in 1844 by Jean Louis Boisselot and improved by the Steinway firm in 1874, allowed a wider range of effects.
Other important technical innovations of this era included changes to the way the piano was strung, such as the use of a "choir" of three strings rather than two for all but the lower notes, and the use of different stringing methods. With the over strung scale, also called "cross-stringing", the strings are placed in a vertically overlapping slanted arrangement, with two heights of bridges on the soundboard instead of just one. This permits larger, but not necessarily longer, strings to fit within the case of the piano. Over stringing was invented by Jean-Henri Pape during the 1820s, and first patented for use in grand pianos in the United States by Henry Steinway Jr. in 1859.
Duplex scaling: Treble strings of a 182 cm. grand piano. From lower left to upper right: dampers, main sounding length of strings, treble bridge, duplex string length, duplex bridge (long bar perpendicular to strings), hitchpins. With duplexes or aliquot scales, which was patented in 1872 by Theodore Steinway, the different components of string vibrations are controlled by tuning their secondary parts in octave relationships with the sounding lengths. Similar systems developed by Blüthner (1872), as well as Taskin (1788), and Collard (1821) used more distinctly ringing undamped vibrations to modify tone.
Some early pianos had shapes and designs that are no longer in use. The square piano had horizontal strings arranged diagonally across the rectangular case above the hammers and with the keyboard set in the long side. This design is attributed to Gottfried Silbermann or Christian Ernst Friderici on the continent, and Johannes Zumpe or Harman Vietor in England and it was improved by changes first introduced by Guillaume-Lebrecht Petzold in France and Alpheus Babcock in the United States. Square pianos were built in great numbers through the 1840s in Europe and the 1890s in America, and saw the most visible changes of any type of piano: the celebrated iron framed over strung squares manufactured by Steinway & Sons were more than two and a half times the size of Zumpe's wood framed instruments from a century before. Their overwhelming popularity was due to inexpensive construction and price, although their performance and tone were often limited by simple actions and closely spaced strings.
The mechanism in upright pianos is perpendicular to the keys.
The tall, vertically strung upright grand was arranged like a grand set on end, with the soundboard and bridges above the keys, and tuning pins below them. The term was later revived by many manufacturers for advertising purposes. Giraffe, pyramid and lyre pianos were arranged in a somewhat similar fashion in evocatively shaped cases.
The very tall cabinet piano was introduced about 1805 and was built through the 1840s. It had strings arranged vertically on a continuous frame with bridges extended nearly to the floor, behind the keyboard and very large sticker action. The short cottage upright or pianino with vertical stringing, made popular by Robert Wornum around 1815, was built into the 20th century. They are informally called birdcage pianos because of their prominent damper mechanism. Pianinos were distinguished from the oblique, or diagonally strung upright made popular in France by Roller & Blanchet during the late 1820s. The tiny spinet upright was manufactured from the mid-1930s until recent times. The low position of the hammers required the use of a "drop action" to preserve a reasonable keyboard height.
Modern upright and grand pianos attained their present forms by the end of the 19th century. Improvements have been made in manufacturing processes, and many individual details of the instrument continue to receive attention.
Much of the most widely admired piano repertoire, for example, that of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, was composed for a type of instrument that is rather different from the modern instruments on which this music is normally performed today. Even the music of the Romantics, including Liszt, Chopin, Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn and Johannes Brahms, was written for pianos substantially different from ours.
A schematic depiction of the construction of a pianoforte.
Modern pianos come in two basic configurations (with subcategories): the grand piano and the upright piano.
Grand piano
In grand pianos, the frame and strings are horizontal, with the strings extending away from the keyboard. There are several sizes of grand piano. A rough generalization distinguishes the "concert grand" (between about and long) from the "parlor grand" or "boudoir grand" (about to ) and the smaller "baby grand".
All else being equal, longer pianos with longer strings have better sound and lower inharmonicity of the strings. Inharmonicity is the degree to which the frequencies of overtones (known as partials, partial tones, or harmonics) depart from whole multiples of the fundamental frequency. Pianos with shorter, thicker, and stiffer strings (e.g., baby grands) have more inharmonicity. The longer strings on a concert grand can vibrate more freely than the shorter, thicker strings on a baby grand, which means that a concert grand's strings will have truer overtones. This is partly because the strings will be tuned closer to equal temperament in relation to the standard pitch with less "stretching" in the piano tuning (See: Piano tuning). Full-size grands are usually used for public concerts, whereas smaller grands, introduced by Sohmer & Co. in 1884, are often chosen for domestic use where space and cost are considerations.
Upright piano
Upright pianos, also called vertical pianos, are more compact because the frame and strings are vertical. It is considered harder to produce a sensitive piano action when the hammers move horizontally, as the vertical hammer return is dependent on springs which are prone to wear and tear. However, a well-regulated vertical piano will probably play more smoothly than a poorly regulated grand piano, and the very best upright pianos approach the level of some grand pianos of the same size in tone quality and responsiveness.
One noticeable advantage that the grand piano action has over the vertical action is that all grand pianos have a special repetition lever in the playing action that is absent in all verticals. This repetition lever, a separate one for every key, catches the hammer close to the strings as long as the keys are played repeatedly and fairly quickly. In this position, with the hammer resting on the lever, a pianist can play repeated notes, staccato, and trills with much more speed and control than is possible on a vertical piano.
Upright pianos with unusually tall frames and long strings are sometimes called "upright grand" pianos.
Some authors classify modern pianos according to their height and, to modifications of the action that are necessary to accomodate the height.
* Studio pianos are around 42 to 45 inches tall. This is the shortest cabinet that can accomodate a 'full-sized' action located above the keyboard.
* Console pianos have a compact action (shorter hammers), and are a few inches shorter than studio models.
* The top of a Spinet model barely rises above the keyboard. The action is located below, operated by vertical wires that are attached to the backs of the keys.
* Anything taller than a studio piano is called an upright.
Player piano
Toy pianos began to be manufactured in the 19th century. In 1863, Henri Fourneaux invented the player piano, which "plays itself" from a piano roll without the need for a pianist. The player piano is a piano that records a performance using rolls of paper with perforations, and then replays the performance using pneumatic devices. A modern equivalent for the player piano is the Yamaha Disklavier system, which uses solenoids and midi instead of pneumatics and rolls. Silent pianos, which allow a regular piano to be used converted to a digital instrument, are a recent innovation and are becoming more popular.
Irving Berlin played a special piano called the transposing piano, which was invented in 1801 by Edward Ryley. It had a lever under the keyboard used to alter the music to any key. One of Berlin's pianos is in the Smithsonian Museum. For much of his career, Berlin only knew how to play the black keys. But with his 'trick piano' he was no longer limited to the key of F-sharp.
A relatively recent development is the prepared piano, which is used in contemporary art music. A prepared piano is a standard grand piano which has had objects placed inside it before a performance in order to alter its sound, or which has had its mechanism changed in some way. The scores for music for prepared piano often instruct the pianist to insert pieces of rubber or small pieces of metal (screws or washers) in between the strings. These added items either mute the strings or create unusual vibrating sounds.
Since the 1980s, digital pianos have been available, which use digital sampling technology to reproduce the sound of each piano note. The best digital pianos are sophisticated, with features including working pedals, weighted keys, multiple voices, and MIDI interfaces. However, with such technology, it is difficult to duplicate one particular aspect of acoustic pianos, namely that when the damper pedal (see below) is depressed, the strings not struck vibrate sympathetically when other strings are struck, as well as the unique instrument-specific mathematical non-linearity of partials on any given unison. Since this sympathetic vibration is considered central to piano tone, many digital pianos do not sound the same as the best acoustic pianos. Progress is being made in this area by including physical models of sympathetic vibration in the synthesis software. Some higher end digital pianos, such as the Yamaha Clavinova series, or the KAWAI MP8 series, produced in the last few years incorporate string resonance technology to overcome this limitation.
With the advent of powerful desktop computers, highly realistic sampled digital grand pianos have become available as affordable software modules. Some use multi-gigabyte piano sample sets with as many as 90 recordings, each lasting many seconds, for each of the 88 keys under different conditions, augmented by additional samples to emulate sympathetic resonance, key release, the drop of the dampers, and simulations of piano techniques like re-pedaling.
Keyboard
Almost every modern piano has 36 black keys and 52 white keys for a total of 88 keys (seven octaves plus a minor third, from A0 to C8). Many older pianos only have 85 keys (seven octaves from A0 to A7), while some manufacturers extend the range further in one or both directions.
Some Bösendorfer pianos extend the normal range downwards to F0, with one other model going as far as a bottom C0, making a full eight octave range. These extra keys are sometimes hidden under a small hinged lid that can be flipped down to cover the keys in order to avoid visual disorientation in a pianist unfamiliar with the extended keyboard. On others, the colours of the extra white keys are reversed (black instead of white).
The extra keys are added primarily for increased resonance from the associated strings; that is, they vibrate sympathetically with other strings whenever the damper pedal is depressed and thus give a fuller tone. Only a very small number of works composed for piano actually use these notes. More recently, the Stuart and Sons company has also manufactured extended-range pianos. On their instruments, the range is extended both down the bass to F0 and up the treble to F8 for a full eight octaves. The extra keys are the same as the other keys in appearance.
Small studio upright acoustical pianos with only 65 keys have been manufactured for use by roving pianists. Known as "gig" pianos and still containing a cast iron harp, these are comparatively lightweight and can be easily transported to and from engagements by only two men. As their harp is longer than that of a spinet or console piano, they have a stronger bass sound that to some pianists is well worth the trade-off in range that a reduced key-set offers.
Piano pedals from left to right: una corda, sostenuto, and damper.
Pianos have had pedals, or some close equivalent, since the earliest days. (In the 18th century, some pianos used levers pressed upward by the player's knee instead of pedals.) Most grand pianos have three pedals: soft pedal (una corda), sostenuto, and sustain pedal (from left to right, respectively). Most modern upright pianos have three pedals: soft pedal, practice pedal and sustain pedal, though older or cheaper models may lack the practice pedal.
The sustain pedal (or, damper pedal) is often simply called "the pedal", since it is the most frequently used. It is placed as the rightmost pedal in the group. It lifts the dampers from all keys, sustaining all played notes, and altering the overall tone.
The soft pedal or una corda pedal is placed leftmost in the row of pedals. In grand pianos, it shifts the entire action, including the keyboard, to the right, so that the hammers hit only one of the three strings for each note (hence the name una corda, or 'one string'). The effect is to soften the note as well as to change the tone. In uprights, this action is not possible, and so the pedal moves the hammers closer to the strings, allowing the hammers to hit the strings with less kinetic energy to produce a softer sound.
On grand pianos, the middle pedal is a sostenuto pedal. This pedal keeps raised any damper that was already raised at the moment the pedal is depressed. This makes it possible to sustain some notes (by depressing the sostenuto pedal before notes to be sustained are released) while the player's hands are free to play other notes. This can be useful for musical passages with pedal points and other otherwise tricky or impossible situations.
On many upright pianos, there is a middle pedal called the 'practice' or celeste pedal. This drops a piece of felt between the hammers and strings, greatly muting the sounds.
There are also non-standard variants. On vertical pianos, the middle pedal can be a bass sustain pedal: that is, when it is depressed, the dampers lift off the strings only in the bass section. This pedal would be used only when a pianist needs to sustain a single bass note or chord over many measures, while playing the melody in the treble section. On the largest Fazioli piano, there is a fourth pedal to the left of the principal three. This fourth pedal works in the same way as the soft pedal of an upright piano, moving the hammers closer to the strings.
An upright pedal piano
The rare transposing piano, of which Irving Berlin possessed an example, had a middle pedal that functioned as a clutch which disengages the keyboard from the mechanism, enabling the keyboard to be moved to the left or right with a lever. The entire action of the piano is thus shifted to allow the pianist to play music written in one key so that it sounds in a different key. The pedalier piano, or pedal piano, is a rare type of piano that includes a pedalboard, enabling bass register notes to be played with the feet, as is standard on the organ. There are two types of pedal piano: the pedal board may be an integral part of the instrument, using the same strings and mechanism as the manual keyboard, or, less frequently, it may consist of two independent pianos (each with its separate mechanics and strings) which are placed one above the other, a regular piano played by the hands and a bass-register piano played by the feet.
Many parts of a piano are made of materials selected for sturdiness. In quality pianos, the outer rim of the piano is made of a hardwood, normally maple or beech. According to Harold A. Conklin, the purpose of a sturdy rim is so that "the vibrational energy will stay as much as possible in the soundboard instead of dissipating uselessly in the case parts, which are inefficient radiators of sound."
View from below of a 182-cm grand piano. In order of distance from viewer: softwood braces, tapered soundboard ribs, soundboard. The metal rod at lower right is a humidity control device.
The rim is normally made by laminating flexible strips of hardwood to the desired shape, a system that was developed by Theodore Steinway in 1880. The thick wooden braces at the bottom (grands) or back (uprights) of the piano are not as acoustically important as the rim, and are often made of a softwood, even in top-quality pianos, in order to save weight. The requirement of structural strength, fulfilled with stout hardwood and thick metal, makes a piano heavy; even a small upright can weigh 136 kg (300 lb), and the Steinway concert grand (Model D) weighs 480 kg (990 lb). The largest piano built, the Fazioli F308, weighs 691 kg (1520 lb).
The pinblock, which holds the tuning pins in place, is another area of the piano where toughness is important. It is made of hardwood, (often maple) and generally is laminated (built of multiple layers) for additional strength and gripping power. Piano strings (also called piano wire), which must endure years of extreme tension and hard blows, are made of high quality steel. They are manufactured to vary as little as possible in diameter, since all deviations from uniformity introduce tonal distortion. The bass strings of a piano are made of a steel core wrapped with copper wire, to increase their mass whilst retaining flexibility.
The plate, or metal frame, of a piano is usually made of cast iron. It is advantageous for the plate to be quite massive. Since the strings are attached to the plate at one end, any vibrations transmitted to the plate will result in loss of energy to the desired (efficient) channel of sound transmission, namely the bridge and the soundboard. Some manufacturers now use cast steel in their plates, for greater strength. The casting of the plate is a delicate art, since the dimensions are crucial and the iron shrinks by about one percent during cooling.
The inclusion in a piano of an extremely large piece of metal is potentially an aesthetic handicap, which piano makers overcome by polishing, painting and decorating the plate. Plates often include the manufacturer's ornamental medallion and can be strikingly attractive. In an effort to make pianos lighter, Alcoa worked with Winter and Company piano manufacturers to make pianos using an aluminum plate during the 1940s. The use of aluminum for piano plates, however, did not become widely accepted and was discontinued.
The numerous grand parts and upright parts of a piano action are generally hardwood (e.g. maple, beech. hornbeam). However, since World War II, plastics have become available. Early plastics were incorporated into some pianos in the late 1940s and 1950s, but proved disastrous because they crystallized and lost their strength after only a few decades of use. The Steinway firm once incorporated Teflon, a synthetic material developed by DuPont, for some grand action parts in place of cloth, but ultimately abandoned the experiment due to an inherent "clicking" which invariably developed over time. (Also Teflon is "humidity stable" whereas the wood adjacent to the Teflon will swell and shrink with humidity changes, causing problems.) More recently, the Kawai firm has built pianos with action parts made of more modern and effective plastics such as carbon fiber; these parts have held up better and have generally received the respect of piano technicians .
Ivorite and ebony keys on a modern Steinway & Sons concert grand piano.
The part of the piano where materials probably matter more than anywhere else is the soundboard. In quality pianos, this is made of solid spruce (that is, spruce boards glued together at their edges). Spruce is chosen for its high ratio of strength to weight. The best piano makers use close-grained, quarter-sawn, defect-free spruce, and make sure that it has been carefully dried over a long period of time before making it into soundboards. In cheap pianos, the soundboard is often made of plywood.
Piano keys are generally made of spruce or basswood, for lightness. Spruce is normally used in high-quality pianos. Traditionally, the black keys were made from ebony and the white keys were covered with strips of ivory, but since ivory-yielding species are now endangered and protected by treaty, plastics are now almost exclusively used. Also, ivory tends to chip more easily than plastic. Legal ivory can still be obtained in limited quantities. At one time, the Yamaha firm innovated a plastic called "Ivorine" or "Ivorite", since imitated by other makers, that mimics the look and feel of ivory.
A piano tuner
Pianos need regular tuning to keep them up to pitch, which is usually the internationally recognized standard concert pitch of A4 = 440 Hz. The hammers of pianos are voiced to compensate for gradual hardening, and other parts also need periodic regulation. Aged and worn pianos can be rebuilt or reconditioned. Often, by replacing a great number of their parts, they can be made to perform as well as new pianos. Older pianos are often more settled and produce a warmer tone.
Piano moving should be done by trained piano movers using adequate manpower and the correct equipment for any particular piano's size and weight. Pianos are heavy yet delicate instruments. Over the years, professional piano movers have developed special techniques for transporting both grands and uprights which prevent damage to the case and to the piano's mechanics.
The piano at the social center in the 19th century (Moritz von Schwind, 1868). The man at the piano is Franz Schubert.
The piano is a crucial instrument in Western classical music, jazz, film, television, and most other complex western musical genres. Since a large number of composers are proficient pianists â and because the piano keyboard offers an easy means of complex melodic and harmonic interplay â the piano is often used as a tool for composition.
Pianos were, and still are, popular instruments for private household ownership. Hence, pianos have gained a place in the popular consciousness, and are sometimes referred to by nicknames including: "the ivories", "the joanna", "the eighty-eight", and "the black(s) and white(s)", "the little joe(s)". Playing the piano is sometimes referred to as "tickling the ivories".
;General
* Innovations in the piano
* Jazz piano
* Piano acoustics
* Piano key frequencies (in equal temperament)
* Piano trio
* String piano
;Related lists
* List of films about pianists
* Lists of solo piano pieces
* List of piano makers
* List of piano brand names
* List of classical pianists (recorded)
;Related instruments
* Hammered dulcimer
* Harp
* Clavichord
* Harpsichord
* Organ and Pipe organ
* Electric piano
* Electronic piano
* The authoritative New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (available online by subscription), contains a wealth of information. Main article: "Pianoforte".
* The Encyclopædia Britannica (available online by subscription) also includes much information on the piano. In the 1988 edition, the primary article can be found in "Musical Instruments".
* The Piano Book by Larry Fine (4th ed. Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts: Brookside Press, 2001; ISBN 1-929145-01-2) gives the basics of how pianos work, and a thorough evaluative survey of current pianos and their manufacturers. It also includes advice on buying and owning pianos.
*Giraffes, black dragons, and other pianos: a technological history from Cristofori to the modern concert grand by Edwin M. Good (1982, second ed., 2001, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press) is a standard reference on the history of the piano.
*The Early Pianoforte by Stewart Pollens (1995, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) is an authoritative work covering the ancestry of the piano, its invention by Cristofori, and the early stages of its subsequent evolution.
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;Information
* Yamaha Musician - Yamaha piano reviews and enthusiast site
* Grand Piano information and images
* The Piano Page Lots of information from the Piano Technicians Guild
* WikiRecording's Guide to Recording Pianos
;History
* History of the Piano Forte, Association of Blind Piano Tuners, UK
* The Frederick Historical Piano Collection
;Piano Technique
* Principles of Piano Technique
;Sheet music for Piano
* All Piano Scores Free printable classical sheet music for piano + audio
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Piano | Is the mechanism in an upright piano perpendicular to its keys? | yes | data/set2/a1 | Piano
Baby Grand Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard that produces sound by striking steel strings with felt covered hammers. The hammers immediately rebound, allowing the strings to continue vibrating at their resonant frequency. " Hammer Time" by John Kiehl, Wolfram Demonstrations Project. These vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a soundboard that couples the acoustic energy to the air so that it can be heard as sound.
The piano is widely used in Western music for solo performance, ensemble use, chamber music, and accompaniment. It is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal. Although not portable and often expensive, the piano's versatility and ubiquity have made it one of the most familiar musical instruments. It is sometimes classified as both a percussion and a stringed instrument. According to the Hornbostel-Sachs method of music classification, it is grouped with Chordophones.
The word piano is a shortened form of the word pianoforte, which is seldom used except in formal language and derived from the original Italian name for the instrument, clavicembalo [or gravicembalo] col piano e forte (literally harpsichord with soft and loud). This refers to the instrument's responsiveness to keyboard touch, which allows the pianist to produce notes at different dynamic levels by controlling the speed with which the hammers hit the strings.
Early piano replica by the modern builder Paul McNulty, after Walter & Sohn, 1805
The piano was originally founded on earlier technological innovations. The first string instruments with struck strings were the hammered dulcimers originating from the Persian traditional musical instrument santur. David R. Peterson (1994), "Acoustics of the hammered dulcimer, its history, and recent developments", Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 95 (5), p. 3002. During the Middle Ages, there were several attempts at creating stringed keyboard instruments with struck strings, Pollens, 1995. chp. 1 the earliest being the hurdy gurdy which has uncertain origins. By the 17th century, 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.
Grand piano by Louis Bas of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, France, 1781. Earliest French grand piano known to survive; includes an inverted wrestplank and action derived from the work of Bartolomeo Cristofiori (ca. 1700) with ornately decorated soundboard.
The invention of the modern piano is credited to Bartolomeo Cristofori of Padua, Italy, who was employed by Prince Ferdinand de Medici as the Keeper of the Instruments. He was an expert harpsichord maker and was well acquainted with the previous body of knowledge on stringed keyboard instruments. It is not known exactly when Cristofori first built a piano. An inventory made by his employers, the Medici family, indicates the existence of a piano by the year 1700; another document of doubtful authenticity indicates a date of 1698. The three Cristofori pianos that survive today date from the 1720s.
Cristofori's great success was in solving, without any prior example, the fundamental mechanical problem of piano design: the hammer must strike the string, but not remain in contact with it (as a tangent remains in contact with a clavichord string) because this would damp the sound. Moreover, the hammer must return to its rest position without bouncing violently, and it must be possible to repeat a note rapidly. Cristofori's piano action served as a model for the many different approaches to piano actions that followed. While Cristofori's early instruments were made with thin strings and were much quieter than the modern piano, compared to the clavichord (the only previous keyboard instrument capable of minutely controlled dynamic nuance through the keyboard) they were considerably louder and had more sustaining power.
Cristofori's new instrument remained relatively unknown until an Italian writer, Scipione Maffei, wrote an enthusiastic article about it (1711), including a diagram of the mechanism. This article was widely distributed, and most of the next generation of piano builders started their work because of reading it. One of these builders was Gottfried Silbermann, better known as an organ builder. Silbermann's pianos were virtually direct copies of Cristofori's, with one important addition: Silbermann invented the forerunner of the modern damper pedal, which lifts all the dampers from the strings at once.
Silbermann showed Johann Sebastian Bach one of his early instruments in the 1730s, but Bach did not like it at that time, claiming that the higher notes were too soft to allow a full dynamic range. Although this earned him some animosity from Silbermann, the criticism was apparently heeded. Bach did approve of a later instrument he saw in 1747, and even served as an agent in selling Silbermann's pianos.
Piano making flourished during the late 18th century in the Viennese school, which included Johann Andreas Stein (who worked in Augsburg, Germany) and the Viennese makers Nannette Streicher (daughter of Johann Andreas Stein) and Anton Walter. Viennese-style pianos were built with wood frames, two strings per note, and had leather-covered hammers. Some of these Viennese pianos had the opposite coloring of modern-day pianos; the natural keys were black and the accidental keys white. It was for such instruments that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed his concertos and sonatas, and replicas of them are built today for use in authentic-instrument performance of his music. The pianos of Mozart's day had a softer, clearer tone than today's pianos or English pianos, with less sustaining power. The term fortepiano is nowadays often used to distinguish the 18th-century instrument from later pianos.
In the period lasting from about 1790 to 1860, the Mozart-era piano underwent tremendous changes that led to the modern form of the instrument. This revolution was in response to a consistent preference by composers and pianists for a more powerful, sustained piano sound, and made possible by the ongoing Industrial Revolution with technological resources such as high-quality steel, called piano wire, for strings, and precision casting for the production of iron frames. Over time, the tonal range of the piano was also increased from the five octaves of Mozart's day to the 7â
or more octaves found on modern pianos.
Broadwood square action
Early technological progress owed much to the English firm of Broadwood, who already had a reputation for the splendour and powerful tone of its harpsichords. Broadwood constructed instruments that were progressively larger, louder, and more robustly constructed. They sent pianos to both Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven, and were the first firm to build pianos with a range of more than five octaves: five octaves and a fifth during the 1790s, six octaves by 1810 (Beethoven used the extra notes in his later works), and seven octaves by 1820. The Viennese makers similarly followed these trends, however the two schools used different piano actions: Broadwoods were more robust, Viennese instruments were more sensitive.
Erard square action
By the 1820s, the center of innovation had shifted to Paris, where the Pleyel firm manufactured pianos used by Frédéric Chopin and the Ãrard firm manufactured those used by Franz Liszt. In 1821, Sébastien Ãrard invented the double escapement action, which permitted a note to be repeated even if the key had not yet risen to its maximum vertical position. This facilitated rapid playing of repeated notes - and this musical device was pioneered by Liszt. When the invention became public, as revised by Henri Herz, the double escapement action gradually became standard in grand pianos, and is still incorporated into all grand pianos currently produced.
One of the major technical innovations that helped to create the sound of the modern piano was the use of a strong iron frame. Also called the "plate", the iron frame sits atop the soundboard, and serves as the primary bulwark against the force of string tension. The increased structural integrity of the iron frame allowed the use of thicker, tenser, and more numerous strings. In a modern grand the total string tension can exceed 20 tons. The single piece cast iron frame was patented in 1825 in Boston by Alpheus Babcock, combining the metal hitch pin plate (1821, claimed by Broadwood on behalf of Samuel Hervé) and resisting bars (Thom and Allen, 1820, but also claimed by Broadwood and Ãrard). Babcock later worked for the Chickering & Mackays firm who patented the first full iron frame for grand pianos in 1843. Composite forged metal frames were preferred by many European makers until the American system was fully adopted by the early 20th century.
Other innovations for the mechanism included the use of felt hammer coverings instead of layered leather hammers. Felt hammers, which were first introduced by Henri Pape in 1826, were a more consistent material, permitting wider dynamic ranges as hammer weights and string tension increased. The sostenuto pedal (see below), invented in 1844 by Jean Louis Boisselot and improved by the Steinway firm in 1874, allowed a wider range of effects.
Other important technical innovations of this era included changes to the way the piano was strung, such as the use of a "choir" of three strings rather than two for all but the lower notes, and the use of different stringing methods. With the over strung scale, also called "cross-stringing", the strings are placed in a vertically overlapping slanted arrangement, with two heights of bridges on the soundboard instead of just one. This permits larger, but not necessarily longer, strings to fit within the case of the piano. Over stringing was invented by Jean-Henri Pape during the 1820s, and first patented for use in grand pianos in the United States by Henry Steinway Jr. in 1859.
Duplex scaling: Treble strings of a 182 cm. grand piano. From lower left to upper right: dampers, main sounding length of strings, treble bridge, duplex string length, duplex bridge (long bar perpendicular to strings), hitchpins. With duplexes or aliquot scales, which was patented in 1872 by Theodore Steinway, the different components of string vibrations are controlled by tuning their secondary parts in octave relationships with the sounding lengths. Similar systems developed by Blüthner (1872), as well as Taskin (1788), and Collard (1821) used more distinctly ringing undamped vibrations to modify tone.
Some early pianos had shapes and designs that are no longer in use. The square piano had horizontal strings arranged diagonally across the rectangular case above the hammers and with the keyboard set in the long side. This design is attributed to Gottfried Silbermann or Christian Ernst Friderici on the continent, and Johannes Zumpe or Harman Vietor in England and it was improved by changes first introduced by Guillaume-Lebrecht Petzold in France and Alpheus Babcock in the United States. Square pianos were built in great numbers through the 1840s in Europe and the 1890s in America, and saw the most visible changes of any type of piano: the celebrated iron framed over strung squares manufactured by Steinway & Sons were more than two and a half times the size of Zumpe's wood framed instruments from a century before. Their overwhelming popularity was due to inexpensive construction and price, although their performance and tone were often limited by simple actions and closely spaced strings.
The mechanism in upright pianos is perpendicular to the keys.
The tall, vertically strung upright grand was arranged like a grand set on end, with the soundboard and bridges above the keys, and tuning pins below them. The term was later revived by many manufacturers for advertising purposes. Giraffe, pyramid and lyre pianos were arranged in a somewhat similar fashion in evocatively shaped cases.
The very tall cabinet piano was introduced about 1805 and was built through the 1840s. It had strings arranged vertically on a continuous frame with bridges extended nearly to the floor, behind the keyboard and very large sticker action. The short cottage upright or pianino with vertical stringing, made popular by Robert Wornum around 1815, was built into the 20th century. They are informally called birdcage pianos because of their prominent damper mechanism. Pianinos were distinguished from the oblique, or diagonally strung upright made popular in France by Roller & Blanchet during the late 1820s. The tiny spinet upright was manufactured from the mid-1930s until recent times. The low position of the hammers required the use of a "drop action" to preserve a reasonable keyboard height.
Modern upright and grand pianos attained their present forms by the end of the 19th century. Improvements have been made in manufacturing processes, and many individual details of the instrument continue to receive attention.
Much of the most widely admired piano repertoire, for example, that of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, was composed for a type of instrument that is rather different from the modern instruments on which this music is normally performed today. Even the music of the Romantics, including Liszt, Chopin, Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn and Johannes Brahms, was written for pianos substantially different from ours.
A schematic depiction of the construction of a pianoforte.
Modern pianos come in two basic configurations (with subcategories): the grand piano and the upright piano.
Grand piano
In grand pianos, the frame and strings are horizontal, with the strings extending away from the keyboard. There are several sizes of grand piano. A rough generalization distinguishes the "concert grand" (between about and long) from the "parlor grand" or "boudoir grand" (about to ) and the smaller "baby grand".
All else being equal, longer pianos with longer strings have better sound and lower inharmonicity of the strings. Inharmonicity is the degree to which the frequencies of overtones (known as partials, partial tones, or harmonics) depart from whole multiples of the fundamental frequency. Pianos with shorter, thicker, and stiffer strings (e.g., baby grands) have more inharmonicity. The longer strings on a concert grand can vibrate more freely than the shorter, thicker strings on a baby grand, which means that a concert grand's strings will have truer overtones. This is partly because the strings will be tuned closer to equal temperament in relation to the standard pitch with less "stretching" in the piano tuning (See: Piano tuning). Full-size grands are usually used for public concerts, whereas smaller grands, introduced by Sohmer & Co. in 1884, are often chosen for domestic use where space and cost are considerations.
Upright piano
Upright pianos, also called vertical pianos, are more compact because the frame and strings are vertical. It is considered harder to produce a sensitive piano action when the hammers move horizontally, as the vertical hammer return is dependent on springs which are prone to wear and tear. However, a well-regulated vertical piano will probably play more smoothly than a poorly regulated grand piano, and the very best upright pianos approach the level of some grand pianos of the same size in tone quality and responsiveness.
One noticeable advantage that the grand piano action has over the vertical action is that all grand pianos have a special repetition lever in the playing action that is absent in all verticals. This repetition lever, a separate one for every key, catches the hammer close to the strings as long as the keys are played repeatedly and fairly quickly. In this position, with the hammer resting on the lever, a pianist can play repeated notes, staccato, and trills with much more speed and control than is possible on a vertical piano.
Upright pianos with unusually tall frames and long strings are sometimes called "upright grand" pianos.
Some authors classify modern pianos according to their height and, to modifications of the action that are necessary to accomodate the height.
* Studio pianos are around 42 to 45 inches tall. This is the shortest cabinet that can accomodate a 'full-sized' action located above the keyboard.
* Console pianos have a compact action (shorter hammers), and are a few inches shorter than studio models.
* The top of a Spinet model barely rises above the keyboard. The action is located below, operated by vertical wires that are attached to the backs of the keys.
* Anything taller than a studio piano is called an upright.
Player piano
Toy pianos began to be manufactured in the 19th century. In 1863, Henri Fourneaux invented the player piano, which "plays itself" from a piano roll without the need for a pianist. The player piano is a piano that records a performance using rolls of paper with perforations, and then replays the performance using pneumatic devices. A modern equivalent for the player piano is the Yamaha Disklavier system, which uses solenoids and midi instead of pneumatics and rolls. Silent pianos, which allow a regular piano to be used converted to a digital instrument, are a recent innovation and are becoming more popular.
Irving Berlin played a special piano called the transposing piano, which was invented in 1801 by Edward Ryley. It had a lever under the keyboard used to alter the music to any key. One of Berlin's pianos is in the Smithsonian Museum. For much of his career, Berlin only knew how to play the black keys. But with his 'trick piano' he was no longer limited to the key of F-sharp.
A relatively recent development is the prepared piano, which is used in contemporary art music. A prepared piano is a standard grand piano which has had objects placed inside it before a performance in order to alter its sound, or which has had its mechanism changed in some way. The scores for music for prepared piano often instruct the pianist to insert pieces of rubber or small pieces of metal (screws or washers) in between the strings. These added items either mute the strings or create unusual vibrating sounds.
Since the 1980s, digital pianos have been available, which use digital sampling technology to reproduce the sound of each piano note. The best digital pianos are sophisticated, with features including working pedals, weighted keys, multiple voices, and MIDI interfaces. However, with such technology, it is difficult to duplicate one particular aspect of acoustic pianos, namely that when the damper pedal (see below) is depressed, the strings not struck vibrate sympathetically when other strings are struck, as well as the unique instrument-specific mathematical non-linearity of partials on any given unison. Since this sympathetic vibration is considered central to piano tone, many digital pianos do not sound the same as the best acoustic pianos. Progress is being made in this area by including physical models of sympathetic vibration in the synthesis software. Some higher end digital pianos, such as the Yamaha Clavinova series, or the KAWAI MP8 series, produced in the last few years incorporate string resonance technology to overcome this limitation.
With the advent of powerful desktop computers, highly realistic sampled digital grand pianos have become available as affordable software modules. Some use multi-gigabyte piano sample sets with as many as 90 recordings, each lasting many seconds, for each of the 88 keys under different conditions, augmented by additional samples to emulate sympathetic resonance, key release, the drop of the dampers, and simulations of piano techniques like re-pedaling.
Keyboard
Almost every modern piano has 36 black keys and 52 white keys for a total of 88 keys (seven octaves plus a minor third, from A0 to C8). Many older pianos only have 85 keys (seven octaves from A0 to A7), while some manufacturers extend the range further in one or both directions.
Some Bösendorfer pianos extend the normal range downwards to F0, with one other model going as far as a bottom C0, making a full eight octave range. These extra keys are sometimes hidden under a small hinged lid that can be flipped down to cover the keys in order to avoid visual disorientation in a pianist unfamiliar with the extended keyboard. On others, the colours of the extra white keys are reversed (black instead of white).
The extra keys are added primarily for increased resonance from the associated strings; that is, they vibrate sympathetically with other strings whenever the damper pedal is depressed and thus give a fuller tone. Only a very small number of works composed for piano actually use these notes. More recently, the Stuart and Sons company has also manufactured extended-range pianos. On their instruments, the range is extended both down the bass to F0 and up the treble to F8 for a full eight octaves. The extra keys are the same as the other keys in appearance.
Small studio upright acoustical pianos with only 65 keys have been manufactured for use by roving pianists. Known as "gig" pianos and still containing a cast iron harp, these are comparatively lightweight and can be easily transported to and from engagements by only two men. As their harp is longer than that of a spinet or console piano, they have a stronger bass sound that to some pianists is well worth the trade-off in range that a reduced key-set offers.
Piano pedals from left to right: una corda, sostenuto, and damper.
Pianos have had pedals, or some close equivalent, since the earliest days. (In the 18th century, some pianos used levers pressed upward by the player's knee instead of pedals.) Most grand pianos have three pedals: soft pedal (una corda), sostenuto, and sustain pedal (from left to right, respectively). Most modern upright pianos have three pedals: soft pedal, practice pedal and sustain pedal, though older or cheaper models may lack the practice pedal.
The sustain pedal (or, damper pedal) is often simply called "the pedal", since it is the most frequently used. It is placed as the rightmost pedal in the group. It lifts the dampers from all keys, sustaining all played notes, and altering the overall tone.
The soft pedal or una corda pedal is placed leftmost in the row of pedals. In grand pianos, it shifts the entire action, including the keyboard, to the right, so that the hammers hit only one of the three strings for each note (hence the name una corda, or 'one string'). The effect is to soften the note as well as to change the tone. In uprights, this action is not possible, and so the pedal moves the hammers closer to the strings, allowing the hammers to hit the strings with less kinetic energy to produce a softer sound.
On grand pianos, the middle pedal is a sostenuto pedal. This pedal keeps raised any damper that was already raised at the moment the pedal is depressed. This makes it possible to sustain some notes (by depressing the sostenuto pedal before notes to be sustained are released) while the player's hands are free to play other notes. This can be useful for musical passages with pedal points and other otherwise tricky or impossible situations.
On many upright pianos, there is a middle pedal called the 'practice' or celeste pedal. This drops a piece of felt between the hammers and strings, greatly muting the sounds.
There are also non-standard variants. On vertical pianos, the middle pedal can be a bass sustain pedal: that is, when it is depressed, the dampers lift off the strings only in the bass section. This pedal would be used only when a pianist needs to sustain a single bass note or chord over many measures, while playing the melody in the treble section. On the largest Fazioli piano, there is a fourth pedal to the left of the principal three. This fourth pedal works in the same way as the soft pedal of an upright piano, moving the hammers closer to the strings.
An upright pedal piano
The rare transposing piano, of which Irving Berlin possessed an example, had a middle pedal that functioned as a clutch which disengages the keyboard from the mechanism, enabling the keyboard to be moved to the left or right with a lever. The entire action of the piano is thus shifted to allow the pianist to play music written in one key so that it sounds in a different key. The pedalier piano, or pedal piano, is a rare type of piano that includes a pedalboard, enabling bass register notes to be played with the feet, as is standard on the organ. There are two types of pedal piano: the pedal board may be an integral part of the instrument, using the same strings and mechanism as the manual keyboard, or, less frequently, it may consist of two independent pianos (each with its separate mechanics and strings) which are placed one above the other, a regular piano played by the hands and a bass-register piano played by the feet.
Many parts of a piano are made of materials selected for sturdiness. In quality pianos, the outer rim of the piano is made of a hardwood, normally maple or beech. According to Harold A. Conklin, the purpose of a sturdy rim is so that "the vibrational energy will stay as much as possible in the soundboard instead of dissipating uselessly in the case parts, which are inefficient radiators of sound."
View from below of a 182-cm grand piano. In order of distance from viewer: softwood braces, tapered soundboard ribs, soundboard. The metal rod at lower right is a humidity control device.
The rim is normally made by laminating flexible strips of hardwood to the desired shape, a system that was developed by Theodore Steinway in 1880. The thick wooden braces at the bottom (grands) or back (uprights) of the piano are not as acoustically important as the rim, and are often made of a softwood, even in top-quality pianos, in order to save weight. The requirement of structural strength, fulfilled with stout hardwood and thick metal, makes a piano heavy; even a small upright can weigh 136 kg (300 lb), and the Steinway concert grand (Model D) weighs 480 kg (990 lb). The largest piano built, the Fazioli F308, weighs 691 kg (1520 lb).
The pinblock, which holds the tuning pins in place, is another area of the piano where toughness is important. It is made of hardwood, (often maple) and generally is laminated (built of multiple layers) for additional strength and gripping power. Piano strings (also called piano wire), which must endure years of extreme tension and hard blows, are made of high quality steel. They are manufactured to vary as little as possible in diameter, since all deviations from uniformity introduce tonal distortion. The bass strings of a piano are made of a steel core wrapped with copper wire, to increase their mass whilst retaining flexibility.
The plate, or metal frame, of a piano is usually made of cast iron. It is advantageous for the plate to be quite massive. Since the strings are attached to the plate at one end, any vibrations transmitted to the plate will result in loss of energy to the desired (efficient) channel of sound transmission, namely the bridge and the soundboard. Some manufacturers now use cast steel in their plates, for greater strength. The casting of the plate is a delicate art, since the dimensions are crucial and the iron shrinks by about one percent during cooling.
The inclusion in a piano of an extremely large piece of metal is potentially an aesthetic handicap, which piano makers overcome by polishing, painting and decorating the plate. Plates often include the manufacturer's ornamental medallion and can be strikingly attractive. In an effort to make pianos lighter, Alcoa worked with Winter and Company piano manufacturers to make pianos using an aluminum plate during the 1940s. The use of aluminum for piano plates, however, did not become widely accepted and was discontinued.
The numerous grand parts and upright parts of a piano action are generally hardwood (e.g. maple, beech. hornbeam). However, since World War II, plastics have become available. Early plastics were incorporated into some pianos in the late 1940s and 1950s, but proved disastrous because they crystallized and lost their strength after only a few decades of use. The Steinway firm once incorporated Teflon, a synthetic material developed by DuPont, for some grand action parts in place of cloth, but ultimately abandoned the experiment due to an inherent "clicking" which invariably developed over time. (Also Teflon is "humidity stable" whereas the wood adjacent to the Teflon will swell and shrink with humidity changes, causing problems.) More recently, the Kawai firm has built pianos with action parts made of more modern and effective plastics such as carbon fiber; these parts have held up better and have generally received the respect of piano technicians .
Ivorite and ebony keys on a modern Steinway & Sons concert grand piano.
The part of the piano where materials probably matter more than anywhere else is the soundboard. In quality pianos, this is made of solid spruce (that is, spruce boards glued together at their edges). Spruce is chosen for its high ratio of strength to weight. The best piano makers use close-grained, quarter-sawn, defect-free spruce, and make sure that it has been carefully dried over a long period of time before making it into soundboards. In cheap pianos, the soundboard is often made of plywood.
Piano keys are generally made of spruce or basswood, for lightness. Spruce is normally used in high-quality pianos. Traditionally, the black keys were made from ebony and the white keys were covered with strips of ivory, but since ivory-yielding species are now endangered and protected by treaty, plastics are now almost exclusively used. Also, ivory tends to chip more easily than plastic. Legal ivory can still be obtained in limited quantities. At one time, the Yamaha firm innovated a plastic called "Ivorine" or "Ivorite", since imitated by other makers, that mimics the look and feel of ivory.
A piano tuner
Pianos need regular tuning to keep them up to pitch, which is usually the internationally recognized standard concert pitch of A4 = 440 Hz. The hammers of pianos are voiced to compensate for gradual hardening, and other parts also need periodic regulation. Aged and worn pianos can be rebuilt or reconditioned. Often, by replacing a great number of their parts, they can be made to perform as well as new pianos. Older pianos are often more settled and produce a warmer tone.
Piano moving should be done by trained piano movers using adequate manpower and the correct equipment for any particular piano's size and weight. Pianos are heavy yet delicate instruments. Over the years, professional piano movers have developed special techniques for transporting both grands and uprights which prevent damage to the case and to the piano's mechanics.
The piano at the social center in the 19th century (Moritz von Schwind, 1868). The man at the piano is Franz Schubert.
The piano is a crucial instrument in Western classical music, jazz, film, television, and most other complex western musical genres. Since a large number of composers are proficient pianists â and because the piano keyboard offers an easy means of complex melodic and harmonic interplay â the piano is often used as a tool for composition.
Pianos were, and still are, popular instruments for private household ownership. Hence, pianos have gained a place in the popular consciousness, and are sometimes referred to by nicknames including: "the ivories", "the joanna", "the eighty-eight", and "the black(s) and white(s)", "the little joe(s)". Playing the piano is sometimes referred to as "tickling the ivories".
;General
* Innovations in the piano
* Jazz piano
* Piano acoustics
* Piano key frequencies (in equal temperament)
* Piano trio
* String piano
;Related lists
* List of films about pianists
* Lists of solo piano pieces
* List of piano makers
* List of piano brand names
* List of classical pianists (recorded)
;Related instruments
* Hammered dulcimer
* Harp
* Clavichord
* Harpsichord
* Organ and Pipe organ
* Electric piano
* Electronic piano
* The authoritative New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (available online by subscription), contains a wealth of information. Main article: "Pianoforte".
* The Encyclopædia Britannica (available online by subscription) also includes much information on the piano. In the 1988 edition, the primary article can be found in "Musical Instruments".
* The Piano Book by Larry Fine (4th ed. Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts: Brookside Press, 2001; ISBN 1-929145-01-2) gives the basics of how pianos work, and a thorough evaluative survey of current pianos and their manufacturers. It also includes advice on buying and owning pianos.
*Giraffes, black dragons, and other pianos: a technological history from Cristofori to the modern concert grand by Edwin M. Good (1982, second ed., 2001, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press) is a standard reference on the history of the piano.
*The Early Pianoforte by Stewart Pollens (1995, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) is an authoritative work covering the ancestry of the piano, its invention by Cristofori, and the early stages of its subsequent evolution.
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;Information
* Yamaha Musician - Yamaha piano reviews and enthusiast site
* Grand Piano information and images
* The Piano Page Lots of information from the Piano Technicians Guild
* WikiRecording's Guide to Recording Pianos
;History
* History of the Piano Forte, Association of Blind Piano Tuners, UK
* The Frederick Historical Piano Collection
;Piano Technique
* Principles of Piano Technique
;Sheet music for Piano
* All Piano Scores Free printable classical sheet music for piano + audio
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Piano | Is the mechanism in an upright piano perpendicular to its keys? | The mechanism in upright pianos is perpendicular to the keys. | data/set2/a1 | Piano
Baby Grand Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard that produces sound by striking steel strings with felt covered hammers. The hammers immediately rebound, allowing the strings to continue vibrating at their resonant frequency. " Hammer Time" by John Kiehl, Wolfram Demonstrations Project. These vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a soundboard that couples the acoustic energy to the air so that it can be heard as sound.
The piano is widely used in Western music for solo performance, ensemble use, chamber music, and accompaniment. It is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal. Although not portable and often expensive, the piano's versatility and ubiquity have made it one of the most familiar musical instruments. It is sometimes classified as both a percussion and a stringed instrument. According to the Hornbostel-Sachs method of music classification, it is grouped with Chordophones.
The word piano is a shortened form of the word pianoforte, which is seldom used except in formal language and derived from the original Italian name for the instrument, clavicembalo [or gravicembalo] col piano e forte (literally harpsichord with soft and loud). This refers to the instrument's responsiveness to keyboard touch, which allows the pianist to produce notes at different dynamic levels by controlling the speed with which the hammers hit the strings.
Early piano replica by the modern builder Paul McNulty, after Walter & Sohn, 1805
The piano was originally founded on earlier technological innovations. The first string instruments with struck strings were the hammered dulcimers originating from the Persian traditional musical instrument santur. David R. Peterson (1994), "Acoustics of the hammered dulcimer, its history, and recent developments", Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 95 (5), p. 3002. During the Middle Ages, there were several attempts at creating stringed keyboard instruments with struck strings, Pollens, 1995. chp. 1 the earliest being the hurdy gurdy which has uncertain origins. By the 17th century, 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.
Grand piano by Louis Bas of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, France, 1781. Earliest French grand piano known to survive; includes an inverted wrestplank and action derived from the work of Bartolomeo Cristofiori (ca. 1700) with ornately decorated soundboard.
The invention of the modern piano is credited to Bartolomeo Cristofori of Padua, Italy, who was employed by Prince Ferdinand de Medici as the Keeper of the Instruments. He was an expert harpsichord maker and was well acquainted with the previous body of knowledge on stringed keyboard instruments. It is not known exactly when Cristofori first built a piano. An inventory made by his employers, the Medici family, indicates the existence of a piano by the year 1700; another document of doubtful authenticity indicates a date of 1698. The three Cristofori pianos that survive today date from the 1720s.
Cristofori's great success was in solving, without any prior example, the fundamental mechanical problem of piano design: the hammer must strike the string, but not remain in contact with it (as a tangent remains in contact with a clavichord string) because this would damp the sound. Moreover, the hammer must return to its rest position without bouncing violently, and it must be possible to repeat a note rapidly. Cristofori's piano action served as a model for the many different approaches to piano actions that followed. While Cristofori's early instruments were made with thin strings and were much quieter than the modern piano, compared to the clavichord (the only previous keyboard instrument capable of minutely controlled dynamic nuance through the keyboard) they were considerably louder and had more sustaining power.
Cristofori's new instrument remained relatively unknown until an Italian writer, Scipione Maffei, wrote an enthusiastic article about it (1711), including a diagram of the mechanism. This article was widely distributed, and most of the next generation of piano builders started their work because of reading it. One of these builders was Gottfried Silbermann, better known as an organ builder. Silbermann's pianos were virtually direct copies of Cristofori's, with one important addition: Silbermann invented the forerunner of the modern damper pedal, which lifts all the dampers from the strings at once.
Silbermann showed Johann Sebastian Bach one of his early instruments in the 1730s, but Bach did not like it at that time, claiming that the higher notes were too soft to allow a full dynamic range. Although this earned him some animosity from Silbermann, the criticism was apparently heeded. Bach did approve of a later instrument he saw in 1747, and even served as an agent in selling Silbermann's pianos.
Piano making flourished during the late 18th century in the Viennese school, which included Johann Andreas Stein (who worked in Augsburg, Germany) and the Viennese makers Nannette Streicher (daughter of Johann Andreas Stein) and Anton Walter. Viennese-style pianos were built with wood frames, two strings per note, and had leather-covered hammers. Some of these Viennese pianos had the opposite coloring of modern-day pianos; the natural keys were black and the accidental keys white. It was for such instruments that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed his concertos and sonatas, and replicas of them are built today for use in authentic-instrument performance of his music. The pianos of Mozart's day had a softer, clearer tone than today's pianos or English pianos, with less sustaining power. The term fortepiano is nowadays often used to distinguish the 18th-century instrument from later pianos.
In the period lasting from about 1790 to 1860, the Mozart-era piano underwent tremendous changes that led to the modern form of the instrument. This revolution was in response to a consistent preference by composers and pianists for a more powerful, sustained piano sound, and made possible by the ongoing Industrial Revolution with technological resources such as high-quality steel, called piano wire, for strings, and precision casting for the production of iron frames. Over time, the tonal range of the piano was also increased from the five octaves of Mozart's day to the 7â
or more octaves found on modern pianos.
Broadwood square action
Early technological progress owed much to the English firm of Broadwood, who already had a reputation for the splendour and powerful tone of its harpsichords. Broadwood constructed instruments that were progressively larger, louder, and more robustly constructed. They sent pianos to both Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven, and were the first firm to build pianos with a range of more than five octaves: five octaves and a fifth during the 1790s, six octaves by 1810 (Beethoven used the extra notes in his later works), and seven octaves by 1820. The Viennese makers similarly followed these trends, however the two schools used different piano actions: Broadwoods were more robust, Viennese instruments were more sensitive.
Erard square action
By the 1820s, the center of innovation had shifted to Paris, where the Pleyel firm manufactured pianos used by Frédéric Chopin and the Ãrard firm manufactured those used by Franz Liszt. In 1821, Sébastien Ãrard invented the double escapement action, which permitted a note to be repeated even if the key had not yet risen to its maximum vertical position. This facilitated rapid playing of repeated notes - and this musical device was pioneered by Liszt. When the invention became public, as revised by Henri Herz, the double escapement action gradually became standard in grand pianos, and is still incorporated into all grand pianos currently produced.
One of the major technical innovations that helped to create the sound of the modern piano was the use of a strong iron frame. Also called the "plate", the iron frame sits atop the soundboard, and serves as the primary bulwark against the force of string tension. The increased structural integrity of the iron frame allowed the use of thicker, tenser, and more numerous strings. In a modern grand the total string tension can exceed 20 tons. The single piece cast iron frame was patented in 1825 in Boston by Alpheus Babcock, combining the metal hitch pin plate (1821, claimed by Broadwood on behalf of Samuel Hervé) and resisting bars (Thom and Allen, 1820, but also claimed by Broadwood and Ãrard). Babcock later worked for the Chickering & Mackays firm who patented the first full iron frame for grand pianos in 1843. Composite forged metal frames were preferred by many European makers until the American system was fully adopted by the early 20th century.
Other innovations for the mechanism included the use of felt hammer coverings instead of layered leather hammers. Felt hammers, which were first introduced by Henri Pape in 1826, were a more consistent material, permitting wider dynamic ranges as hammer weights and string tension increased. The sostenuto pedal (see below), invented in 1844 by Jean Louis Boisselot and improved by the Steinway firm in 1874, allowed a wider range of effects.
Other important technical innovations of this era included changes to the way the piano was strung, such as the use of a "choir" of three strings rather than two for all but the lower notes, and the use of different stringing methods. With the over strung scale, also called "cross-stringing", the strings are placed in a vertically overlapping slanted arrangement, with two heights of bridges on the soundboard instead of just one. This permits larger, but not necessarily longer, strings to fit within the case of the piano. Over stringing was invented by Jean-Henri Pape during the 1820s, and first patented for use in grand pianos in the United States by Henry Steinway Jr. in 1859.
Duplex scaling: Treble strings of a 182 cm. grand piano. From lower left to upper right: dampers, main sounding length of strings, treble bridge, duplex string length, duplex bridge (long bar perpendicular to strings), hitchpins. With duplexes or aliquot scales, which was patented in 1872 by Theodore Steinway, the different components of string vibrations are controlled by tuning their secondary parts in octave relationships with the sounding lengths. Similar systems developed by Blüthner (1872), as well as Taskin (1788), and Collard (1821) used more distinctly ringing undamped vibrations to modify tone.
Some early pianos had shapes and designs that are no longer in use. The square piano had horizontal strings arranged diagonally across the rectangular case above the hammers and with the keyboard set in the long side. This design is attributed to Gottfried Silbermann or Christian Ernst Friderici on the continent, and Johannes Zumpe or Harman Vietor in England and it was improved by changes first introduced by Guillaume-Lebrecht Petzold in France and Alpheus Babcock in the United States. Square pianos were built in great numbers through the 1840s in Europe and the 1890s in America, and saw the most visible changes of any type of piano: the celebrated iron framed over strung squares manufactured by Steinway & Sons were more than two and a half times the size of Zumpe's wood framed instruments from a century before. Their overwhelming popularity was due to inexpensive construction and price, although their performance and tone were often limited by simple actions and closely spaced strings.
The mechanism in upright pianos is perpendicular to the keys.
The tall, vertically strung upright grand was arranged like a grand set on end, with the soundboard and bridges above the keys, and tuning pins below them. The term was later revived by many manufacturers for advertising purposes. Giraffe, pyramid and lyre pianos were arranged in a somewhat similar fashion in evocatively shaped cases.
The very tall cabinet piano was introduced about 1805 and was built through the 1840s. It had strings arranged vertically on a continuous frame with bridges extended nearly to the floor, behind the keyboard and very large sticker action. The short cottage upright or pianino with vertical stringing, made popular by Robert Wornum around 1815, was built into the 20th century. They are informally called birdcage pianos because of their prominent damper mechanism. Pianinos were distinguished from the oblique, or diagonally strung upright made popular in France by Roller & Blanchet during the late 1820s. The tiny spinet upright was manufactured from the mid-1930s until recent times. The low position of the hammers required the use of a "drop action" to preserve a reasonable keyboard height.
Modern upright and grand pianos attained their present forms by the end of the 19th century. Improvements have been made in manufacturing processes, and many individual details of the instrument continue to receive attention.
Much of the most widely admired piano repertoire, for example, that of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, was composed for a type of instrument that is rather different from the modern instruments on which this music is normally performed today. Even the music of the Romantics, including Liszt, Chopin, Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn and Johannes Brahms, was written for pianos substantially different from ours.
A schematic depiction of the construction of a pianoforte.
Modern pianos come in two basic configurations (with subcategories): the grand piano and the upright piano.
Grand piano
In grand pianos, the frame and strings are horizontal, with the strings extending away from the keyboard. There are several sizes of grand piano. A rough generalization distinguishes the "concert grand" (between about and long) from the "parlor grand" or "boudoir grand" (about to ) and the smaller "baby grand".
All else being equal, longer pianos with longer strings have better sound and lower inharmonicity of the strings. Inharmonicity is the degree to which the frequencies of overtones (known as partials, partial tones, or harmonics) depart from whole multiples of the fundamental frequency. Pianos with shorter, thicker, and stiffer strings (e.g., baby grands) have more inharmonicity. The longer strings on a concert grand can vibrate more freely than the shorter, thicker strings on a baby grand, which means that a concert grand's strings will have truer overtones. This is partly because the strings will be tuned closer to equal temperament in relation to the standard pitch with less "stretching" in the piano tuning (See: Piano tuning). Full-size grands are usually used for public concerts, whereas smaller grands, introduced by Sohmer & Co. in 1884, are often chosen for domestic use where space and cost are considerations.
Upright piano
Upright pianos, also called vertical pianos, are more compact because the frame and strings are vertical. It is considered harder to produce a sensitive piano action when the hammers move horizontally, as the vertical hammer return is dependent on springs which are prone to wear and tear. However, a well-regulated vertical piano will probably play more smoothly than a poorly regulated grand piano, and the very best upright pianos approach the level of some grand pianos of the same size in tone quality and responsiveness.
One noticeable advantage that the grand piano action has over the vertical action is that all grand pianos have a special repetition lever in the playing action that is absent in all verticals. This repetition lever, a separate one for every key, catches the hammer close to the strings as long as the keys are played repeatedly and fairly quickly. In this position, with the hammer resting on the lever, a pianist can play repeated notes, staccato, and trills with much more speed and control than is possible on a vertical piano.
Upright pianos with unusually tall frames and long strings are sometimes called "upright grand" pianos.
Some authors classify modern pianos according to their height and, to modifications of the action that are necessary to accomodate the height.
* Studio pianos are around 42 to 45 inches tall. This is the shortest cabinet that can accomodate a 'full-sized' action located above the keyboard.
* Console pianos have a compact action (shorter hammers), and are a few inches shorter than studio models.
* The top of a Spinet model barely rises above the keyboard. The action is located below, operated by vertical wires that are attached to the backs of the keys.
* Anything taller than a studio piano is called an upright.
Player piano
Toy pianos began to be manufactured in the 19th century. In 1863, Henri Fourneaux invented the player piano, which "plays itself" from a piano roll without the need for a pianist. The player piano is a piano that records a performance using rolls of paper with perforations, and then replays the performance using pneumatic devices. A modern equivalent for the player piano is the Yamaha Disklavier system, which uses solenoids and midi instead of pneumatics and rolls. Silent pianos, which allow a regular piano to be used converted to a digital instrument, are a recent innovation and are becoming more popular.
Irving Berlin played a special piano called the transposing piano, which was invented in 1801 by Edward Ryley. It had a lever under the keyboard used to alter the music to any key. One of Berlin's pianos is in the Smithsonian Museum. For much of his career, Berlin only knew how to play the black keys. But with his 'trick piano' he was no longer limited to the key of F-sharp.
A relatively recent development is the prepared piano, which is used in contemporary art music. A prepared piano is a standard grand piano which has had objects placed inside it before a performance in order to alter its sound, or which has had its mechanism changed in some way. The scores for music for prepared piano often instruct the pianist to insert pieces of rubber or small pieces of metal (screws or washers) in between the strings. These added items either mute the strings or create unusual vibrating sounds.
Since the 1980s, digital pianos have been available, which use digital sampling technology to reproduce the sound of each piano note. The best digital pianos are sophisticated, with features including working pedals, weighted keys, multiple voices, and MIDI interfaces. However, with such technology, it is difficult to duplicate one particular aspect of acoustic pianos, namely that when the damper pedal (see below) is depressed, the strings not struck vibrate sympathetically when other strings are struck, as well as the unique instrument-specific mathematical non-linearity of partials on any given unison. Since this sympathetic vibration is considered central to piano tone, many digital pianos do not sound the same as the best acoustic pianos. Progress is being made in this area by including physical models of sympathetic vibration in the synthesis software. Some higher end digital pianos, such as the Yamaha Clavinova series, or the KAWAI MP8 series, produced in the last few years incorporate string resonance technology to overcome this limitation.
With the advent of powerful desktop computers, highly realistic sampled digital grand pianos have become available as affordable software modules. Some use multi-gigabyte piano sample sets with as many as 90 recordings, each lasting many seconds, for each of the 88 keys under different conditions, augmented by additional samples to emulate sympathetic resonance, key release, the drop of the dampers, and simulations of piano techniques like re-pedaling.
Keyboard
Almost every modern piano has 36 black keys and 52 white keys for a total of 88 keys (seven octaves plus a minor third, from A0 to C8). Many older pianos only have 85 keys (seven octaves from A0 to A7), while some manufacturers extend the range further in one or both directions.
Some Bösendorfer pianos extend the normal range downwards to F0, with one other model going as far as a bottom C0, making a full eight octave range. These extra keys are sometimes hidden under a small hinged lid that can be flipped down to cover the keys in order to avoid visual disorientation in a pianist unfamiliar with the extended keyboard. On others, the colours of the extra white keys are reversed (black instead of white).
The extra keys are added primarily for increased resonance from the associated strings; that is, they vibrate sympathetically with other strings whenever the damper pedal is depressed and thus give a fuller tone. Only a very small number of works composed for piano actually use these notes. More recently, the Stuart and Sons company has also manufactured extended-range pianos. On their instruments, the range is extended both down the bass to F0 and up the treble to F8 for a full eight octaves. The extra keys are the same as the other keys in appearance.
Small studio upright acoustical pianos with only 65 keys have been manufactured for use by roving pianists. Known as "gig" pianos and still containing a cast iron harp, these are comparatively lightweight and can be easily transported to and from engagements by only two men. As their harp is longer than that of a spinet or console piano, they have a stronger bass sound that to some pianists is well worth the trade-off in range that a reduced key-set offers.
Piano pedals from left to right: una corda, sostenuto, and damper.
Pianos have had pedals, or some close equivalent, since the earliest days. (In the 18th century, some pianos used levers pressed upward by the player's knee instead of pedals.) Most grand pianos have three pedals: soft pedal (una corda), sostenuto, and sustain pedal (from left to right, respectively). Most modern upright pianos have three pedals: soft pedal, practice pedal and sustain pedal, though older or cheaper models may lack the practice pedal.
The sustain pedal (or, damper pedal) is often simply called "the pedal", since it is the most frequently used. It is placed as the rightmost pedal in the group. It lifts the dampers from all keys, sustaining all played notes, and altering the overall tone.
The soft pedal or una corda pedal is placed leftmost in the row of pedals. In grand pianos, it shifts the entire action, including the keyboard, to the right, so that the hammers hit only one of the three strings for each note (hence the name una corda, or 'one string'). The effect is to soften the note as well as to change the tone. In uprights, this action is not possible, and so the pedal moves the hammers closer to the strings, allowing the hammers to hit the strings with less kinetic energy to produce a softer sound.
On grand pianos, the middle pedal is a sostenuto pedal. This pedal keeps raised any damper that was already raised at the moment the pedal is depressed. This makes it possible to sustain some notes (by depressing the sostenuto pedal before notes to be sustained are released) while the player's hands are free to play other notes. This can be useful for musical passages with pedal points and other otherwise tricky or impossible situations.
On many upright pianos, there is a middle pedal called the 'practice' or celeste pedal. This drops a piece of felt between the hammers and strings, greatly muting the sounds.
There are also non-standard variants. On vertical pianos, the middle pedal can be a bass sustain pedal: that is, when it is depressed, the dampers lift off the strings only in the bass section. This pedal would be used only when a pianist needs to sustain a single bass note or chord over many measures, while playing the melody in the treble section. On the largest Fazioli piano, there is a fourth pedal to the left of the principal three. This fourth pedal works in the same way as the soft pedal of an upright piano, moving the hammers closer to the strings.
An upright pedal piano
The rare transposing piano, of which Irving Berlin possessed an example, had a middle pedal that functioned as a clutch which disengages the keyboard from the mechanism, enabling the keyboard to be moved to the left or right with a lever. The entire action of the piano is thus shifted to allow the pianist to play music written in one key so that it sounds in a different key. The pedalier piano, or pedal piano, is a rare type of piano that includes a pedalboard, enabling bass register notes to be played with the feet, as is standard on the organ. There are two types of pedal piano: the pedal board may be an integral part of the instrument, using the same strings and mechanism as the manual keyboard, or, less frequently, it may consist of two independent pianos (each with its separate mechanics and strings) which are placed one above the other, a regular piano played by the hands and a bass-register piano played by the feet.
Many parts of a piano are made of materials selected for sturdiness. In quality pianos, the outer rim of the piano is made of a hardwood, normally maple or beech. According to Harold A. Conklin, the purpose of a sturdy rim is so that "the vibrational energy will stay as much as possible in the soundboard instead of dissipating uselessly in the case parts, which are inefficient radiators of sound."
View from below of a 182-cm grand piano. In order of distance from viewer: softwood braces, tapered soundboard ribs, soundboard. The metal rod at lower right is a humidity control device.
The rim is normally made by laminating flexible strips of hardwood to the desired shape, a system that was developed by Theodore Steinway in 1880. The thick wooden braces at the bottom (grands) or back (uprights) of the piano are not as acoustically important as the rim, and are often made of a softwood, even in top-quality pianos, in order to save weight. The requirement of structural strength, fulfilled with stout hardwood and thick metal, makes a piano heavy; even a small upright can weigh 136 kg (300 lb), and the Steinway concert grand (Model D) weighs 480 kg (990 lb). The largest piano built, the Fazioli F308, weighs 691 kg (1520 lb).
The pinblock, which holds the tuning pins in place, is another area of the piano where toughness is important. It is made of hardwood, (often maple) and generally is laminated (built of multiple layers) for additional strength and gripping power. Piano strings (also called piano wire), which must endure years of extreme tension and hard blows, are made of high quality steel. They are manufactured to vary as little as possible in diameter, since all deviations from uniformity introduce tonal distortion. The bass strings of a piano are made of a steel core wrapped with copper wire, to increase their mass whilst retaining flexibility.
The plate, or metal frame, of a piano is usually made of cast iron. It is advantageous for the plate to be quite massive. Since the strings are attached to the plate at one end, any vibrations transmitted to the plate will result in loss of energy to the desired (efficient) channel of sound transmission, namely the bridge and the soundboard. Some manufacturers now use cast steel in their plates, for greater strength. The casting of the plate is a delicate art, since the dimensions are crucial and the iron shrinks by about one percent during cooling.
The inclusion in a piano of an extremely large piece of metal is potentially an aesthetic handicap, which piano makers overcome by polishing, painting and decorating the plate. Plates often include the manufacturer's ornamental medallion and can be strikingly attractive. In an effort to make pianos lighter, Alcoa worked with Winter and Company piano manufacturers to make pianos using an aluminum plate during the 1940s. The use of aluminum for piano plates, however, did not become widely accepted and was discontinued.
The numerous grand parts and upright parts of a piano action are generally hardwood (e.g. maple, beech. hornbeam). However, since World War II, plastics have become available. Early plastics were incorporated into some pianos in the late 1940s and 1950s, but proved disastrous because they crystallized and lost their strength after only a few decades of use. The Steinway firm once incorporated Teflon, a synthetic material developed by DuPont, for some grand action parts in place of cloth, but ultimately abandoned the experiment due to an inherent "clicking" which invariably developed over time. (Also Teflon is "humidity stable" whereas the wood adjacent to the Teflon will swell and shrink with humidity changes, causing problems.) More recently, the Kawai firm has built pianos with action parts made of more modern and effective plastics such as carbon fiber; these parts have held up better and have generally received the respect of piano technicians .
Ivorite and ebony keys on a modern Steinway & Sons concert grand piano.
The part of the piano where materials probably matter more than anywhere else is the soundboard. In quality pianos, this is made of solid spruce (that is, spruce boards glued together at their edges). Spruce is chosen for its high ratio of strength to weight. The best piano makers use close-grained, quarter-sawn, defect-free spruce, and make sure that it has been carefully dried over a long period of time before making it into soundboards. In cheap pianos, the soundboard is often made of plywood.
Piano keys are generally made of spruce or basswood, for lightness. Spruce is normally used in high-quality pianos. Traditionally, the black keys were made from ebony and the white keys were covered with strips of ivory, but since ivory-yielding species are now endangered and protected by treaty, plastics are now almost exclusively used. Also, ivory tends to chip more easily than plastic. Legal ivory can still be obtained in limited quantities. At one time, the Yamaha firm innovated a plastic called "Ivorine" or "Ivorite", since imitated by other makers, that mimics the look and feel of ivory.
A piano tuner
Pianos need regular tuning to keep them up to pitch, which is usually the internationally recognized standard concert pitch of A4 = 440 Hz. The hammers of pianos are voiced to compensate for gradual hardening, and other parts also need periodic regulation. Aged and worn pianos can be rebuilt or reconditioned. Often, by replacing a great number of their parts, they can be made to perform as well as new pianos. Older pianos are often more settled and produce a warmer tone.
Piano moving should be done by trained piano movers using adequate manpower and the correct equipment for any particular piano's size and weight. Pianos are heavy yet delicate instruments. Over the years, professional piano movers have developed special techniques for transporting both grands and uprights which prevent damage to the case and to the piano's mechanics.
The piano at the social center in the 19th century (Moritz von Schwind, 1868). The man at the piano is Franz Schubert.
The piano is a crucial instrument in Western classical music, jazz, film, television, and most other complex western musical genres. Since a large number of composers are proficient pianists â and because the piano keyboard offers an easy means of complex melodic and harmonic interplay â the piano is often used as a tool for composition.
Pianos were, and still are, popular instruments for private household ownership. Hence, pianos have gained a place in the popular consciousness, and are sometimes referred to by nicknames including: "the ivories", "the joanna", "the eighty-eight", and "the black(s) and white(s)", "the little joe(s)". Playing the piano is sometimes referred to as "tickling the ivories".
;General
* Innovations in the piano
* Jazz piano
* Piano acoustics
* Piano key frequencies (in equal temperament)
* Piano trio
* String piano
;Related lists
* List of films about pianists
* Lists of solo piano pieces
* List of piano makers
* List of piano brand names
* List of classical pianists (recorded)
;Related instruments
* Hammered dulcimer
* Harp
* Clavichord
* Harpsichord
* Organ and Pipe organ
* Electric piano
* Electronic piano
* The authoritative New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (available online by subscription), contains a wealth of information. Main article: "Pianoforte".
* The Encyclopædia Britannica (available online by subscription) also includes much information on the piano. In the 1988 edition, the primary article can be found in "Musical Instruments".
* The Piano Book by Larry Fine (4th ed. Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts: Brookside Press, 2001; ISBN 1-929145-01-2) gives the basics of how pianos work, and a thorough evaluative survey of current pianos and their manufacturers. It also includes advice on buying and owning pianos.
*Giraffes, black dragons, and other pianos: a technological history from Cristofori to the modern concert grand by Edwin M. Good (1982, second ed., 2001, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press) is a standard reference on the history of the piano.
*The Early Pianoforte by Stewart Pollens (1995, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) is an authoritative work covering the ancestry of the piano, its invention by Cristofori, and the early stages of its subsequent evolution.
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;Information
* Yamaha Musician - Yamaha piano reviews and enthusiast site
* Grand Piano information and images
* The Piano Page Lots of information from the Piano Technicians Guild
* WikiRecording's Guide to Recording Pianos
;History
* History of the Piano Forte, Association of Blind Piano Tuners, UK
* The Frederick Historical Piano Collection
;Piano Technique
* Principles of Piano Technique
;Sheet music for Piano
* All Piano Scores Free printable classical sheet music for piano + audio
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Piano | About how tall is a typical studio piano? | Studio pianos are around 42 to 45 inches tall. | data/set2/a1 | Piano
Baby Grand Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard that produces sound by striking steel strings with felt covered hammers. The hammers immediately rebound, allowing the strings to continue vibrating at their resonant frequency. " Hammer Time" by John Kiehl, Wolfram Demonstrations Project. These vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a soundboard that couples the acoustic energy to the air so that it can be heard as sound.
The piano is widely used in Western music for solo performance, ensemble use, chamber music, and accompaniment. It is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal. Although not portable and often expensive, the piano's versatility and ubiquity have made it one of the most familiar musical instruments. It is sometimes classified as both a percussion and a stringed instrument. According to the Hornbostel-Sachs method of music classification, it is grouped with Chordophones.
The word piano is a shortened form of the word pianoforte, which is seldom used except in formal language and derived from the original Italian name for the instrument, clavicembalo [or gravicembalo] col piano e forte (literally harpsichord with soft and loud). This refers to the instrument's responsiveness to keyboard touch, which allows the pianist to produce notes at different dynamic levels by controlling the speed with which the hammers hit the strings.
Early piano replica by the modern builder Paul McNulty, after Walter & Sohn, 1805
The piano was originally founded on earlier technological innovations. The first string instruments with struck strings were the hammered dulcimers originating from the Persian traditional musical instrument santur. David R. Peterson (1994), "Acoustics of the hammered dulcimer, its history, and recent developments", Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 95 (5), p. 3002. During the Middle Ages, there were several attempts at creating stringed keyboard instruments with struck strings, Pollens, 1995. chp. 1 the earliest being the hurdy gurdy which has uncertain origins. By the 17th century, 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.
Grand piano by Louis Bas of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, France, 1781. Earliest French grand piano known to survive; includes an inverted wrestplank and action derived from the work of Bartolomeo Cristofiori (ca. 1700) with ornately decorated soundboard.
The invention of the modern piano is credited to Bartolomeo Cristofori of Padua, Italy, who was employed by Prince Ferdinand de Medici as the Keeper of the Instruments. He was an expert harpsichord maker and was well acquainted with the previous body of knowledge on stringed keyboard instruments. It is not known exactly when Cristofori first built a piano. An inventory made by his employers, the Medici family, indicates the existence of a piano by the year 1700; another document of doubtful authenticity indicates a date of 1698. The three Cristofori pianos that survive today date from the 1720s.
Cristofori's great success was in solving, without any prior example, the fundamental mechanical problem of piano design: the hammer must strike the string, but not remain in contact with it (as a tangent remains in contact with a clavichord string) because this would damp the sound. Moreover, the hammer must return to its rest position without bouncing violently, and it must be possible to repeat a note rapidly. Cristofori's piano action served as a model for the many different approaches to piano actions that followed. While Cristofori's early instruments were made with thin strings and were much quieter than the modern piano, compared to the clavichord (the only previous keyboard instrument capable of minutely controlled dynamic nuance through the keyboard) they were considerably louder and had more sustaining power.
Cristofori's new instrument remained relatively unknown until an Italian writer, Scipione Maffei, wrote an enthusiastic article about it (1711), including a diagram of the mechanism. This article was widely distributed, and most of the next generation of piano builders started their work because of reading it. One of these builders was Gottfried Silbermann, better known as an organ builder. Silbermann's pianos were virtually direct copies of Cristofori's, with one important addition: Silbermann invented the forerunner of the modern damper pedal, which lifts all the dampers from the strings at once.
Silbermann showed Johann Sebastian Bach one of his early instruments in the 1730s, but Bach did not like it at that time, claiming that the higher notes were too soft to allow a full dynamic range. Although this earned him some animosity from Silbermann, the criticism was apparently heeded. Bach did approve of a later instrument he saw in 1747, and even served as an agent in selling Silbermann's pianos.
Piano making flourished during the late 18th century in the Viennese school, which included Johann Andreas Stein (who worked in Augsburg, Germany) and the Viennese makers Nannette Streicher (daughter of Johann Andreas Stein) and Anton Walter. Viennese-style pianos were built with wood frames, two strings per note, and had leather-covered hammers. Some of these Viennese pianos had the opposite coloring of modern-day pianos; the natural keys were black and the accidental keys white. It was for such instruments that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed his concertos and sonatas, and replicas of them are built today for use in authentic-instrument performance of his music. The pianos of Mozart's day had a softer, clearer tone than today's pianos or English pianos, with less sustaining power. The term fortepiano is nowadays often used to distinguish the 18th-century instrument from later pianos.
In the period lasting from about 1790 to 1860, the Mozart-era piano underwent tremendous changes that led to the modern form of the instrument. This revolution was in response to a consistent preference by composers and pianists for a more powerful, sustained piano sound, and made possible by the ongoing Industrial Revolution with technological resources such as high-quality steel, called piano wire, for strings, and precision casting for the production of iron frames. Over time, the tonal range of the piano was also increased from the five octaves of Mozart's day to the 7â
or more octaves found on modern pianos.
Broadwood square action
Early technological progress owed much to the English firm of Broadwood, who already had a reputation for the splendour and powerful tone of its harpsichords. Broadwood constructed instruments that were progressively larger, louder, and more robustly constructed. They sent pianos to both Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven, and were the first firm to build pianos with a range of more than five octaves: five octaves and a fifth during the 1790s, six octaves by 1810 (Beethoven used the extra notes in his later works), and seven octaves by 1820. The Viennese makers similarly followed these trends, however the two schools used different piano actions: Broadwoods were more robust, Viennese instruments were more sensitive.
Erard square action
By the 1820s, the center of innovation had shifted to Paris, where the Pleyel firm manufactured pianos used by Frédéric Chopin and the Ãrard firm manufactured those used by Franz Liszt. In 1821, Sébastien Ãrard invented the double escapement action, which permitted a note to be repeated even if the key had not yet risen to its maximum vertical position. This facilitated rapid playing of repeated notes - and this musical device was pioneered by Liszt. When the invention became public, as revised by Henri Herz, the double escapement action gradually became standard in grand pianos, and is still incorporated into all grand pianos currently produced.
One of the major technical innovations that helped to create the sound of the modern piano was the use of a strong iron frame. Also called the "plate", the iron frame sits atop the soundboard, and serves as the primary bulwark against the force of string tension. The increased structural integrity of the iron frame allowed the use of thicker, tenser, and more numerous strings. In a modern grand the total string tension can exceed 20 tons. The single piece cast iron frame was patented in 1825 in Boston by Alpheus Babcock, combining the metal hitch pin plate (1821, claimed by Broadwood on behalf of Samuel Hervé) and resisting bars (Thom and Allen, 1820, but also claimed by Broadwood and Ãrard). Babcock later worked for the Chickering & Mackays firm who patented the first full iron frame for grand pianos in 1843. Composite forged metal frames were preferred by many European makers until the American system was fully adopted by the early 20th century.
Other innovations for the mechanism included the use of felt hammer coverings instead of layered leather hammers. Felt hammers, which were first introduced by Henri Pape in 1826, were a more consistent material, permitting wider dynamic ranges as hammer weights and string tension increased. The sostenuto pedal (see below), invented in 1844 by Jean Louis Boisselot and improved by the Steinway firm in 1874, allowed a wider range of effects.
Other important technical innovations of this era included changes to the way the piano was strung, such as the use of a "choir" of three strings rather than two for all but the lower notes, and the use of different stringing methods. With the over strung scale, also called "cross-stringing", the strings are placed in a vertically overlapping slanted arrangement, with two heights of bridges on the soundboard instead of just one. This permits larger, but not necessarily longer, strings to fit within the case of the piano. Over stringing was invented by Jean-Henri Pape during the 1820s, and first patented for use in grand pianos in the United States by Henry Steinway Jr. in 1859.
Duplex scaling: Treble strings of a 182 cm. grand piano. From lower left to upper right: dampers, main sounding length of strings, treble bridge, duplex string length, duplex bridge (long bar perpendicular to strings), hitchpins. With duplexes or aliquot scales, which was patented in 1872 by Theodore Steinway, the different components of string vibrations are controlled by tuning their secondary parts in octave relationships with the sounding lengths. Similar systems developed by Blüthner (1872), as well as Taskin (1788), and Collard (1821) used more distinctly ringing undamped vibrations to modify tone.
Some early pianos had shapes and designs that are no longer in use. The square piano had horizontal strings arranged diagonally across the rectangular case above the hammers and with the keyboard set in the long side. This design is attributed to Gottfried Silbermann or Christian Ernst Friderici on the continent, and Johannes Zumpe or Harman Vietor in England and it was improved by changes first introduced by Guillaume-Lebrecht Petzold in France and Alpheus Babcock in the United States. Square pianos were built in great numbers through the 1840s in Europe and the 1890s in America, and saw the most visible changes of any type of piano: the celebrated iron framed over strung squares manufactured by Steinway & Sons were more than two and a half times the size of Zumpe's wood framed instruments from a century before. Their overwhelming popularity was due to inexpensive construction and price, although their performance and tone were often limited by simple actions and closely spaced strings.
The mechanism in upright pianos is perpendicular to the keys.
The tall, vertically strung upright grand was arranged like a grand set on end, with the soundboard and bridges above the keys, and tuning pins below them. The term was later revived by many manufacturers for advertising purposes. Giraffe, pyramid and lyre pianos were arranged in a somewhat similar fashion in evocatively shaped cases.
The very tall cabinet piano was introduced about 1805 and was built through the 1840s. It had strings arranged vertically on a continuous frame with bridges extended nearly to the floor, behind the keyboard and very large sticker action. The short cottage upright or pianino with vertical stringing, made popular by Robert Wornum around 1815, was built into the 20th century. They are informally called birdcage pianos because of their prominent damper mechanism. Pianinos were distinguished from the oblique, or diagonally strung upright made popular in France by Roller & Blanchet during the late 1820s. The tiny spinet upright was manufactured from the mid-1930s until recent times. The low position of the hammers required the use of a "drop action" to preserve a reasonable keyboard height.
Modern upright and grand pianos attained their present forms by the end of the 19th century. Improvements have been made in manufacturing processes, and many individual details of the instrument continue to receive attention.
Much of the most widely admired piano repertoire, for example, that of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, was composed for a type of instrument that is rather different from the modern instruments on which this music is normally performed today. Even the music of the Romantics, including Liszt, Chopin, Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn and Johannes Brahms, was written for pianos substantially different from ours.
A schematic depiction of the construction of a pianoforte.
Modern pianos come in two basic configurations (with subcategories): the grand piano and the upright piano.
Grand piano
In grand pianos, the frame and strings are horizontal, with the strings extending away from the keyboard. There are several sizes of grand piano. A rough generalization distinguishes the "concert grand" (between about and long) from the "parlor grand" or "boudoir grand" (about to ) and the smaller "baby grand".
All else being equal, longer pianos with longer strings have better sound and lower inharmonicity of the strings. Inharmonicity is the degree to which the frequencies of overtones (known as partials, partial tones, or harmonics) depart from whole multiples of the fundamental frequency. Pianos with shorter, thicker, and stiffer strings (e.g., baby grands) have more inharmonicity. The longer strings on a concert grand can vibrate more freely than the shorter, thicker strings on a baby grand, which means that a concert grand's strings will have truer overtones. This is partly because the strings will be tuned closer to equal temperament in relation to the standard pitch with less "stretching" in the piano tuning (See: Piano tuning). Full-size grands are usually used for public concerts, whereas smaller grands, introduced by Sohmer & Co. in 1884, are often chosen for domestic use where space and cost are considerations.
Upright piano
Upright pianos, also called vertical pianos, are more compact because the frame and strings are vertical. It is considered harder to produce a sensitive piano action when the hammers move horizontally, as the vertical hammer return is dependent on springs which are prone to wear and tear. However, a well-regulated vertical piano will probably play more smoothly than a poorly regulated grand piano, and the very best upright pianos approach the level of some grand pianos of the same size in tone quality and responsiveness.
One noticeable advantage that the grand piano action has over the vertical action is that all grand pianos have a special repetition lever in the playing action that is absent in all verticals. This repetition lever, a separate one for every key, catches the hammer close to the strings as long as the keys are played repeatedly and fairly quickly. In this position, with the hammer resting on the lever, a pianist can play repeated notes, staccato, and trills with much more speed and control than is possible on a vertical piano.
Upright pianos with unusually tall frames and long strings are sometimes called "upright grand" pianos.
Some authors classify modern pianos according to their height and, to modifications of the action that are necessary to accomodate the height.
* Studio pianos are around 42 to 45 inches tall. This is the shortest cabinet that can accomodate a 'full-sized' action located above the keyboard.
* Console pianos have a compact action (shorter hammers), and are a few inches shorter than studio models.
* The top of a Spinet model barely rises above the keyboard. The action is located below, operated by vertical wires that are attached to the backs of the keys.
* Anything taller than a studio piano is called an upright.
Player piano
Toy pianos began to be manufactured in the 19th century. In 1863, Henri Fourneaux invented the player piano, which "plays itself" from a piano roll without the need for a pianist. The player piano is a piano that records a performance using rolls of paper with perforations, and then replays the performance using pneumatic devices. A modern equivalent for the player piano is the Yamaha Disklavier system, which uses solenoids and midi instead of pneumatics and rolls. Silent pianos, which allow a regular piano to be used converted to a digital instrument, are a recent innovation and are becoming more popular.
Irving Berlin played a special piano called the transposing piano, which was invented in 1801 by Edward Ryley. It had a lever under the keyboard used to alter the music to any key. One of Berlin's pianos is in the Smithsonian Museum. For much of his career, Berlin only knew how to play the black keys. But with his 'trick piano' he was no longer limited to the key of F-sharp.
A relatively recent development is the prepared piano, which is used in contemporary art music. A prepared piano is a standard grand piano which has had objects placed inside it before a performance in order to alter its sound, or which has had its mechanism changed in some way. The scores for music for prepared piano often instruct the pianist to insert pieces of rubber or small pieces of metal (screws or washers) in between the strings. These added items either mute the strings or create unusual vibrating sounds.
Since the 1980s, digital pianos have been available, which use digital sampling technology to reproduce the sound of each piano note. The best digital pianos are sophisticated, with features including working pedals, weighted keys, multiple voices, and MIDI interfaces. However, with such technology, it is difficult to duplicate one particular aspect of acoustic pianos, namely that when the damper pedal (see below) is depressed, the strings not struck vibrate sympathetically when other strings are struck, as well as the unique instrument-specific mathematical non-linearity of partials on any given unison. Since this sympathetic vibration is considered central to piano tone, many digital pianos do not sound the same as the best acoustic pianos. Progress is being made in this area by including physical models of sympathetic vibration in the synthesis software. Some higher end digital pianos, such as the Yamaha Clavinova series, or the KAWAI MP8 series, produced in the last few years incorporate string resonance technology to overcome this limitation.
With the advent of powerful desktop computers, highly realistic sampled digital grand pianos have become available as affordable software modules. Some use multi-gigabyte piano sample sets with as many as 90 recordings, each lasting many seconds, for each of the 88 keys under different conditions, augmented by additional samples to emulate sympathetic resonance, key release, the drop of the dampers, and simulations of piano techniques like re-pedaling.
Keyboard
Almost every modern piano has 36 black keys and 52 white keys for a total of 88 keys (seven octaves plus a minor third, from A0 to C8). Many older pianos only have 85 keys (seven octaves from A0 to A7), while some manufacturers extend the range further in one or both directions.
Some Bösendorfer pianos extend the normal range downwards to F0, with one other model going as far as a bottom C0, making a full eight octave range. These extra keys are sometimes hidden under a small hinged lid that can be flipped down to cover the keys in order to avoid visual disorientation in a pianist unfamiliar with the extended keyboard. On others, the colours of the extra white keys are reversed (black instead of white).
The extra keys are added primarily for increased resonance from the associated strings; that is, they vibrate sympathetically with other strings whenever the damper pedal is depressed and thus give a fuller tone. Only a very small number of works composed for piano actually use these notes. More recently, the Stuart and Sons company has also manufactured extended-range pianos. On their instruments, the range is extended both down the bass to F0 and up the treble to F8 for a full eight octaves. The extra keys are the same as the other keys in appearance.
Small studio upright acoustical pianos with only 65 keys have been manufactured for use by roving pianists. Known as "gig" pianos and still containing a cast iron harp, these are comparatively lightweight and can be easily transported to and from engagements by only two men. As their harp is longer than that of a spinet or console piano, they have a stronger bass sound that to some pianists is well worth the trade-off in range that a reduced key-set offers.
Piano pedals from left to right: una corda, sostenuto, and damper.
Pianos have had pedals, or some close equivalent, since the earliest days. (In the 18th century, some pianos used levers pressed upward by the player's knee instead of pedals.) Most grand pianos have three pedals: soft pedal (una corda), sostenuto, and sustain pedal (from left to right, respectively). Most modern upright pianos have three pedals: soft pedal, practice pedal and sustain pedal, though older or cheaper models may lack the practice pedal.
The sustain pedal (or, damper pedal) is often simply called "the pedal", since it is the most frequently used. It is placed as the rightmost pedal in the group. It lifts the dampers from all keys, sustaining all played notes, and altering the overall tone.
The soft pedal or una corda pedal is placed leftmost in the row of pedals. In grand pianos, it shifts the entire action, including the keyboard, to the right, so that the hammers hit only one of the three strings for each note (hence the name una corda, or 'one string'). The effect is to soften the note as well as to change the tone. In uprights, this action is not possible, and so the pedal moves the hammers closer to the strings, allowing the hammers to hit the strings with less kinetic energy to produce a softer sound.
On grand pianos, the middle pedal is a sostenuto pedal. This pedal keeps raised any damper that was already raised at the moment the pedal is depressed. This makes it possible to sustain some notes (by depressing the sostenuto pedal before notes to be sustained are released) while the player's hands are free to play other notes. This can be useful for musical passages with pedal points and other otherwise tricky or impossible situations.
On many upright pianos, there is a middle pedal called the 'practice' or celeste pedal. This drops a piece of felt between the hammers and strings, greatly muting the sounds.
There are also non-standard variants. On vertical pianos, the middle pedal can be a bass sustain pedal: that is, when it is depressed, the dampers lift off the strings only in the bass section. This pedal would be used only when a pianist needs to sustain a single bass note or chord over many measures, while playing the melody in the treble section. On the largest Fazioli piano, there is a fourth pedal to the left of the principal three. This fourth pedal works in the same way as the soft pedal of an upright piano, moving the hammers closer to the strings.
An upright pedal piano
The rare transposing piano, of which Irving Berlin possessed an example, had a middle pedal that functioned as a clutch which disengages the keyboard from the mechanism, enabling the keyboard to be moved to the left or right with a lever. The entire action of the piano is thus shifted to allow the pianist to play music written in one key so that it sounds in a different key. The pedalier piano, or pedal piano, is a rare type of piano that includes a pedalboard, enabling bass register notes to be played with the feet, as is standard on the organ. There are two types of pedal piano: the pedal board may be an integral part of the instrument, using the same strings and mechanism as the manual keyboard, or, less frequently, it may consist of two independent pianos (each with its separate mechanics and strings) which are placed one above the other, a regular piano played by the hands and a bass-register piano played by the feet.
Many parts of a piano are made of materials selected for sturdiness. In quality pianos, the outer rim of the piano is made of a hardwood, normally maple or beech. According to Harold A. Conklin, the purpose of a sturdy rim is so that "the vibrational energy will stay as much as possible in the soundboard instead of dissipating uselessly in the case parts, which are inefficient radiators of sound."
View from below of a 182-cm grand piano. In order of distance from viewer: softwood braces, tapered soundboard ribs, soundboard. The metal rod at lower right is a humidity control device.
The rim is normally made by laminating flexible strips of hardwood to the desired shape, a system that was developed by Theodore Steinway in 1880. The thick wooden braces at the bottom (grands) or back (uprights) of the piano are not as acoustically important as the rim, and are often made of a softwood, even in top-quality pianos, in order to save weight. The requirement of structural strength, fulfilled with stout hardwood and thick metal, makes a piano heavy; even a small upright can weigh 136 kg (300 lb), and the Steinway concert grand (Model D) weighs 480 kg (990 lb). The largest piano built, the Fazioli F308, weighs 691 kg (1520 lb).
The pinblock, which holds the tuning pins in place, is another area of the piano where toughness is important. It is made of hardwood, (often maple) and generally is laminated (built of multiple layers) for additional strength and gripping power. Piano strings (also called piano wire), which must endure years of extreme tension and hard blows, are made of high quality steel. They are manufactured to vary as little as possible in diameter, since all deviations from uniformity introduce tonal distortion. The bass strings of a piano are made of a steel core wrapped with copper wire, to increase their mass whilst retaining flexibility.
The plate, or metal frame, of a piano is usually made of cast iron. It is advantageous for the plate to be quite massive. Since the strings are attached to the plate at one end, any vibrations transmitted to the plate will result in loss of energy to the desired (efficient) channel of sound transmission, namely the bridge and the soundboard. Some manufacturers now use cast steel in their plates, for greater strength. The casting of the plate is a delicate art, since the dimensions are crucial and the iron shrinks by about one percent during cooling.
The inclusion in a piano of an extremely large piece of metal is potentially an aesthetic handicap, which piano makers overcome by polishing, painting and decorating the plate. Plates often include the manufacturer's ornamental medallion and can be strikingly attractive. In an effort to make pianos lighter, Alcoa worked with Winter and Company piano manufacturers to make pianos using an aluminum plate during the 1940s. The use of aluminum for piano plates, however, did not become widely accepted and was discontinued.
The numerous grand parts and upright parts of a piano action are generally hardwood (e.g. maple, beech. hornbeam). However, since World War II, plastics have become available. Early plastics were incorporated into some pianos in the late 1940s and 1950s, but proved disastrous because they crystallized and lost their strength after only a few decades of use. The Steinway firm once incorporated Teflon, a synthetic material developed by DuPont, for some grand action parts in place of cloth, but ultimately abandoned the experiment due to an inherent "clicking" which invariably developed over time. (Also Teflon is "humidity stable" whereas the wood adjacent to the Teflon will swell and shrink with humidity changes, causing problems.) More recently, the Kawai firm has built pianos with action parts made of more modern and effective plastics such as carbon fiber; these parts have held up better and have generally received the respect of piano technicians .
Ivorite and ebony keys on a modern Steinway & Sons concert grand piano.
The part of the piano where materials probably matter more than anywhere else is the soundboard. In quality pianos, this is made of solid spruce (that is, spruce boards glued together at their edges). Spruce is chosen for its high ratio of strength to weight. The best piano makers use close-grained, quarter-sawn, defect-free spruce, and make sure that it has been carefully dried over a long period of time before making it into soundboards. In cheap pianos, the soundboard is often made of plywood.
Piano keys are generally made of spruce or basswood, for lightness. Spruce is normally used in high-quality pianos. Traditionally, the black keys were made from ebony and the white keys were covered with strips of ivory, but since ivory-yielding species are now endangered and protected by treaty, plastics are now almost exclusively used. Also, ivory tends to chip more easily than plastic. Legal ivory can still be obtained in limited quantities. At one time, the Yamaha firm innovated a plastic called "Ivorine" or "Ivorite", since imitated by other makers, that mimics the look and feel of ivory.
A piano tuner
Pianos need regular tuning to keep them up to pitch, which is usually the internationally recognized standard concert pitch of A4 = 440 Hz. The hammers of pianos are voiced to compensate for gradual hardening, and other parts also need periodic regulation. Aged and worn pianos can be rebuilt or reconditioned. Often, by replacing a great number of their parts, they can be made to perform as well as new pianos. Older pianos are often more settled and produce a warmer tone.
Piano moving should be done by trained piano movers using adequate manpower and the correct equipment for any particular piano's size and weight. Pianos are heavy yet delicate instruments. Over the years, professional piano movers have developed special techniques for transporting both grands and uprights which prevent damage to the case and to the piano's mechanics.
The piano at the social center in the 19th century (Moritz von Schwind, 1868). The man at the piano is Franz Schubert.
The piano is a crucial instrument in Western classical music, jazz, film, television, and most other complex western musical genres. Since a large number of composers are proficient pianists â and because the piano keyboard offers an easy means of complex melodic and harmonic interplay â the piano is often used as a tool for composition.
Pianos were, and still are, popular instruments for private household ownership. Hence, pianos have gained a place in the popular consciousness, and are sometimes referred to by nicknames including: "the ivories", "the joanna", "the eighty-eight", and "the black(s) and white(s)", "the little joe(s)". Playing the piano is sometimes referred to as "tickling the ivories".
;General
* Innovations in the piano
* Jazz piano
* Piano acoustics
* Piano key frequencies (in equal temperament)
* Piano trio
* String piano
;Related lists
* List of films about pianists
* Lists of solo piano pieces
* List of piano makers
* List of piano brand names
* List of classical pianists (recorded)
;Related instruments
* Hammered dulcimer
* Harp
* Clavichord
* Harpsichord
* Organ and Pipe organ
* Electric piano
* Electronic piano
* The authoritative New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (available online by subscription), contains a wealth of information. Main article: "Pianoforte".
* The Encyclopædia Britannica (available online by subscription) also includes much information on the piano. In the 1988 edition, the primary article can be found in "Musical Instruments".
* The Piano Book by Larry Fine (4th ed. Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts: Brookside Press, 2001; ISBN 1-929145-01-2) gives the basics of how pianos work, and a thorough evaluative survey of current pianos and their manufacturers. It also includes advice on buying and owning pianos.
*Giraffes, black dragons, and other pianos: a technological history from Cristofori to the modern concert grand by Edwin M. Good (1982, second ed., 2001, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press) is a standard reference on the history of the piano.
*The Early Pianoforte by Stewart Pollens (1995, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) is an authoritative work covering the ancestry of the piano, its invention by Cristofori, and the early stages of its subsequent evolution.
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;Information
* Yamaha Musician - Yamaha piano reviews and enthusiast site
* Grand Piano information and images
* The Piano Page Lots of information from the Piano Technicians Guild
* WikiRecording's Guide to Recording Pianos
;History
* History of the Piano Forte, Association of Blind Piano Tuners, UK
* The Frederick Historical Piano Collection
;Piano Technique
* Principles of Piano Technique
;Sheet music for Piano
* All Piano Scores Free printable classical sheet music for piano + audio
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Piano | About how tall is a typical studio piano? | Studio pianos are around 42 to 45 inches tall. | data/set2/a1 | Piano
Baby Grand Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard that produces sound by striking steel strings with felt covered hammers. The hammers immediately rebound, allowing the strings to continue vibrating at their resonant frequency. " Hammer Time" by John Kiehl, Wolfram Demonstrations Project. These vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a soundboard that couples the acoustic energy to the air so that it can be heard as sound.
The piano is widely used in Western music for solo performance, ensemble use, chamber music, and accompaniment. It is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal. Although not portable and often expensive, the piano's versatility and ubiquity have made it one of the most familiar musical instruments. It is sometimes classified as both a percussion and a stringed instrument. According to the Hornbostel-Sachs method of music classification, it is grouped with Chordophones.
The word piano is a shortened form of the word pianoforte, which is seldom used except in formal language and derived from the original Italian name for the instrument, clavicembalo [or gravicembalo] col piano e forte (literally harpsichord with soft and loud). This refers to the instrument's responsiveness to keyboard touch, which allows the pianist to produce notes at different dynamic levels by controlling the speed with which the hammers hit the strings.
Early piano replica by the modern builder Paul McNulty, after Walter & Sohn, 1805
The piano was originally founded on earlier technological innovations. The first string instruments with struck strings were the hammered dulcimers originating from the Persian traditional musical instrument santur. David R. Peterson (1994), "Acoustics of the hammered dulcimer, its history, and recent developments", Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 95 (5), p. 3002. During the Middle Ages, there were several attempts at creating stringed keyboard instruments with struck strings, Pollens, 1995. chp. 1 the earliest being the hurdy gurdy which has uncertain origins. By the 17th century, 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.
Grand piano by Louis Bas of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, France, 1781. Earliest French grand piano known to survive; includes an inverted wrestplank and action derived from the work of Bartolomeo Cristofiori (ca. 1700) with ornately decorated soundboard.
The invention of the modern piano is credited to Bartolomeo Cristofori of Padua, Italy, who was employed by Prince Ferdinand de Medici as the Keeper of the Instruments. He was an expert harpsichord maker and was well acquainted with the previous body of knowledge on stringed keyboard instruments. It is not known exactly when Cristofori first built a piano. An inventory made by his employers, the Medici family, indicates the existence of a piano by the year 1700; another document of doubtful authenticity indicates a date of 1698. The three Cristofori pianos that survive today date from the 1720s.
Cristofori's great success was in solving, without any prior example, the fundamental mechanical problem of piano design: the hammer must strike the string, but not remain in contact with it (as a tangent remains in contact with a clavichord string) because this would damp the sound. Moreover, the hammer must return to its rest position without bouncing violently, and it must be possible to repeat a note rapidly. Cristofori's piano action served as a model for the many different approaches to piano actions that followed. While Cristofori's early instruments were made with thin strings and were much quieter than the modern piano, compared to the clavichord (the only previous keyboard instrument capable of minutely controlled dynamic nuance through the keyboard) they were considerably louder and had more sustaining power.
Cristofori's new instrument remained relatively unknown until an Italian writer, Scipione Maffei, wrote an enthusiastic article about it (1711), including a diagram of the mechanism. This article was widely distributed, and most of the next generation of piano builders started their work because of reading it. One of these builders was Gottfried Silbermann, better known as an organ builder. Silbermann's pianos were virtually direct copies of Cristofori's, with one important addition: Silbermann invented the forerunner of the modern damper pedal, which lifts all the dampers from the strings at once.
Silbermann showed Johann Sebastian Bach one of his early instruments in the 1730s, but Bach did not like it at that time, claiming that the higher notes were too soft to allow a full dynamic range. Although this earned him some animosity from Silbermann, the criticism was apparently heeded. Bach did approve of a later instrument he saw in 1747, and even served as an agent in selling Silbermann's pianos.
Piano making flourished during the late 18th century in the Viennese school, which included Johann Andreas Stein (who worked in Augsburg, Germany) and the Viennese makers Nannette Streicher (daughter of Johann Andreas Stein) and Anton Walter. Viennese-style pianos were built with wood frames, two strings per note, and had leather-covered hammers. Some of these Viennese pianos had the opposite coloring of modern-day pianos; the natural keys were black and the accidental keys white. It was for such instruments that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed his concertos and sonatas, and replicas of them are built today for use in authentic-instrument performance of his music. The pianos of Mozart's day had a softer, clearer tone than today's pianos or English pianos, with less sustaining power. The term fortepiano is nowadays often used to distinguish the 18th-century instrument from later pianos.
In the period lasting from about 1790 to 1860, the Mozart-era piano underwent tremendous changes that led to the modern form of the instrument. This revolution was in response to a consistent preference by composers and pianists for a more powerful, sustained piano sound, and made possible by the ongoing Industrial Revolution with technological resources such as high-quality steel, called piano wire, for strings, and precision casting for the production of iron frames. Over time, the tonal range of the piano was also increased from the five octaves of Mozart's day to the 7â
or more octaves found on modern pianos.
Broadwood square action
Early technological progress owed much to the English firm of Broadwood, who already had a reputation for the splendour and powerful tone of its harpsichords. Broadwood constructed instruments that were progressively larger, louder, and more robustly constructed. They sent pianos to both Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven, and were the first firm to build pianos with a range of more than five octaves: five octaves and a fifth during the 1790s, six octaves by 1810 (Beethoven used the extra notes in his later works), and seven octaves by 1820. The Viennese makers similarly followed these trends, however the two schools used different piano actions: Broadwoods were more robust, Viennese instruments were more sensitive.
Erard square action
By the 1820s, the center of innovation had shifted to Paris, where the Pleyel firm manufactured pianos used by Frédéric Chopin and the Ãrard firm manufactured those used by Franz Liszt. In 1821, Sébastien Ãrard invented the double escapement action, which permitted a note to be repeated even if the key had not yet risen to its maximum vertical position. This facilitated rapid playing of repeated notes - and this musical device was pioneered by Liszt. When the invention became public, as revised by Henri Herz, the double escapement action gradually became standard in grand pianos, and is still incorporated into all grand pianos currently produced.
One of the major technical innovations that helped to create the sound of the modern piano was the use of a strong iron frame. Also called the "plate", the iron frame sits atop the soundboard, and serves as the primary bulwark against the force of string tension. The increased structural integrity of the iron frame allowed the use of thicker, tenser, and more numerous strings. In a modern grand the total string tension can exceed 20 tons. The single piece cast iron frame was patented in 1825 in Boston by Alpheus Babcock, combining the metal hitch pin plate (1821, claimed by Broadwood on behalf of Samuel Hervé) and resisting bars (Thom and Allen, 1820, but also claimed by Broadwood and Ãrard). Babcock later worked for the Chickering & Mackays firm who patented the first full iron frame for grand pianos in 1843. Composite forged metal frames were preferred by many European makers until the American system was fully adopted by the early 20th century.
Other innovations for the mechanism included the use of felt hammer coverings instead of layered leather hammers. Felt hammers, which were first introduced by Henri Pape in 1826, were a more consistent material, permitting wider dynamic ranges as hammer weights and string tension increased. The sostenuto pedal (see below), invented in 1844 by Jean Louis Boisselot and improved by the Steinway firm in 1874, allowed a wider range of effects.
Other important technical innovations of this era included changes to the way the piano was strung, such as the use of a "choir" of three strings rather than two for all but the lower notes, and the use of different stringing methods. With the over strung scale, also called "cross-stringing", the strings are placed in a vertically overlapping slanted arrangement, with two heights of bridges on the soundboard instead of just one. This permits larger, but not necessarily longer, strings to fit within the case of the piano. Over stringing was invented by Jean-Henri Pape during the 1820s, and first patented for use in grand pianos in the United States by Henry Steinway Jr. in 1859.
Duplex scaling: Treble strings of a 182 cm. grand piano. From lower left to upper right: dampers, main sounding length of strings, treble bridge, duplex string length, duplex bridge (long bar perpendicular to strings), hitchpins. With duplexes or aliquot scales, which was patented in 1872 by Theodore Steinway, the different components of string vibrations are controlled by tuning their secondary parts in octave relationships with the sounding lengths. Similar systems developed by Blüthner (1872), as well as Taskin (1788), and Collard (1821) used more distinctly ringing undamped vibrations to modify tone.
Some early pianos had shapes and designs that are no longer in use. The square piano had horizontal strings arranged diagonally across the rectangular case above the hammers and with the keyboard set in the long side. This design is attributed to Gottfried Silbermann or Christian Ernst Friderici on the continent, and Johannes Zumpe or Harman Vietor in England and it was improved by changes first introduced by Guillaume-Lebrecht Petzold in France and Alpheus Babcock in the United States. Square pianos were built in great numbers through the 1840s in Europe and the 1890s in America, and saw the most visible changes of any type of piano: the celebrated iron framed over strung squares manufactured by Steinway & Sons were more than two and a half times the size of Zumpe's wood framed instruments from a century before. Their overwhelming popularity was due to inexpensive construction and price, although their performance and tone were often limited by simple actions and closely spaced strings.
The mechanism in upright pianos is perpendicular to the keys.
The tall, vertically strung upright grand was arranged like a grand set on end, with the soundboard and bridges above the keys, and tuning pins below them. The term was later revived by many manufacturers for advertising purposes. Giraffe, pyramid and lyre pianos were arranged in a somewhat similar fashion in evocatively shaped cases.
The very tall cabinet piano was introduced about 1805 and was built through the 1840s. It had strings arranged vertically on a continuous frame with bridges extended nearly to the floor, behind the keyboard and very large sticker action. The short cottage upright or pianino with vertical stringing, made popular by Robert Wornum around 1815, was built into the 20th century. They are informally called birdcage pianos because of their prominent damper mechanism. Pianinos were distinguished from the oblique, or diagonally strung upright made popular in France by Roller & Blanchet during the late 1820s. The tiny spinet upright was manufactured from the mid-1930s until recent times. The low position of the hammers required the use of a "drop action" to preserve a reasonable keyboard height.
Modern upright and grand pianos attained their present forms by the end of the 19th century. Improvements have been made in manufacturing processes, and many individual details of the instrument continue to receive attention.
Much of the most widely admired piano repertoire, for example, that of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, was composed for a type of instrument that is rather different from the modern instruments on which this music is normally performed today. Even the music of the Romantics, including Liszt, Chopin, Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn and Johannes Brahms, was written for pianos substantially different from ours.
A schematic depiction of the construction of a pianoforte.
Modern pianos come in two basic configurations (with subcategories): the grand piano and the upright piano.
Grand piano
In grand pianos, the frame and strings are horizontal, with the strings extending away from the keyboard. There are several sizes of grand piano. A rough generalization distinguishes the "concert grand" (between about and long) from the "parlor grand" or "boudoir grand" (about to ) and the smaller "baby grand".
All else being equal, longer pianos with longer strings have better sound and lower inharmonicity of the strings. Inharmonicity is the degree to which the frequencies of overtones (known as partials, partial tones, or harmonics) depart from whole multiples of the fundamental frequency. Pianos with shorter, thicker, and stiffer strings (e.g., baby grands) have more inharmonicity. The longer strings on a concert grand can vibrate more freely than the shorter, thicker strings on a baby grand, which means that a concert grand's strings will have truer overtones. This is partly because the strings will be tuned closer to equal temperament in relation to the standard pitch with less "stretching" in the piano tuning (See: Piano tuning). Full-size grands are usually used for public concerts, whereas smaller grands, introduced by Sohmer & Co. in 1884, are often chosen for domestic use where space and cost are considerations.
Upright piano
Upright pianos, also called vertical pianos, are more compact because the frame and strings are vertical. It is considered harder to produce a sensitive piano action when the hammers move horizontally, as the vertical hammer return is dependent on springs which are prone to wear and tear. However, a well-regulated vertical piano will probably play more smoothly than a poorly regulated grand piano, and the very best upright pianos approach the level of some grand pianos of the same size in tone quality and responsiveness.
One noticeable advantage that the grand piano action has over the vertical action is that all grand pianos have a special repetition lever in the playing action that is absent in all verticals. This repetition lever, a separate one for every key, catches the hammer close to the strings as long as the keys are played repeatedly and fairly quickly. In this position, with the hammer resting on the lever, a pianist can play repeated notes, staccato, and trills with much more speed and control than is possible on a vertical piano.
Upright pianos with unusually tall frames and long strings are sometimes called "upright grand" pianos.
Some authors classify modern pianos according to their height and, to modifications of the action that are necessary to accomodate the height.
* Studio pianos are around 42 to 45 inches tall. This is the shortest cabinet that can accomodate a 'full-sized' action located above the keyboard.
* Console pianos have a compact action (shorter hammers), and are a few inches shorter than studio models.
* The top of a Spinet model barely rises above the keyboard. The action is located below, operated by vertical wires that are attached to the backs of the keys.
* Anything taller than a studio piano is called an upright.
Player piano
Toy pianos began to be manufactured in the 19th century. In 1863, Henri Fourneaux invented the player piano, which "plays itself" from a piano roll without the need for a pianist. The player piano is a piano that records a performance using rolls of paper with perforations, and then replays the performance using pneumatic devices. A modern equivalent for the player piano is the Yamaha Disklavier system, which uses solenoids and midi instead of pneumatics and rolls. Silent pianos, which allow a regular piano to be used converted to a digital instrument, are a recent innovation and are becoming more popular.
Irving Berlin played a special piano called the transposing piano, which was invented in 1801 by Edward Ryley. It had a lever under the keyboard used to alter the music to any key. One of Berlin's pianos is in the Smithsonian Museum. For much of his career, Berlin only knew how to play the black keys. But with his 'trick piano' he was no longer limited to the key of F-sharp.
A relatively recent development is the prepared piano, which is used in contemporary art music. A prepared piano is a standard grand piano which has had objects placed inside it before a performance in order to alter its sound, or which has had its mechanism changed in some way. The scores for music for prepared piano often instruct the pianist to insert pieces of rubber or small pieces of metal (screws or washers) in between the strings. These added items either mute the strings or create unusual vibrating sounds.
Since the 1980s, digital pianos have been available, which use digital sampling technology to reproduce the sound of each piano note. The best digital pianos are sophisticated, with features including working pedals, weighted keys, multiple voices, and MIDI interfaces. However, with such technology, it is difficult to duplicate one particular aspect of acoustic pianos, namely that when the damper pedal (see below) is depressed, the strings not struck vibrate sympathetically when other strings are struck, as well as the unique instrument-specific mathematical non-linearity of partials on any given unison. Since this sympathetic vibration is considered central to piano tone, many digital pianos do not sound the same as the best acoustic pianos. Progress is being made in this area by including physical models of sympathetic vibration in the synthesis software. Some higher end digital pianos, such as the Yamaha Clavinova series, or the KAWAI MP8 series, produced in the last few years incorporate string resonance technology to overcome this limitation.
With the advent of powerful desktop computers, highly realistic sampled digital grand pianos have become available as affordable software modules. Some use multi-gigabyte piano sample sets with as many as 90 recordings, each lasting many seconds, for each of the 88 keys under different conditions, augmented by additional samples to emulate sympathetic resonance, key release, the drop of the dampers, and simulations of piano techniques like re-pedaling.
Keyboard
Almost every modern piano has 36 black keys and 52 white keys for a total of 88 keys (seven octaves plus a minor third, from A0 to C8). Many older pianos only have 85 keys (seven octaves from A0 to A7), while some manufacturers extend the range further in one or both directions.
Some Bösendorfer pianos extend the normal range downwards to F0, with one other model going as far as a bottom C0, making a full eight octave range. These extra keys are sometimes hidden under a small hinged lid that can be flipped down to cover the keys in order to avoid visual disorientation in a pianist unfamiliar with the extended keyboard. On others, the colours of the extra white keys are reversed (black instead of white).
The extra keys are added primarily for increased resonance from the associated strings; that is, they vibrate sympathetically with other strings whenever the damper pedal is depressed and thus give a fuller tone. Only a very small number of works composed for piano actually use these notes. More recently, the Stuart and Sons company has also manufactured extended-range pianos. On their instruments, the range is extended both down the bass to F0 and up the treble to F8 for a full eight octaves. The extra keys are the same as the other keys in appearance.
Small studio upright acoustical pianos with only 65 keys have been manufactured for use by roving pianists. Known as "gig" pianos and still containing a cast iron harp, these are comparatively lightweight and can be easily transported to and from engagements by only two men. As their harp is longer than that of a spinet or console piano, they have a stronger bass sound that to some pianists is well worth the trade-off in range that a reduced key-set offers.
Piano pedals from left to right: una corda, sostenuto, and damper.
Pianos have had pedals, or some close equivalent, since the earliest days. (In the 18th century, some pianos used levers pressed upward by the player's knee instead of pedals.) Most grand pianos have three pedals: soft pedal (una corda), sostenuto, and sustain pedal (from left to right, respectively). Most modern upright pianos have three pedals: soft pedal, practice pedal and sustain pedal, though older or cheaper models may lack the practice pedal.
The sustain pedal (or, damper pedal) is often simply called "the pedal", since it is the most frequently used. It is placed as the rightmost pedal in the group. It lifts the dampers from all keys, sustaining all played notes, and altering the overall tone.
The soft pedal or una corda pedal is placed leftmost in the row of pedals. In grand pianos, it shifts the entire action, including the keyboard, to the right, so that the hammers hit only one of the three strings for each note (hence the name una corda, or 'one string'). The effect is to soften the note as well as to change the tone. In uprights, this action is not possible, and so the pedal moves the hammers closer to the strings, allowing the hammers to hit the strings with less kinetic energy to produce a softer sound.
On grand pianos, the middle pedal is a sostenuto pedal. This pedal keeps raised any damper that was already raised at the moment the pedal is depressed. This makes it possible to sustain some notes (by depressing the sostenuto pedal before notes to be sustained are released) while the player's hands are free to play other notes. This can be useful for musical passages with pedal points and other otherwise tricky or impossible situations.
On many upright pianos, there is a middle pedal called the 'practice' or celeste pedal. This drops a piece of felt between the hammers and strings, greatly muting the sounds.
There are also non-standard variants. On vertical pianos, the middle pedal can be a bass sustain pedal: that is, when it is depressed, the dampers lift off the strings only in the bass section. This pedal would be used only when a pianist needs to sustain a single bass note or chord over many measures, while playing the melody in the treble section. On the largest Fazioli piano, there is a fourth pedal to the left of the principal three. This fourth pedal works in the same way as the soft pedal of an upright piano, moving the hammers closer to the strings.
An upright pedal piano
The rare transposing piano, of which Irving Berlin possessed an example, had a middle pedal that functioned as a clutch which disengages the keyboard from the mechanism, enabling the keyboard to be moved to the left or right with a lever. The entire action of the piano is thus shifted to allow the pianist to play music written in one key so that it sounds in a different key. The pedalier piano, or pedal piano, is a rare type of piano that includes a pedalboard, enabling bass register notes to be played with the feet, as is standard on the organ. There are two types of pedal piano: the pedal board may be an integral part of the instrument, using the same strings and mechanism as the manual keyboard, or, less frequently, it may consist of two independent pianos (each with its separate mechanics and strings) which are placed one above the other, a regular piano played by the hands and a bass-register piano played by the feet.
Many parts of a piano are made of materials selected for sturdiness. In quality pianos, the outer rim of the piano is made of a hardwood, normally maple or beech. According to Harold A. Conklin, the purpose of a sturdy rim is so that "the vibrational energy will stay as much as possible in the soundboard instead of dissipating uselessly in the case parts, which are inefficient radiators of sound."
View from below of a 182-cm grand piano. In order of distance from viewer: softwood braces, tapered soundboard ribs, soundboard. The metal rod at lower right is a humidity control device.
The rim is normally made by laminating flexible strips of hardwood to the desired shape, a system that was developed by Theodore Steinway in 1880. The thick wooden braces at the bottom (grands) or back (uprights) of the piano are not as acoustically important as the rim, and are often made of a softwood, even in top-quality pianos, in order to save weight. The requirement of structural strength, fulfilled with stout hardwood and thick metal, makes a piano heavy; even a small upright can weigh 136 kg (300 lb), and the Steinway concert grand (Model D) weighs 480 kg (990 lb). The largest piano built, the Fazioli F308, weighs 691 kg (1520 lb).
The pinblock, which holds the tuning pins in place, is another area of the piano where toughness is important. It is made of hardwood, (often maple) and generally is laminated (built of multiple layers) for additional strength and gripping power. Piano strings (also called piano wire), which must endure years of extreme tension and hard blows, are made of high quality steel. They are manufactured to vary as little as possible in diameter, since all deviations from uniformity introduce tonal distortion. The bass strings of a piano are made of a steel core wrapped with copper wire, to increase their mass whilst retaining flexibility.
The plate, or metal frame, of a piano is usually made of cast iron. It is advantageous for the plate to be quite massive. Since the strings are attached to the plate at one end, any vibrations transmitted to the plate will result in loss of energy to the desired (efficient) channel of sound transmission, namely the bridge and the soundboard. Some manufacturers now use cast steel in their plates, for greater strength. The casting of the plate is a delicate art, since the dimensions are crucial and the iron shrinks by about one percent during cooling.
The inclusion in a piano of an extremely large piece of metal is potentially an aesthetic handicap, which piano makers overcome by polishing, painting and decorating the plate. Plates often include the manufacturer's ornamental medallion and can be strikingly attractive. In an effort to make pianos lighter, Alcoa worked with Winter and Company piano manufacturers to make pianos using an aluminum plate during the 1940s. The use of aluminum for piano plates, however, did not become widely accepted and was discontinued.
The numerous grand parts and upright parts of a piano action are generally hardwood (e.g. maple, beech. hornbeam). However, since World War II, plastics have become available. Early plastics were incorporated into some pianos in the late 1940s and 1950s, but proved disastrous because they crystallized and lost their strength after only a few decades of use. The Steinway firm once incorporated Teflon, a synthetic material developed by DuPont, for some grand action parts in place of cloth, but ultimately abandoned the experiment due to an inherent "clicking" which invariably developed over time. (Also Teflon is "humidity stable" whereas the wood adjacent to the Teflon will swell and shrink with humidity changes, causing problems.) More recently, the Kawai firm has built pianos with action parts made of more modern and effective plastics such as carbon fiber; these parts have held up better and have generally received the respect of piano technicians .
Ivorite and ebony keys on a modern Steinway & Sons concert grand piano.
The part of the piano where materials probably matter more than anywhere else is the soundboard. In quality pianos, this is made of solid spruce (that is, spruce boards glued together at their edges). Spruce is chosen for its high ratio of strength to weight. The best piano makers use close-grained, quarter-sawn, defect-free spruce, and make sure that it has been carefully dried over a long period of time before making it into soundboards. In cheap pianos, the soundboard is often made of plywood.
Piano keys are generally made of spruce or basswood, for lightness. Spruce is normally used in high-quality pianos. Traditionally, the black keys were made from ebony and the white keys were covered with strips of ivory, but since ivory-yielding species are now endangered and protected by treaty, plastics are now almost exclusively used. Also, ivory tends to chip more easily than plastic. Legal ivory can still be obtained in limited quantities. At one time, the Yamaha firm innovated a plastic called "Ivorine" or "Ivorite", since imitated by other makers, that mimics the look and feel of ivory.
A piano tuner
Pianos need regular tuning to keep them up to pitch, which is usually the internationally recognized standard concert pitch of A4 = 440 Hz. The hammers of pianos are voiced to compensate for gradual hardening, and other parts also need periodic regulation. Aged and worn pianos can be rebuilt or reconditioned. Often, by replacing a great number of their parts, they can be made to perform as well as new pianos. Older pianos are often more settled and produce a warmer tone.
Piano moving should be done by trained piano movers using adequate manpower and the correct equipment for any particular piano's size and weight. Pianos are heavy yet delicate instruments. Over the years, professional piano movers have developed special techniques for transporting both grands and uprights which prevent damage to the case and to the piano's mechanics.
The piano at the social center in the 19th century (Moritz von Schwind, 1868). The man at the piano is Franz Schubert.
The piano is a crucial instrument in Western classical music, jazz, film, television, and most other complex western musical genres. Since a large number of composers are proficient pianists â and because the piano keyboard offers an easy means of complex melodic and harmonic interplay â the piano is often used as a tool for composition.
Pianos were, and still are, popular instruments for private household ownership. Hence, pianos have gained a place in the popular consciousness, and are sometimes referred to by nicknames including: "the ivories", "the joanna", "the eighty-eight", and "the black(s) and white(s)", "the little joe(s)". Playing the piano is sometimes referred to as "tickling the ivories".
;General
* Innovations in the piano
* Jazz piano
* Piano acoustics
* Piano key frequencies (in equal temperament)
* Piano trio
* String piano
;Related lists
* List of films about pianists
* Lists of solo piano pieces
* List of piano makers
* List of piano brand names
* List of classical pianists (recorded)
;Related instruments
* Hammered dulcimer
* Harp
* Clavichord
* Harpsichord
* Organ and Pipe organ
* Electric piano
* Electronic piano
* The authoritative New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (available online by subscription), contains a wealth of information. Main article: "Pianoforte".
* The Encyclopædia Britannica (available online by subscription) also includes much information on the piano. In the 1988 edition, the primary article can be found in "Musical Instruments".
* The Piano Book by Larry Fine (4th ed. Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts: Brookside Press, 2001; ISBN 1-929145-01-2) gives the basics of how pianos work, and a thorough evaluative survey of current pianos and their manufacturers. It also includes advice on buying and owning pianos.
*Giraffes, black dragons, and other pianos: a technological history from Cristofori to the modern concert grand by Edwin M. Good (1982, second ed., 2001, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press) is a standard reference on the history of the piano.
*The Early Pianoforte by Stewart Pollens (1995, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) is an authoritative work covering the ancestry of the piano, its invention by Cristofori, and the early stages of its subsequent evolution.
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;Information
* Yamaha Musician - Yamaha piano reviews and enthusiast site
* Grand Piano information and images
* The Piano Page Lots of information from the Piano Technicians Guild
* WikiRecording's Guide to Recording Pianos
;History
* History of the Piano Forte, Association of Blind Piano Tuners, UK
* The Frederick Historical Piano Collection
;Piano Technique
* Principles of Piano Technique
;Sheet music for Piano
* All Piano Scores Free printable classical sheet music for piano + audio
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Piano | What are a piano's keys generally made of? | Piano keys are generally made of spruce or basswood. | data/set2/a1 | Piano
Baby Grand Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard that produces sound by striking steel strings with felt covered hammers. The hammers immediately rebound, allowing the strings to continue vibrating at their resonant frequency. " Hammer Time" by John Kiehl, Wolfram Demonstrations Project. These vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a soundboard that couples the acoustic energy to the air so that it can be heard as sound.
The piano is widely used in Western music for solo performance, ensemble use, chamber music, and accompaniment. It is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal. Although not portable and often expensive, the piano's versatility and ubiquity have made it one of the most familiar musical instruments. It is sometimes classified as both a percussion and a stringed instrument. According to the Hornbostel-Sachs method of music classification, it is grouped with Chordophones.
The word piano is a shortened form of the word pianoforte, which is seldom used except in formal language and derived from the original Italian name for the instrument, clavicembalo [or gravicembalo] col piano e forte (literally harpsichord with soft and loud). This refers to the instrument's responsiveness to keyboard touch, which allows the pianist to produce notes at different dynamic levels by controlling the speed with which the hammers hit the strings.
Early piano replica by the modern builder Paul McNulty, after Walter & Sohn, 1805
The piano was originally founded on earlier technological innovations. The first string instruments with struck strings were the hammered dulcimers originating from the Persian traditional musical instrument santur. David R. Peterson (1994), "Acoustics of the hammered dulcimer, its history, and recent developments", Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 95 (5), p. 3002. During the Middle Ages, there were several attempts at creating stringed keyboard instruments with struck strings, Pollens, 1995. chp. 1 the earliest being the hurdy gurdy which has uncertain origins. By the 17th century, 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.
Grand piano by Louis Bas of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, France, 1781. Earliest French grand piano known to survive; includes an inverted wrestplank and action derived from the work of Bartolomeo Cristofiori (ca. 1700) with ornately decorated soundboard.
The invention of the modern piano is credited to Bartolomeo Cristofori of Padua, Italy, who was employed by Prince Ferdinand de Medici as the Keeper of the Instruments. He was an expert harpsichord maker and was well acquainted with the previous body of knowledge on stringed keyboard instruments. It is not known exactly when Cristofori first built a piano. An inventory made by his employers, the Medici family, indicates the existence of a piano by the year 1700; another document of doubtful authenticity indicates a date of 1698. The three Cristofori pianos that survive today date from the 1720s.
Cristofori's great success was in solving, without any prior example, the fundamental mechanical problem of piano design: the hammer must strike the string, but not remain in contact with it (as a tangent remains in contact with a clavichord string) because this would damp the sound. Moreover, the hammer must return to its rest position without bouncing violently, and it must be possible to repeat a note rapidly. Cristofori's piano action served as a model for the many different approaches to piano actions that followed. While Cristofori's early instruments were made with thin strings and were much quieter than the modern piano, compared to the clavichord (the only previous keyboard instrument capable of minutely controlled dynamic nuance through the keyboard) they were considerably louder and had more sustaining power.
Cristofori's new instrument remained relatively unknown until an Italian writer, Scipione Maffei, wrote an enthusiastic article about it (1711), including a diagram of the mechanism. This article was widely distributed, and most of the next generation of piano builders started their work because of reading it. One of these builders was Gottfried Silbermann, better known as an organ builder. Silbermann's pianos were virtually direct copies of Cristofori's, with one important addition: Silbermann invented the forerunner of the modern damper pedal, which lifts all the dampers from the strings at once.
Silbermann showed Johann Sebastian Bach one of his early instruments in the 1730s, but Bach did not like it at that time, claiming that the higher notes were too soft to allow a full dynamic range. Although this earned him some animosity from Silbermann, the criticism was apparently heeded. Bach did approve of a later instrument he saw in 1747, and even served as an agent in selling Silbermann's pianos.
Piano making flourished during the late 18th century in the Viennese school, which included Johann Andreas Stein (who worked in Augsburg, Germany) and the Viennese makers Nannette Streicher (daughter of Johann Andreas Stein) and Anton Walter. Viennese-style pianos were built with wood frames, two strings per note, and had leather-covered hammers. Some of these Viennese pianos had the opposite coloring of modern-day pianos; the natural keys were black and the accidental keys white. It was for such instruments that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed his concertos and sonatas, and replicas of them are built today for use in authentic-instrument performance of his music. The pianos of Mozart's day had a softer, clearer tone than today's pianos or English pianos, with less sustaining power. The term fortepiano is nowadays often used to distinguish the 18th-century instrument from later pianos.
In the period lasting from about 1790 to 1860, the Mozart-era piano underwent tremendous changes that led to the modern form of the instrument. This revolution was in response to a consistent preference by composers and pianists for a more powerful, sustained piano sound, and made possible by the ongoing Industrial Revolution with technological resources such as high-quality steel, called piano wire, for strings, and precision casting for the production of iron frames. Over time, the tonal range of the piano was also increased from the five octaves of Mozart's day to the 7â
or more octaves found on modern pianos.
Broadwood square action
Early technological progress owed much to the English firm of Broadwood, who already had a reputation for the splendour and powerful tone of its harpsichords. Broadwood constructed instruments that were progressively larger, louder, and more robustly constructed. They sent pianos to both Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven, and were the first firm to build pianos with a range of more than five octaves: five octaves and a fifth during the 1790s, six octaves by 1810 (Beethoven used the extra notes in his later works), and seven octaves by 1820. The Viennese makers similarly followed these trends, however the two schools used different piano actions: Broadwoods were more robust, Viennese instruments were more sensitive.
Erard square action
By the 1820s, the center of innovation had shifted to Paris, where the Pleyel firm manufactured pianos used by Frédéric Chopin and the Ãrard firm manufactured those used by Franz Liszt. In 1821, Sébastien Ãrard invented the double escapement action, which permitted a note to be repeated even if the key had not yet risen to its maximum vertical position. This facilitated rapid playing of repeated notes - and this musical device was pioneered by Liszt. When the invention became public, as revised by Henri Herz, the double escapement action gradually became standard in grand pianos, and is still incorporated into all grand pianos currently produced.
One of the major technical innovations that helped to create the sound of the modern piano was the use of a strong iron frame. Also called the "plate", the iron frame sits atop the soundboard, and serves as the primary bulwark against the force of string tension. The increased structural integrity of the iron frame allowed the use of thicker, tenser, and more numerous strings. In a modern grand the total string tension can exceed 20 tons. The single piece cast iron frame was patented in 1825 in Boston by Alpheus Babcock, combining the metal hitch pin plate (1821, claimed by Broadwood on behalf of Samuel Hervé) and resisting bars (Thom and Allen, 1820, but also claimed by Broadwood and Ãrard). Babcock later worked for the Chickering & Mackays firm who patented the first full iron frame for grand pianos in 1843. Composite forged metal frames were preferred by many European makers until the American system was fully adopted by the early 20th century.
Other innovations for the mechanism included the use of felt hammer coverings instead of layered leather hammers. Felt hammers, which were first introduced by Henri Pape in 1826, were a more consistent material, permitting wider dynamic ranges as hammer weights and string tension increased. The sostenuto pedal (see below), invented in 1844 by Jean Louis Boisselot and improved by the Steinway firm in 1874, allowed a wider range of effects.
Other important technical innovations of this era included changes to the way the piano was strung, such as the use of a "choir" of three strings rather than two for all but the lower notes, and the use of different stringing methods. With the over strung scale, also called "cross-stringing", the strings are placed in a vertically overlapping slanted arrangement, with two heights of bridges on the soundboard instead of just one. This permits larger, but not necessarily longer, strings to fit within the case of the piano. Over stringing was invented by Jean-Henri Pape during the 1820s, and first patented for use in grand pianos in the United States by Henry Steinway Jr. in 1859.
Duplex scaling: Treble strings of a 182 cm. grand piano. From lower left to upper right: dampers, main sounding length of strings, treble bridge, duplex string length, duplex bridge (long bar perpendicular to strings), hitchpins. With duplexes or aliquot scales, which was patented in 1872 by Theodore Steinway, the different components of string vibrations are controlled by tuning their secondary parts in octave relationships with the sounding lengths. Similar systems developed by Blüthner (1872), as well as Taskin (1788), and Collard (1821) used more distinctly ringing undamped vibrations to modify tone.
Some early pianos had shapes and designs that are no longer in use. The square piano had horizontal strings arranged diagonally across the rectangular case above the hammers and with the keyboard set in the long side. This design is attributed to Gottfried Silbermann or Christian Ernst Friderici on the continent, and Johannes Zumpe or Harman Vietor in England and it was improved by changes first introduced by Guillaume-Lebrecht Petzold in France and Alpheus Babcock in the United States. Square pianos were built in great numbers through the 1840s in Europe and the 1890s in America, and saw the most visible changes of any type of piano: the celebrated iron framed over strung squares manufactured by Steinway & Sons were more than two and a half times the size of Zumpe's wood framed instruments from a century before. Their overwhelming popularity was due to inexpensive construction and price, although their performance and tone were often limited by simple actions and closely spaced strings.
The mechanism in upright pianos is perpendicular to the keys.
The tall, vertically strung upright grand was arranged like a grand set on end, with the soundboard and bridges above the keys, and tuning pins below them. The term was later revived by many manufacturers for advertising purposes. Giraffe, pyramid and lyre pianos were arranged in a somewhat similar fashion in evocatively shaped cases.
The very tall cabinet piano was introduced about 1805 and was built through the 1840s. It had strings arranged vertically on a continuous frame with bridges extended nearly to the floor, behind the keyboard and very large sticker action. The short cottage upright or pianino with vertical stringing, made popular by Robert Wornum around 1815, was built into the 20th century. They are informally called birdcage pianos because of their prominent damper mechanism. Pianinos were distinguished from the oblique, or diagonally strung upright made popular in France by Roller & Blanchet during the late 1820s. The tiny spinet upright was manufactured from the mid-1930s until recent times. The low position of the hammers required the use of a "drop action" to preserve a reasonable keyboard height.
Modern upright and grand pianos attained their present forms by the end of the 19th century. Improvements have been made in manufacturing processes, and many individual details of the instrument continue to receive attention.
Much of the most widely admired piano repertoire, for example, that of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, was composed for a type of instrument that is rather different from the modern instruments on which this music is normally performed today. Even the music of the Romantics, including Liszt, Chopin, Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn and Johannes Brahms, was written for pianos substantially different from ours.
A schematic depiction of the construction of a pianoforte.
Modern pianos come in two basic configurations (with subcategories): the grand piano and the upright piano.
Grand piano
In grand pianos, the frame and strings are horizontal, with the strings extending away from the keyboard. There are several sizes of grand piano. A rough generalization distinguishes the "concert grand" (between about and long) from the "parlor grand" or "boudoir grand" (about to ) and the smaller "baby grand".
All else being equal, longer pianos with longer strings have better sound and lower inharmonicity of the strings. Inharmonicity is the degree to which the frequencies of overtones (known as partials, partial tones, or harmonics) depart from whole multiples of the fundamental frequency. Pianos with shorter, thicker, and stiffer strings (e.g., baby grands) have more inharmonicity. The longer strings on a concert grand can vibrate more freely than the shorter, thicker strings on a baby grand, which means that a concert grand's strings will have truer overtones. This is partly because the strings will be tuned closer to equal temperament in relation to the standard pitch with less "stretching" in the piano tuning (See: Piano tuning). Full-size grands are usually used for public concerts, whereas smaller grands, introduced by Sohmer & Co. in 1884, are often chosen for domestic use where space and cost are considerations.
Upright piano
Upright pianos, also called vertical pianos, are more compact because the frame and strings are vertical. It is considered harder to produce a sensitive piano action when the hammers move horizontally, as the vertical hammer return is dependent on springs which are prone to wear and tear. However, a well-regulated vertical piano will probably play more smoothly than a poorly regulated grand piano, and the very best upright pianos approach the level of some grand pianos of the same size in tone quality and responsiveness.
One noticeable advantage that the grand piano action has over the vertical action is that all grand pianos have a special repetition lever in the playing action that is absent in all verticals. This repetition lever, a separate one for every key, catches the hammer close to the strings as long as the keys are played repeatedly and fairly quickly. In this position, with the hammer resting on the lever, a pianist can play repeated notes, staccato, and trills with much more speed and control than is possible on a vertical piano.
Upright pianos with unusually tall frames and long strings are sometimes called "upright grand" pianos.
Some authors classify modern pianos according to their height and, to modifications of the action that are necessary to accomodate the height.
* Studio pianos are around 42 to 45 inches tall. This is the shortest cabinet that can accomodate a 'full-sized' action located above the keyboard.
* Console pianos have a compact action (shorter hammers), and are a few inches shorter than studio models.
* The top of a Spinet model barely rises above the keyboard. The action is located below, operated by vertical wires that are attached to the backs of the keys.
* Anything taller than a studio piano is called an upright.
Player piano
Toy pianos began to be manufactured in the 19th century. In 1863, Henri Fourneaux invented the player piano, which "plays itself" from a piano roll without the need for a pianist. The player piano is a piano that records a performance using rolls of paper with perforations, and then replays the performance using pneumatic devices. A modern equivalent for the player piano is the Yamaha Disklavier system, which uses solenoids and midi instead of pneumatics and rolls. Silent pianos, which allow a regular piano to be used converted to a digital instrument, are a recent innovation and are becoming more popular.
Irving Berlin played a special piano called the transposing piano, which was invented in 1801 by Edward Ryley. It had a lever under the keyboard used to alter the music to any key. One of Berlin's pianos is in the Smithsonian Museum. For much of his career, Berlin only knew how to play the black keys. But with his 'trick piano' he was no longer limited to the key of F-sharp.
A relatively recent development is the prepared piano, which is used in contemporary art music. A prepared piano is a standard grand piano which has had objects placed inside it before a performance in order to alter its sound, or which has had its mechanism changed in some way. The scores for music for prepared piano often instruct the pianist to insert pieces of rubber or small pieces of metal (screws or washers) in between the strings. These added items either mute the strings or create unusual vibrating sounds.
Since the 1980s, digital pianos have been available, which use digital sampling technology to reproduce the sound of each piano note. The best digital pianos are sophisticated, with features including working pedals, weighted keys, multiple voices, and MIDI interfaces. However, with such technology, it is difficult to duplicate one particular aspect of acoustic pianos, namely that when the damper pedal (see below) is depressed, the strings not struck vibrate sympathetically when other strings are struck, as well as the unique instrument-specific mathematical non-linearity of partials on any given unison. Since this sympathetic vibration is considered central to piano tone, many digital pianos do not sound the same as the best acoustic pianos. Progress is being made in this area by including physical models of sympathetic vibration in the synthesis software. Some higher end digital pianos, such as the Yamaha Clavinova series, or the KAWAI MP8 series, produced in the last few years incorporate string resonance technology to overcome this limitation.
With the advent of powerful desktop computers, highly realistic sampled digital grand pianos have become available as affordable software modules. Some use multi-gigabyte piano sample sets with as many as 90 recordings, each lasting many seconds, for each of the 88 keys under different conditions, augmented by additional samples to emulate sympathetic resonance, key release, the drop of the dampers, and simulations of piano techniques like re-pedaling.
Keyboard
Almost every modern piano has 36 black keys and 52 white keys for a total of 88 keys (seven octaves plus a minor third, from A0 to C8). Many older pianos only have 85 keys (seven octaves from A0 to A7), while some manufacturers extend the range further in one or both directions.
Some Bösendorfer pianos extend the normal range downwards to F0, with one other model going as far as a bottom C0, making a full eight octave range. These extra keys are sometimes hidden under a small hinged lid that can be flipped down to cover the keys in order to avoid visual disorientation in a pianist unfamiliar with the extended keyboard. On others, the colours of the extra white keys are reversed (black instead of white).
The extra keys are added primarily for increased resonance from the associated strings; that is, they vibrate sympathetically with other strings whenever the damper pedal is depressed and thus give a fuller tone. Only a very small number of works composed for piano actually use these notes. More recently, the Stuart and Sons company has also manufactured extended-range pianos. On their instruments, the range is extended both down the bass to F0 and up the treble to F8 for a full eight octaves. The extra keys are the same as the other keys in appearance.
Small studio upright acoustical pianos with only 65 keys have been manufactured for use by roving pianists. Known as "gig" pianos and still containing a cast iron harp, these are comparatively lightweight and can be easily transported to and from engagements by only two men. As their harp is longer than that of a spinet or console piano, they have a stronger bass sound that to some pianists is well worth the trade-off in range that a reduced key-set offers.
Piano pedals from left to right: una corda, sostenuto, and damper.
Pianos have had pedals, or some close equivalent, since the earliest days. (In the 18th century, some pianos used levers pressed upward by the player's knee instead of pedals.) Most grand pianos have three pedals: soft pedal (una corda), sostenuto, and sustain pedal (from left to right, respectively). Most modern upright pianos have three pedals: soft pedal, practice pedal and sustain pedal, though older or cheaper models may lack the practice pedal.
The sustain pedal (or, damper pedal) is often simply called "the pedal", since it is the most frequently used. It is placed as the rightmost pedal in the group. It lifts the dampers from all keys, sustaining all played notes, and altering the overall tone.
The soft pedal or una corda pedal is placed leftmost in the row of pedals. In grand pianos, it shifts the entire action, including the keyboard, to the right, so that the hammers hit only one of the three strings for each note (hence the name una corda, or 'one string'). The effect is to soften the note as well as to change the tone. In uprights, this action is not possible, and so the pedal moves the hammers closer to the strings, allowing the hammers to hit the strings with less kinetic energy to produce a softer sound.
On grand pianos, the middle pedal is a sostenuto pedal. This pedal keeps raised any damper that was already raised at the moment the pedal is depressed. This makes it possible to sustain some notes (by depressing the sostenuto pedal before notes to be sustained are released) while the player's hands are free to play other notes. This can be useful for musical passages with pedal points and other otherwise tricky or impossible situations.
On many upright pianos, there is a middle pedal called the 'practice' or celeste pedal. This drops a piece of felt between the hammers and strings, greatly muting the sounds.
There are also non-standard variants. On vertical pianos, the middle pedal can be a bass sustain pedal: that is, when it is depressed, the dampers lift off the strings only in the bass section. This pedal would be used only when a pianist needs to sustain a single bass note or chord over many measures, while playing the melody in the treble section. On the largest Fazioli piano, there is a fourth pedal to the left of the principal three. This fourth pedal works in the same way as the soft pedal of an upright piano, moving the hammers closer to the strings.
An upright pedal piano
The rare transposing piano, of which Irving Berlin possessed an example, had a middle pedal that functioned as a clutch which disengages the keyboard from the mechanism, enabling the keyboard to be moved to the left or right with a lever. The entire action of the piano is thus shifted to allow the pianist to play music written in one key so that it sounds in a different key. The pedalier piano, or pedal piano, is a rare type of piano that includes a pedalboard, enabling bass register notes to be played with the feet, as is standard on the organ. There are two types of pedal piano: the pedal board may be an integral part of the instrument, using the same strings and mechanism as the manual keyboard, or, less frequently, it may consist of two independent pianos (each with its separate mechanics and strings) which are placed one above the other, a regular piano played by the hands and a bass-register piano played by the feet.
Many parts of a piano are made of materials selected for sturdiness. In quality pianos, the outer rim of the piano is made of a hardwood, normally maple or beech. According to Harold A. Conklin, the purpose of a sturdy rim is so that "the vibrational energy will stay as much as possible in the soundboard instead of dissipating uselessly in the case parts, which are inefficient radiators of sound."
View from below of a 182-cm grand piano. In order of distance from viewer: softwood braces, tapered soundboard ribs, soundboard. The metal rod at lower right is a humidity control device.
The rim is normally made by laminating flexible strips of hardwood to the desired shape, a system that was developed by Theodore Steinway in 1880. The thick wooden braces at the bottom (grands) or back (uprights) of the piano are not as acoustically important as the rim, and are often made of a softwood, even in top-quality pianos, in order to save weight. The requirement of structural strength, fulfilled with stout hardwood and thick metal, makes a piano heavy; even a small upright can weigh 136 kg (300 lb), and the Steinway concert grand (Model D) weighs 480 kg (990 lb). The largest piano built, the Fazioli F308, weighs 691 kg (1520 lb).
The pinblock, which holds the tuning pins in place, is another area of the piano where toughness is important. It is made of hardwood, (often maple) and generally is laminated (built of multiple layers) for additional strength and gripping power. Piano strings (also called piano wire), which must endure years of extreme tension and hard blows, are made of high quality steel. They are manufactured to vary as little as possible in diameter, since all deviations from uniformity introduce tonal distortion. The bass strings of a piano are made of a steel core wrapped with copper wire, to increase their mass whilst retaining flexibility.
The plate, or metal frame, of a piano is usually made of cast iron. It is advantageous for the plate to be quite massive. Since the strings are attached to the plate at one end, any vibrations transmitted to the plate will result in loss of energy to the desired (efficient) channel of sound transmission, namely the bridge and the soundboard. Some manufacturers now use cast steel in their plates, for greater strength. The casting of the plate is a delicate art, since the dimensions are crucial and the iron shrinks by about one percent during cooling.
The inclusion in a piano of an extremely large piece of metal is potentially an aesthetic handicap, which piano makers overcome by polishing, painting and decorating the plate. Plates often include the manufacturer's ornamental medallion and can be strikingly attractive. In an effort to make pianos lighter, Alcoa worked with Winter and Company piano manufacturers to make pianos using an aluminum plate during the 1940s. The use of aluminum for piano plates, however, did not become widely accepted and was discontinued.
The numerous grand parts and upright parts of a piano action are generally hardwood (e.g. maple, beech. hornbeam). However, since World War II, plastics have become available. Early plastics were incorporated into some pianos in the late 1940s and 1950s, but proved disastrous because they crystallized and lost their strength after only a few decades of use. The Steinway firm once incorporated Teflon, a synthetic material developed by DuPont, for some grand action parts in place of cloth, but ultimately abandoned the experiment due to an inherent "clicking" which invariably developed over time. (Also Teflon is "humidity stable" whereas the wood adjacent to the Teflon will swell and shrink with humidity changes, causing problems.) More recently, the Kawai firm has built pianos with action parts made of more modern and effective plastics such as carbon fiber; these parts have held up better and have generally received the respect of piano technicians .
Ivorite and ebony keys on a modern Steinway & Sons concert grand piano.
The part of the piano where materials probably matter more than anywhere else is the soundboard. In quality pianos, this is made of solid spruce (that is, spruce boards glued together at their edges). Spruce is chosen for its high ratio of strength to weight. The best piano makers use close-grained, quarter-sawn, defect-free spruce, and make sure that it has been carefully dried over a long period of time before making it into soundboards. In cheap pianos, the soundboard is often made of plywood.
Piano keys are generally made of spruce or basswood, for lightness. Spruce is normally used in high-quality pianos. Traditionally, the black keys were made from ebony and the white keys were covered with strips of ivory, but since ivory-yielding species are now endangered and protected by treaty, plastics are now almost exclusively used. Also, ivory tends to chip more easily than plastic. Legal ivory can still be obtained in limited quantities. At one time, the Yamaha firm innovated a plastic called "Ivorine" or "Ivorite", since imitated by other makers, that mimics the look and feel of ivory.
A piano tuner
Pianos need regular tuning to keep them up to pitch, which is usually the internationally recognized standard concert pitch of A4 = 440 Hz. The hammers of pianos are voiced to compensate for gradual hardening, and other parts also need periodic regulation. Aged and worn pianos can be rebuilt or reconditioned. Often, by replacing a great number of their parts, they can be made to perform as well as new pianos. Older pianos are often more settled and produce a warmer tone.
Piano moving should be done by trained piano movers using adequate manpower and the correct equipment for any particular piano's size and weight. Pianos are heavy yet delicate instruments. Over the years, professional piano movers have developed special techniques for transporting both grands and uprights which prevent damage to the case and to the piano's mechanics.
The piano at the social center in the 19th century (Moritz von Schwind, 1868). The man at the piano is Franz Schubert.
The piano is a crucial instrument in Western classical music, jazz, film, television, and most other complex western musical genres. Since a large number of composers are proficient pianists â and because the piano keyboard offers an easy means of complex melodic and harmonic interplay â the piano is often used as a tool for composition.
Pianos were, and still are, popular instruments for private household ownership. Hence, pianos have gained a place in the popular consciousness, and are sometimes referred to by nicknames including: "the ivories", "the joanna", "the eighty-eight", and "the black(s) and white(s)", "the little joe(s)". Playing the piano is sometimes referred to as "tickling the ivories".
;General
* Innovations in the piano
* Jazz piano
* Piano acoustics
* Piano key frequencies (in equal temperament)
* Piano trio
* String piano
;Related lists
* List of films about pianists
* Lists of solo piano pieces
* List of piano makers
* List of piano brand names
* List of classical pianists (recorded)
;Related instruments
* Hammered dulcimer
* Harp
* Clavichord
* Harpsichord
* Organ and Pipe organ
* Electric piano
* Electronic piano
* The authoritative New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (available online by subscription), contains a wealth of information. Main article: "Pianoforte".
* The Encyclopædia Britannica (available online by subscription) also includes much information on the piano. In the 1988 edition, the primary article can be found in "Musical Instruments".
* The Piano Book by Larry Fine (4th ed. Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts: Brookside Press, 2001; ISBN 1-929145-01-2) gives the basics of how pianos work, and a thorough evaluative survey of current pianos and their manufacturers. It also includes advice on buying and owning pianos.
*Giraffes, black dragons, and other pianos: a technological history from Cristofori to the modern concert grand by Edwin M. Good (1982, second ed., 2001, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press) is a standard reference on the history of the piano.
*The Early Pianoforte by Stewart Pollens (1995, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) is an authoritative work covering the ancestry of the piano, its invention by Cristofori, and the early stages of its subsequent evolution.
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;Information
* Yamaha Musician - Yamaha piano reviews and enthusiast site
* Grand Piano information and images
* The Piano Page Lots of information from the Piano Technicians Guild
* WikiRecording's Guide to Recording Pianos
;History
* History of the Piano Forte, Association of Blind Piano Tuners, UK
* The Frederick Historical Piano Collection
;Piano Technique
* Principles of Piano Technique
;Sheet music for Piano
* All Piano Scores Free printable classical sheet music for piano + audio
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Piano | What are a piano's keys generally made of? | Piano keys are generally made of spruce or basswood. | data/set2/a1 | Piano
Baby Grand Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard that produces sound by striking steel strings with felt covered hammers. The hammers immediately rebound, allowing the strings to continue vibrating at their resonant frequency. " Hammer Time" by John Kiehl, Wolfram Demonstrations Project. These vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a soundboard that couples the acoustic energy to the air so that it can be heard as sound.
The piano is widely used in Western music for solo performance, ensemble use, chamber music, and accompaniment. It is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal. Although not portable and often expensive, the piano's versatility and ubiquity have made it one of the most familiar musical instruments. It is sometimes classified as both a percussion and a stringed instrument. According to the Hornbostel-Sachs method of music classification, it is grouped with Chordophones.
The word piano is a shortened form of the word pianoforte, which is seldom used except in formal language and derived from the original Italian name for the instrument, clavicembalo [or gravicembalo] col piano e forte (literally harpsichord with soft and loud). This refers to the instrument's responsiveness to keyboard touch, which allows the pianist to produce notes at different dynamic levels by controlling the speed with which the hammers hit the strings.
Early piano replica by the modern builder Paul McNulty, after Walter & Sohn, 1805
The piano was originally founded on earlier technological innovations. The first string instruments with struck strings were the hammered dulcimers originating from the Persian traditional musical instrument santur. David R. Peterson (1994), "Acoustics of the hammered dulcimer, its history, and recent developments", Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 95 (5), p. 3002. During the Middle Ages, there were several attempts at creating stringed keyboard instruments with struck strings, Pollens, 1995. chp. 1 the earliest being the hurdy gurdy which has uncertain origins. By the 17th century, 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.
Grand piano by Louis Bas of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, France, 1781. Earliest French grand piano known to survive; includes an inverted wrestplank and action derived from the work of Bartolomeo Cristofiori (ca. 1700) with ornately decorated soundboard.
The invention of the modern piano is credited to Bartolomeo Cristofori of Padua, Italy, who was employed by Prince Ferdinand de Medici as the Keeper of the Instruments. He was an expert harpsichord maker and was well acquainted with the previous body of knowledge on stringed keyboard instruments. It is not known exactly when Cristofori first built a piano. An inventory made by his employers, the Medici family, indicates the existence of a piano by the year 1700; another document of doubtful authenticity indicates a date of 1698. The three Cristofori pianos that survive today date from the 1720s.
Cristofori's great success was in solving, without any prior example, the fundamental mechanical problem of piano design: the hammer must strike the string, but not remain in contact with it (as a tangent remains in contact with a clavichord string) because this would damp the sound. Moreover, the hammer must return to its rest position without bouncing violently, and it must be possible to repeat a note rapidly. Cristofori's piano action served as a model for the many different approaches to piano actions that followed. While Cristofori's early instruments were made with thin strings and were much quieter than the modern piano, compared to the clavichord (the only previous keyboard instrument capable of minutely controlled dynamic nuance through the keyboard) they were considerably louder and had more sustaining power.
Cristofori's new instrument remained relatively unknown until an Italian writer, Scipione Maffei, wrote an enthusiastic article about it (1711), including a diagram of the mechanism. This article was widely distributed, and most of the next generation of piano builders started their work because of reading it. One of these builders was Gottfried Silbermann, better known as an organ builder. Silbermann's pianos were virtually direct copies of Cristofori's, with one important addition: Silbermann invented the forerunner of the modern damper pedal, which lifts all the dampers from the strings at once.
Silbermann showed Johann Sebastian Bach one of his early instruments in the 1730s, but Bach did not like it at that time, claiming that the higher notes were too soft to allow a full dynamic range. Although this earned him some animosity from Silbermann, the criticism was apparently heeded. Bach did approve of a later instrument he saw in 1747, and even served as an agent in selling Silbermann's pianos.
Piano making flourished during the late 18th century in the Viennese school, which included Johann Andreas Stein (who worked in Augsburg, Germany) and the Viennese makers Nannette Streicher (daughter of Johann Andreas Stein) and Anton Walter. Viennese-style pianos were built with wood frames, two strings per note, and had leather-covered hammers. Some of these Viennese pianos had the opposite coloring of modern-day pianos; the natural keys were black and the accidental keys white. It was for such instruments that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed his concertos and sonatas, and replicas of them are built today for use in authentic-instrument performance of his music. The pianos of Mozart's day had a softer, clearer tone than today's pianos or English pianos, with less sustaining power. The term fortepiano is nowadays often used to distinguish the 18th-century instrument from later pianos.
In the period lasting from about 1790 to 1860, the Mozart-era piano underwent tremendous changes that led to the modern form of the instrument. This revolution was in response to a consistent preference by composers and pianists for a more powerful, sustained piano sound, and made possible by the ongoing Industrial Revolution with technological resources such as high-quality steel, called piano wire, for strings, and precision casting for the production of iron frames. Over time, the tonal range of the piano was also increased from the five octaves of Mozart's day to the 7â
or more octaves found on modern pianos.
Broadwood square action
Early technological progress owed much to the English firm of Broadwood, who already had a reputation for the splendour and powerful tone of its harpsichords. Broadwood constructed instruments that were progressively larger, louder, and more robustly constructed. They sent pianos to both Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven, and were the first firm to build pianos with a range of more than five octaves: five octaves and a fifth during the 1790s, six octaves by 1810 (Beethoven used the extra notes in his later works), and seven octaves by 1820. The Viennese makers similarly followed these trends, however the two schools used different piano actions: Broadwoods were more robust, Viennese instruments were more sensitive.
Erard square action
By the 1820s, the center of innovation had shifted to Paris, where the Pleyel firm manufactured pianos used by Frédéric Chopin and the Ãrard firm manufactured those used by Franz Liszt. In 1821, Sébastien Ãrard invented the double escapement action, which permitted a note to be repeated even if the key had not yet risen to its maximum vertical position. This facilitated rapid playing of repeated notes - and this musical device was pioneered by Liszt. When the invention became public, as revised by Henri Herz, the double escapement action gradually became standard in grand pianos, and is still incorporated into all grand pianos currently produced.
One of the major technical innovations that helped to create the sound of the modern piano was the use of a strong iron frame. Also called the "plate", the iron frame sits atop the soundboard, and serves as the primary bulwark against the force of string tension. The increased structural integrity of the iron frame allowed the use of thicker, tenser, and more numerous strings. In a modern grand the total string tension can exceed 20 tons. The single piece cast iron frame was patented in 1825 in Boston by Alpheus Babcock, combining the metal hitch pin plate (1821, claimed by Broadwood on behalf of Samuel Hervé) and resisting bars (Thom and Allen, 1820, but also claimed by Broadwood and Ãrard). Babcock later worked for the Chickering & Mackays firm who patented the first full iron frame for grand pianos in 1843. Composite forged metal frames were preferred by many European makers until the American system was fully adopted by the early 20th century.
Other innovations for the mechanism included the use of felt hammer coverings instead of layered leather hammers. Felt hammers, which were first introduced by Henri Pape in 1826, were a more consistent material, permitting wider dynamic ranges as hammer weights and string tension increased. The sostenuto pedal (see below), invented in 1844 by Jean Louis Boisselot and improved by the Steinway firm in 1874, allowed a wider range of effects.
Other important technical innovations of this era included changes to the way the piano was strung, such as the use of a "choir" of three strings rather than two for all but the lower notes, and the use of different stringing methods. With the over strung scale, also called "cross-stringing", the strings are placed in a vertically overlapping slanted arrangement, with two heights of bridges on the soundboard instead of just one. This permits larger, but not necessarily longer, strings to fit within the case of the piano. Over stringing was invented by Jean-Henri Pape during the 1820s, and first patented for use in grand pianos in the United States by Henry Steinway Jr. in 1859.
Duplex scaling: Treble strings of a 182 cm. grand piano. From lower left to upper right: dampers, main sounding length of strings, treble bridge, duplex string length, duplex bridge (long bar perpendicular to strings), hitchpins. With duplexes or aliquot scales, which was patented in 1872 by Theodore Steinway, the different components of string vibrations are controlled by tuning their secondary parts in octave relationships with the sounding lengths. Similar systems developed by Blüthner (1872), as well as Taskin (1788), and Collard (1821) used more distinctly ringing undamped vibrations to modify tone.
Some early pianos had shapes and designs that are no longer in use. The square piano had horizontal strings arranged diagonally across the rectangular case above the hammers and with the keyboard set in the long side. This design is attributed to Gottfried Silbermann or Christian Ernst Friderici on the continent, and Johannes Zumpe or Harman Vietor in England and it was improved by changes first introduced by Guillaume-Lebrecht Petzold in France and Alpheus Babcock in the United States. Square pianos were built in great numbers through the 1840s in Europe and the 1890s in America, and saw the most visible changes of any type of piano: the celebrated iron framed over strung squares manufactured by Steinway & Sons were more than two and a half times the size of Zumpe's wood framed instruments from a century before. Their overwhelming popularity was due to inexpensive construction and price, although their performance and tone were often limited by simple actions and closely spaced strings.
The mechanism in upright pianos is perpendicular to the keys.
The tall, vertically strung upright grand was arranged like a grand set on end, with the soundboard and bridges above the keys, and tuning pins below them. The term was later revived by many manufacturers for advertising purposes. Giraffe, pyramid and lyre pianos were arranged in a somewhat similar fashion in evocatively shaped cases.
The very tall cabinet piano was introduced about 1805 and was built through the 1840s. It had strings arranged vertically on a continuous frame with bridges extended nearly to the floor, behind the keyboard and very large sticker action. The short cottage upright or pianino with vertical stringing, made popular by Robert Wornum around 1815, was built into the 20th century. They are informally called birdcage pianos because of their prominent damper mechanism. Pianinos were distinguished from the oblique, or diagonally strung upright made popular in France by Roller & Blanchet during the late 1820s. The tiny spinet upright was manufactured from the mid-1930s until recent times. The low position of the hammers required the use of a "drop action" to preserve a reasonable keyboard height.
Modern upright and grand pianos attained their present forms by the end of the 19th century. Improvements have been made in manufacturing processes, and many individual details of the instrument continue to receive attention.
Much of the most widely admired piano repertoire, for example, that of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, was composed for a type of instrument that is rather different from the modern instruments on which this music is normally performed today. Even the music of the Romantics, including Liszt, Chopin, Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn and Johannes Brahms, was written for pianos substantially different from ours.
A schematic depiction of the construction of a pianoforte.
Modern pianos come in two basic configurations (with subcategories): the grand piano and the upright piano.
Grand piano
In grand pianos, the frame and strings are horizontal, with the strings extending away from the keyboard. There are several sizes of grand piano. A rough generalization distinguishes the "concert grand" (between about and long) from the "parlor grand" or "boudoir grand" (about to ) and the smaller "baby grand".
All else being equal, longer pianos with longer strings have better sound and lower inharmonicity of the strings. Inharmonicity is the degree to which the frequencies of overtones (known as partials, partial tones, or harmonics) depart from whole multiples of the fundamental frequency. Pianos with shorter, thicker, and stiffer strings (e.g., baby grands) have more inharmonicity. The longer strings on a concert grand can vibrate more freely than the shorter, thicker strings on a baby grand, which means that a concert grand's strings will have truer overtones. This is partly because the strings will be tuned closer to equal temperament in relation to the standard pitch with less "stretching" in the piano tuning (See: Piano tuning). Full-size grands are usually used for public concerts, whereas smaller grands, introduced by Sohmer & Co. in 1884, are often chosen for domestic use where space and cost are considerations.
Upright piano
Upright pianos, also called vertical pianos, are more compact because the frame and strings are vertical. It is considered harder to produce a sensitive piano action when the hammers move horizontally, as the vertical hammer return is dependent on springs which are prone to wear and tear. However, a well-regulated vertical piano will probably play more smoothly than a poorly regulated grand piano, and the very best upright pianos approach the level of some grand pianos of the same size in tone quality and responsiveness.
One noticeable advantage that the grand piano action has over the vertical action is that all grand pianos have a special repetition lever in the playing action that is absent in all verticals. This repetition lever, a separate one for every key, catches the hammer close to the strings as long as the keys are played repeatedly and fairly quickly. In this position, with the hammer resting on the lever, a pianist can play repeated notes, staccato, and trills with much more speed and control than is possible on a vertical piano.
Upright pianos with unusually tall frames and long strings are sometimes called "upright grand" pianos.
Some authors classify modern pianos according to their height and, to modifications of the action that are necessary to accomodate the height.
* Studio pianos are around 42 to 45 inches tall. This is the shortest cabinet that can accomodate a 'full-sized' action located above the keyboard.
* Console pianos have a compact action (shorter hammers), and are a few inches shorter than studio models.
* The top of a Spinet model barely rises above the keyboard. The action is located below, operated by vertical wires that are attached to the backs of the keys.
* Anything taller than a studio piano is called an upright.
Player piano
Toy pianos began to be manufactured in the 19th century. In 1863, Henri Fourneaux invented the player piano, which "plays itself" from a piano roll without the need for a pianist. The player piano is a piano that records a performance using rolls of paper with perforations, and then replays the performance using pneumatic devices. A modern equivalent for the player piano is the Yamaha Disklavier system, which uses solenoids and midi instead of pneumatics and rolls. Silent pianos, which allow a regular piano to be used converted to a digital instrument, are a recent innovation and are becoming more popular.
Irving Berlin played a special piano called the transposing piano, which was invented in 1801 by Edward Ryley. It had a lever under the keyboard used to alter the music to any key. One of Berlin's pianos is in the Smithsonian Museum. For much of his career, Berlin only knew how to play the black keys. But with his 'trick piano' he was no longer limited to the key of F-sharp.
A relatively recent development is the prepared piano, which is used in contemporary art music. A prepared piano is a standard grand piano which has had objects placed inside it before a performance in order to alter its sound, or which has had its mechanism changed in some way. The scores for music for prepared piano often instruct the pianist to insert pieces of rubber or small pieces of metal (screws or washers) in between the strings. These added items either mute the strings or create unusual vibrating sounds.
Since the 1980s, digital pianos have been available, which use digital sampling technology to reproduce the sound of each piano note. The best digital pianos are sophisticated, with features including working pedals, weighted keys, multiple voices, and MIDI interfaces. However, with such technology, it is difficult to duplicate one particular aspect of acoustic pianos, namely that when the damper pedal (see below) is depressed, the strings not struck vibrate sympathetically when other strings are struck, as well as the unique instrument-specific mathematical non-linearity of partials on any given unison. Since this sympathetic vibration is considered central to piano tone, many digital pianos do not sound the same as the best acoustic pianos. Progress is being made in this area by including physical models of sympathetic vibration in the synthesis software. Some higher end digital pianos, such as the Yamaha Clavinova series, or the KAWAI MP8 series, produced in the last few years incorporate string resonance technology to overcome this limitation.
With the advent of powerful desktop computers, highly realistic sampled digital grand pianos have become available as affordable software modules. Some use multi-gigabyte piano sample sets with as many as 90 recordings, each lasting many seconds, for each of the 88 keys under different conditions, augmented by additional samples to emulate sympathetic resonance, key release, the drop of the dampers, and simulations of piano techniques like re-pedaling.
Keyboard
Almost every modern piano has 36 black keys and 52 white keys for a total of 88 keys (seven octaves plus a minor third, from A0 to C8). Many older pianos only have 85 keys (seven octaves from A0 to A7), while some manufacturers extend the range further in one or both directions.
Some Bösendorfer pianos extend the normal range downwards to F0, with one other model going as far as a bottom C0, making a full eight octave range. These extra keys are sometimes hidden under a small hinged lid that can be flipped down to cover the keys in order to avoid visual disorientation in a pianist unfamiliar with the extended keyboard. On others, the colours of the extra white keys are reversed (black instead of white).
The extra keys are added primarily for increased resonance from the associated strings; that is, they vibrate sympathetically with other strings whenever the damper pedal is depressed and thus give a fuller tone. Only a very small number of works composed for piano actually use these notes. More recently, the Stuart and Sons company has also manufactured extended-range pianos. On their instruments, the range is extended both down the bass to F0 and up the treble to F8 for a full eight octaves. The extra keys are the same as the other keys in appearance.
Small studio upright acoustical pianos with only 65 keys have been manufactured for use by roving pianists. Known as "gig" pianos and still containing a cast iron harp, these are comparatively lightweight and can be easily transported to and from engagements by only two men. As their harp is longer than that of a spinet or console piano, they have a stronger bass sound that to some pianists is well worth the trade-off in range that a reduced key-set offers.
Piano pedals from left to right: una corda, sostenuto, and damper.
Pianos have had pedals, or some close equivalent, since the earliest days. (In the 18th century, some pianos used levers pressed upward by the player's knee instead of pedals.) Most grand pianos have three pedals: soft pedal (una corda), sostenuto, and sustain pedal (from left to right, respectively). Most modern upright pianos have three pedals: soft pedal, practice pedal and sustain pedal, though older or cheaper models may lack the practice pedal.
The sustain pedal (or, damper pedal) is often simply called "the pedal", since it is the most frequently used. It is placed as the rightmost pedal in the group. It lifts the dampers from all keys, sustaining all played notes, and altering the overall tone.
The soft pedal or una corda pedal is placed leftmost in the row of pedals. In grand pianos, it shifts the entire action, including the keyboard, to the right, so that the hammers hit only one of the three strings for each note (hence the name una corda, or 'one string'). The effect is to soften the note as well as to change the tone. In uprights, this action is not possible, and so the pedal moves the hammers closer to the strings, allowing the hammers to hit the strings with less kinetic energy to produce a softer sound.
On grand pianos, the middle pedal is a sostenuto pedal. This pedal keeps raised any damper that was already raised at the moment the pedal is depressed. This makes it possible to sustain some notes (by depressing the sostenuto pedal before notes to be sustained are released) while the player's hands are free to play other notes. This can be useful for musical passages with pedal points and other otherwise tricky or impossible situations.
On many upright pianos, there is a middle pedal called the 'practice' or celeste pedal. This drops a piece of felt between the hammers and strings, greatly muting the sounds.
There are also non-standard variants. On vertical pianos, the middle pedal can be a bass sustain pedal: that is, when it is depressed, the dampers lift off the strings only in the bass section. This pedal would be used only when a pianist needs to sustain a single bass note or chord over many measures, while playing the melody in the treble section. On the largest Fazioli piano, there is a fourth pedal to the left of the principal three. This fourth pedal works in the same way as the soft pedal of an upright piano, moving the hammers closer to the strings.
An upright pedal piano
The rare transposing piano, of which Irving Berlin possessed an example, had a middle pedal that functioned as a clutch which disengages the keyboard from the mechanism, enabling the keyboard to be moved to the left or right with a lever. The entire action of the piano is thus shifted to allow the pianist to play music written in one key so that it sounds in a different key. The pedalier piano, or pedal piano, is a rare type of piano that includes a pedalboard, enabling bass register notes to be played with the feet, as is standard on the organ. There are two types of pedal piano: the pedal board may be an integral part of the instrument, using the same strings and mechanism as the manual keyboard, or, less frequently, it may consist of two independent pianos (each with its separate mechanics and strings) which are placed one above the other, a regular piano played by the hands and a bass-register piano played by the feet.
Many parts of a piano are made of materials selected for sturdiness. In quality pianos, the outer rim of the piano is made of a hardwood, normally maple or beech. According to Harold A. Conklin, the purpose of a sturdy rim is so that "the vibrational energy will stay as much as possible in the soundboard instead of dissipating uselessly in the case parts, which are inefficient radiators of sound."
View from below of a 182-cm grand piano. In order of distance from viewer: softwood braces, tapered soundboard ribs, soundboard. The metal rod at lower right is a humidity control device.
The rim is normally made by laminating flexible strips of hardwood to the desired shape, a system that was developed by Theodore Steinway in 1880. The thick wooden braces at the bottom (grands) or back (uprights) of the piano are not as acoustically important as the rim, and are often made of a softwood, even in top-quality pianos, in order to save weight. The requirement of structural strength, fulfilled with stout hardwood and thick metal, makes a piano heavy; even a small upright can weigh 136 kg (300 lb), and the Steinway concert grand (Model D) weighs 480 kg (990 lb). The largest piano built, the Fazioli F308, weighs 691 kg (1520 lb).
The pinblock, which holds the tuning pins in place, is another area of the piano where toughness is important. It is made of hardwood, (often maple) and generally is laminated (built of multiple layers) for additional strength and gripping power. Piano strings (also called piano wire), which must endure years of extreme tension and hard blows, are made of high quality steel. They are manufactured to vary as little as possible in diameter, since all deviations from uniformity introduce tonal distortion. The bass strings of a piano are made of a steel core wrapped with copper wire, to increase their mass whilst retaining flexibility.
The plate, or metal frame, of a piano is usually made of cast iron. It is advantageous for the plate to be quite massive. Since the strings are attached to the plate at one end, any vibrations transmitted to the plate will result in loss of energy to the desired (efficient) channel of sound transmission, namely the bridge and the soundboard. Some manufacturers now use cast steel in their plates, for greater strength. The casting of the plate is a delicate art, since the dimensions are crucial and the iron shrinks by about one percent during cooling.
The inclusion in a piano of an extremely large piece of metal is potentially an aesthetic handicap, which piano makers overcome by polishing, painting and decorating the plate. Plates often include the manufacturer's ornamental medallion and can be strikingly attractive. In an effort to make pianos lighter, Alcoa worked with Winter and Company piano manufacturers to make pianos using an aluminum plate during the 1940s. The use of aluminum for piano plates, however, did not become widely accepted and was discontinued.
The numerous grand parts and upright parts of a piano action are generally hardwood (e.g. maple, beech. hornbeam). However, since World War II, plastics have become available. Early plastics were incorporated into some pianos in the late 1940s and 1950s, but proved disastrous because they crystallized and lost their strength after only a few decades of use. The Steinway firm once incorporated Teflon, a synthetic material developed by DuPont, for some grand action parts in place of cloth, but ultimately abandoned the experiment due to an inherent "clicking" which invariably developed over time. (Also Teflon is "humidity stable" whereas the wood adjacent to the Teflon will swell and shrink with humidity changes, causing problems.) More recently, the Kawai firm has built pianos with action parts made of more modern and effective plastics such as carbon fiber; these parts have held up better and have generally received the respect of piano technicians .
Ivorite and ebony keys on a modern Steinway & Sons concert grand piano.
The part of the piano where materials probably matter more than anywhere else is the soundboard. In quality pianos, this is made of solid spruce (that is, spruce boards glued together at their edges). Spruce is chosen for its high ratio of strength to weight. The best piano makers use close-grained, quarter-sawn, defect-free spruce, and make sure that it has been carefully dried over a long period of time before making it into soundboards. In cheap pianos, the soundboard is often made of plywood.
Piano keys are generally made of spruce or basswood, for lightness. Spruce is normally used in high-quality pianos. Traditionally, the black keys were made from ebony and the white keys were covered with strips of ivory, but since ivory-yielding species are now endangered and protected by treaty, plastics are now almost exclusively used. Also, ivory tends to chip more easily than plastic. Legal ivory can still be obtained in limited quantities. At one time, the Yamaha firm innovated a plastic called "Ivorine" or "Ivorite", since imitated by other makers, that mimics the look and feel of ivory.
A piano tuner
Pianos need regular tuning to keep them up to pitch, which is usually the internationally recognized standard concert pitch of A4 = 440 Hz. The hammers of pianos are voiced to compensate for gradual hardening, and other parts also need periodic regulation. Aged and worn pianos can be rebuilt or reconditioned. Often, by replacing a great number of their parts, they can be made to perform as well as new pianos. Older pianos are often more settled and produce a warmer tone.
Piano moving should be done by trained piano movers using adequate manpower and the correct equipment for any particular piano's size and weight. Pianos are heavy yet delicate instruments. Over the years, professional piano movers have developed special techniques for transporting both grands and uprights which prevent damage to the case and to the piano's mechanics.
The piano at the social center in the 19th century (Moritz von Schwind, 1868). The man at the piano is Franz Schubert.
The piano is a crucial instrument in Western classical music, jazz, film, television, and most other complex western musical genres. Since a large number of composers are proficient pianists â and because the piano keyboard offers an easy means of complex melodic and harmonic interplay â the piano is often used as a tool for composition.
Pianos were, and still are, popular instruments for private household ownership. Hence, pianos have gained a place in the popular consciousness, and are sometimes referred to by nicknames including: "the ivories", "the joanna", "the eighty-eight", and "the black(s) and white(s)", "the little joe(s)". Playing the piano is sometimes referred to as "tickling the ivories".
;General
* Innovations in the piano
* Jazz piano
* Piano acoustics
* Piano key frequencies (in equal temperament)
* Piano trio
* String piano
;Related lists
* List of films about pianists
* Lists of solo piano pieces
* List of piano makers
* List of piano brand names
* List of classical pianists (recorded)
;Related instruments
* Hammered dulcimer
* Harp
* Clavichord
* Harpsichord
* Organ and Pipe organ
* Electric piano
* Electronic piano
* The authoritative New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (available online by subscription), contains a wealth of information. Main article: "Pianoforte".
* The Encyclopædia Britannica (available online by subscription) also includes much information on the piano. In the 1988 edition, the primary article can be found in "Musical Instruments".
* The Piano Book by Larry Fine (4th ed. Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts: Brookside Press, 2001; ISBN 1-929145-01-2) gives the basics of how pianos work, and a thorough evaluative survey of current pianos and their manufacturers. It also includes advice on buying and owning pianos.
*Giraffes, black dragons, and other pianos: a technological history from Cristofori to the modern concert grand by Edwin M. Good (1982, second ed., 2001, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press) is a standard reference on the history of the piano.
*The Early Pianoforte by Stewart Pollens (1995, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) is an authoritative work covering the ancestry of the piano, its invention by Cristofori, and the early stages of its subsequent evolution.
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;Information
* Yamaha Musician - Yamaha piano reviews and enthusiast site
* Grand Piano information and images
* The Piano Page Lots of information from the Piano Technicians Guild
* WikiRecording's Guide to Recording Pianos
;History
* History of the Piano Forte, Association of Blind Piano Tuners, UK
* The Frederick Historical Piano Collection
;Piano Technique
* Principles of Piano Technique
;Sheet music for Piano
* All Piano Scores Free printable classical sheet music for piano + audio
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Piano | How many total keys does a typical modern piano have? | 88 keys. | data/set2/a1 | Piano
Baby Grand Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard that produces sound by striking steel strings with felt covered hammers. The hammers immediately rebound, allowing the strings to continue vibrating at their resonant frequency. " Hammer Time" by John Kiehl, Wolfram Demonstrations Project. These vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a soundboard that couples the acoustic energy to the air so that it can be heard as sound.
The piano is widely used in Western music for solo performance, ensemble use, chamber music, and accompaniment. It is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal. Although not portable and often expensive, the piano's versatility and ubiquity have made it one of the most familiar musical instruments. It is sometimes classified as both a percussion and a stringed instrument. According to the Hornbostel-Sachs method of music classification, it is grouped with Chordophones.
The word piano is a shortened form of the word pianoforte, which is seldom used except in formal language and derived from the original Italian name for the instrument, clavicembalo [or gravicembalo] col piano e forte (literally harpsichord with soft and loud). This refers to the instrument's responsiveness to keyboard touch, which allows the pianist to produce notes at different dynamic levels by controlling the speed with which the hammers hit the strings.
Early piano replica by the modern builder Paul McNulty, after Walter & Sohn, 1805
The piano was originally founded on earlier technological innovations. The first string instruments with struck strings were the hammered dulcimers originating from the Persian traditional musical instrument santur. David R. Peterson (1994), "Acoustics of the hammered dulcimer, its history, and recent developments", Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 95 (5), p. 3002. During the Middle Ages, there were several attempts at creating stringed keyboard instruments with struck strings, Pollens, 1995. chp. 1 the earliest being the hurdy gurdy which has uncertain origins. By the 17th century, 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.
Grand piano by Louis Bas of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, France, 1781. Earliest French grand piano known to survive; includes an inverted wrestplank and action derived from the work of Bartolomeo Cristofiori (ca. 1700) with ornately decorated soundboard.
The invention of the modern piano is credited to Bartolomeo Cristofori of Padua, Italy, who was employed by Prince Ferdinand de Medici as the Keeper of the Instruments. He was an expert harpsichord maker and was well acquainted with the previous body of knowledge on stringed keyboard instruments. It is not known exactly when Cristofori first built a piano. An inventory made by his employers, the Medici family, indicates the existence of a piano by the year 1700; another document of doubtful authenticity indicates a date of 1698. The three Cristofori pianos that survive today date from the 1720s.
Cristofori's great success was in solving, without any prior example, the fundamental mechanical problem of piano design: the hammer must strike the string, but not remain in contact with it (as a tangent remains in contact with a clavichord string) because this would damp the sound. Moreover, the hammer must return to its rest position without bouncing violently, and it must be possible to repeat a note rapidly. Cristofori's piano action served as a model for the many different approaches to piano actions that followed. While Cristofori's early instruments were made with thin strings and were much quieter than the modern piano, compared to the clavichord (the only previous keyboard instrument capable of minutely controlled dynamic nuance through the keyboard) they were considerably louder and had more sustaining power.
Cristofori's new instrument remained relatively unknown until an Italian writer, Scipione Maffei, wrote an enthusiastic article about it (1711), including a diagram of the mechanism. This article was widely distributed, and most of the next generation of piano builders started their work because of reading it. One of these builders was Gottfried Silbermann, better known as an organ builder. Silbermann's pianos were virtually direct copies of Cristofori's, with one important addition: Silbermann invented the forerunner of the modern damper pedal, which lifts all the dampers from the strings at once.
Silbermann showed Johann Sebastian Bach one of his early instruments in the 1730s, but Bach did not like it at that time, claiming that the higher notes were too soft to allow a full dynamic range. Although this earned him some animosity from Silbermann, the criticism was apparently heeded. Bach did approve of a later instrument he saw in 1747, and even served as an agent in selling Silbermann's pianos.
Piano making flourished during the late 18th century in the Viennese school, which included Johann Andreas Stein (who worked in Augsburg, Germany) and the Viennese makers Nannette Streicher (daughter of Johann Andreas Stein) and Anton Walter. Viennese-style pianos were built with wood frames, two strings per note, and had leather-covered hammers. Some of these Viennese pianos had the opposite coloring of modern-day pianos; the natural keys were black and the accidental keys white. It was for such instruments that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed his concertos and sonatas, and replicas of them are built today for use in authentic-instrument performance of his music. The pianos of Mozart's day had a softer, clearer tone than today's pianos or English pianos, with less sustaining power. The term fortepiano is nowadays often used to distinguish the 18th-century instrument from later pianos.
In the period lasting from about 1790 to 1860, the Mozart-era piano underwent tremendous changes that led to the modern form of the instrument. This revolution was in response to a consistent preference by composers and pianists for a more powerful, sustained piano sound, and made possible by the ongoing Industrial Revolution with technological resources such as high-quality steel, called piano wire, for strings, and precision casting for the production of iron frames. Over time, the tonal range of the piano was also increased from the five octaves of Mozart's day to the 7â
or more octaves found on modern pianos.
Broadwood square action
Early technological progress owed much to the English firm of Broadwood, who already had a reputation for the splendour and powerful tone of its harpsichords. Broadwood constructed instruments that were progressively larger, louder, and more robustly constructed. They sent pianos to both Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven, and were the first firm to build pianos with a range of more than five octaves: five octaves and a fifth during the 1790s, six octaves by 1810 (Beethoven used the extra notes in his later works), and seven octaves by 1820. The Viennese makers similarly followed these trends, however the two schools used different piano actions: Broadwoods were more robust, Viennese instruments were more sensitive.
Erard square action
By the 1820s, the center of innovation had shifted to Paris, where the Pleyel firm manufactured pianos used by Frédéric Chopin and the Ãrard firm manufactured those used by Franz Liszt. In 1821, Sébastien Ãrard invented the double escapement action, which permitted a note to be repeated even if the key had not yet risen to its maximum vertical position. This facilitated rapid playing of repeated notes - and this musical device was pioneered by Liszt. When the invention became public, as revised by Henri Herz, the double escapement action gradually became standard in grand pianos, and is still incorporated into all grand pianos currently produced.
One of the major technical innovations that helped to create the sound of the modern piano was the use of a strong iron frame. Also called the "plate", the iron frame sits atop the soundboard, and serves as the primary bulwark against the force of string tension. The increased structural integrity of the iron frame allowed the use of thicker, tenser, and more numerous strings. In a modern grand the total string tension can exceed 20 tons. The single piece cast iron frame was patented in 1825 in Boston by Alpheus Babcock, combining the metal hitch pin plate (1821, claimed by Broadwood on behalf of Samuel Hervé) and resisting bars (Thom and Allen, 1820, but also claimed by Broadwood and Ãrard). Babcock later worked for the Chickering & Mackays firm who patented the first full iron frame for grand pianos in 1843. Composite forged metal frames were preferred by many European makers until the American system was fully adopted by the early 20th century.
Other innovations for the mechanism included the use of felt hammer coverings instead of layered leather hammers. Felt hammers, which were first introduced by Henri Pape in 1826, were a more consistent material, permitting wider dynamic ranges as hammer weights and string tension increased. The sostenuto pedal (see below), invented in 1844 by Jean Louis Boisselot and improved by the Steinway firm in 1874, allowed a wider range of effects.
Other important technical innovations of this era included changes to the way the piano was strung, such as the use of a "choir" of three strings rather than two for all but the lower notes, and the use of different stringing methods. With the over strung scale, also called "cross-stringing", the strings are placed in a vertically overlapping slanted arrangement, with two heights of bridges on the soundboard instead of just one. This permits larger, but not necessarily longer, strings to fit within the case of the piano. Over stringing was invented by Jean-Henri Pape during the 1820s, and first patented for use in grand pianos in the United States by Henry Steinway Jr. in 1859.
Duplex scaling: Treble strings of a 182 cm. grand piano. From lower left to upper right: dampers, main sounding length of strings, treble bridge, duplex string length, duplex bridge (long bar perpendicular to strings), hitchpins. With duplexes or aliquot scales, which was patented in 1872 by Theodore Steinway, the different components of string vibrations are controlled by tuning their secondary parts in octave relationships with the sounding lengths. Similar systems developed by Blüthner (1872), as well as Taskin (1788), and Collard (1821) used more distinctly ringing undamped vibrations to modify tone.
Some early pianos had shapes and designs that are no longer in use. The square piano had horizontal strings arranged diagonally across the rectangular case above the hammers and with the keyboard set in the long side. This design is attributed to Gottfried Silbermann or Christian Ernst Friderici on the continent, and Johannes Zumpe or Harman Vietor in England and it was improved by changes first introduced by Guillaume-Lebrecht Petzold in France and Alpheus Babcock in the United States. Square pianos were built in great numbers through the 1840s in Europe and the 1890s in America, and saw the most visible changes of any type of piano: the celebrated iron framed over strung squares manufactured by Steinway & Sons were more than two and a half times the size of Zumpe's wood framed instruments from a century before. Their overwhelming popularity was due to inexpensive construction and price, although their performance and tone were often limited by simple actions and closely spaced strings.
The mechanism in upright pianos is perpendicular to the keys.
The tall, vertically strung upright grand was arranged like a grand set on end, with the soundboard and bridges above the keys, and tuning pins below them. The term was later revived by many manufacturers for advertising purposes. Giraffe, pyramid and lyre pianos were arranged in a somewhat similar fashion in evocatively shaped cases.
The very tall cabinet piano was introduced about 1805 and was built through the 1840s. It had strings arranged vertically on a continuous frame with bridges extended nearly to the floor, behind the keyboard and very large sticker action. The short cottage upright or pianino with vertical stringing, made popular by Robert Wornum around 1815, was built into the 20th century. They are informally called birdcage pianos because of their prominent damper mechanism. Pianinos were distinguished from the oblique, or diagonally strung upright made popular in France by Roller & Blanchet during the late 1820s. The tiny spinet upright was manufactured from the mid-1930s until recent times. The low position of the hammers required the use of a "drop action" to preserve a reasonable keyboard height.
Modern upright and grand pianos attained their present forms by the end of the 19th century. Improvements have been made in manufacturing processes, and many individual details of the instrument continue to receive attention.
Much of the most widely admired piano repertoire, for example, that of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, was composed for a type of instrument that is rather different from the modern instruments on which this music is normally performed today. Even the music of the Romantics, including Liszt, Chopin, Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn and Johannes Brahms, was written for pianos substantially different from ours.
A schematic depiction of the construction of a pianoforte.
Modern pianos come in two basic configurations (with subcategories): the grand piano and the upright piano.
Grand piano
In grand pianos, the frame and strings are horizontal, with the strings extending away from the keyboard. There are several sizes of grand piano. A rough generalization distinguishes the "concert grand" (between about and long) from the "parlor grand" or "boudoir grand" (about to ) and the smaller "baby grand".
All else being equal, longer pianos with longer strings have better sound and lower inharmonicity of the strings. Inharmonicity is the degree to which the frequencies of overtones (known as partials, partial tones, or harmonics) depart from whole multiples of the fundamental frequency. Pianos with shorter, thicker, and stiffer strings (e.g., baby grands) have more inharmonicity. The longer strings on a concert grand can vibrate more freely than the shorter, thicker strings on a baby grand, which means that a concert grand's strings will have truer overtones. This is partly because the strings will be tuned closer to equal temperament in relation to the standard pitch with less "stretching" in the piano tuning (See: Piano tuning). Full-size grands are usually used for public concerts, whereas smaller grands, introduced by Sohmer & Co. in 1884, are often chosen for domestic use where space and cost are considerations.
Upright piano
Upright pianos, also called vertical pianos, are more compact because the frame and strings are vertical. It is considered harder to produce a sensitive piano action when the hammers move horizontally, as the vertical hammer return is dependent on springs which are prone to wear and tear. However, a well-regulated vertical piano will probably play more smoothly than a poorly regulated grand piano, and the very best upright pianos approach the level of some grand pianos of the same size in tone quality and responsiveness.
One noticeable advantage that the grand piano action has over the vertical action is that all grand pianos have a special repetition lever in the playing action that is absent in all verticals. This repetition lever, a separate one for every key, catches the hammer close to the strings as long as the keys are played repeatedly and fairly quickly. In this position, with the hammer resting on the lever, a pianist can play repeated notes, staccato, and trills with much more speed and control than is possible on a vertical piano.
Upright pianos with unusually tall frames and long strings are sometimes called "upright grand" pianos.
Some authors classify modern pianos according to their height and, to modifications of the action that are necessary to accomodate the height.
* Studio pianos are around 42 to 45 inches tall. This is the shortest cabinet that can accomodate a 'full-sized' action located above the keyboard.
* Console pianos have a compact action (shorter hammers), and are a few inches shorter than studio models.
* The top of a Spinet model barely rises above the keyboard. The action is located below, operated by vertical wires that are attached to the backs of the keys.
* Anything taller than a studio piano is called an upright.
Player piano
Toy pianos began to be manufactured in the 19th century. In 1863, Henri Fourneaux invented the player piano, which "plays itself" from a piano roll without the need for a pianist. The player piano is a piano that records a performance using rolls of paper with perforations, and then replays the performance using pneumatic devices. A modern equivalent for the player piano is the Yamaha Disklavier system, which uses solenoids and midi instead of pneumatics and rolls. Silent pianos, which allow a regular piano to be used converted to a digital instrument, are a recent innovation and are becoming more popular.
Irving Berlin played a special piano called the transposing piano, which was invented in 1801 by Edward Ryley. It had a lever under the keyboard used to alter the music to any key. One of Berlin's pianos is in the Smithsonian Museum. For much of his career, Berlin only knew how to play the black keys. But with his 'trick piano' he was no longer limited to the key of F-sharp.
A relatively recent development is the prepared piano, which is used in contemporary art music. A prepared piano is a standard grand piano which has had objects placed inside it before a performance in order to alter its sound, or which has had its mechanism changed in some way. The scores for music for prepared piano often instruct the pianist to insert pieces of rubber or small pieces of metal (screws or washers) in between the strings. These added items either mute the strings or create unusual vibrating sounds.
Since the 1980s, digital pianos have been available, which use digital sampling technology to reproduce the sound of each piano note. The best digital pianos are sophisticated, with features including working pedals, weighted keys, multiple voices, and MIDI interfaces. However, with such technology, it is difficult to duplicate one particular aspect of acoustic pianos, namely that when the damper pedal (see below) is depressed, the strings not struck vibrate sympathetically when other strings are struck, as well as the unique instrument-specific mathematical non-linearity of partials on any given unison. Since this sympathetic vibration is considered central to piano tone, many digital pianos do not sound the same as the best acoustic pianos. Progress is being made in this area by including physical models of sympathetic vibration in the synthesis software. Some higher end digital pianos, such as the Yamaha Clavinova series, or the KAWAI MP8 series, produced in the last few years incorporate string resonance technology to overcome this limitation.
With the advent of powerful desktop computers, highly realistic sampled digital grand pianos have become available as affordable software modules. Some use multi-gigabyte piano sample sets with as many as 90 recordings, each lasting many seconds, for each of the 88 keys under different conditions, augmented by additional samples to emulate sympathetic resonance, key release, the drop of the dampers, and simulations of piano techniques like re-pedaling.
Keyboard
Almost every modern piano has 36 black keys and 52 white keys for a total of 88 keys (seven octaves plus a minor third, from A0 to C8). Many older pianos only have 85 keys (seven octaves from A0 to A7), while some manufacturers extend the range further in one or both directions.
Some Bösendorfer pianos extend the normal range downwards to F0, with one other model going as far as a bottom C0, making a full eight octave range. These extra keys are sometimes hidden under a small hinged lid that can be flipped down to cover the keys in order to avoid visual disorientation in a pianist unfamiliar with the extended keyboard. On others, the colours of the extra white keys are reversed (black instead of white).
The extra keys are added primarily for increased resonance from the associated strings; that is, they vibrate sympathetically with other strings whenever the damper pedal is depressed and thus give a fuller tone. Only a very small number of works composed for piano actually use these notes. More recently, the Stuart and Sons company has also manufactured extended-range pianos. On their instruments, the range is extended both down the bass to F0 and up the treble to F8 for a full eight octaves. The extra keys are the same as the other keys in appearance.
Small studio upright acoustical pianos with only 65 keys have been manufactured for use by roving pianists. Known as "gig" pianos and still containing a cast iron harp, these are comparatively lightweight and can be easily transported to and from engagements by only two men. As their harp is longer than that of a spinet or console piano, they have a stronger bass sound that to some pianists is well worth the trade-off in range that a reduced key-set offers.
Piano pedals from left to right: una corda, sostenuto, and damper.
Pianos have had pedals, or some close equivalent, since the earliest days. (In the 18th century, some pianos used levers pressed upward by the player's knee instead of pedals.) Most grand pianos have three pedals: soft pedal (una corda), sostenuto, and sustain pedal (from left to right, respectively). Most modern upright pianos have three pedals: soft pedal, practice pedal and sustain pedal, though older or cheaper models may lack the practice pedal.
The sustain pedal (or, damper pedal) is often simply called "the pedal", since it is the most frequently used. It is placed as the rightmost pedal in the group. It lifts the dampers from all keys, sustaining all played notes, and altering the overall tone.
The soft pedal or una corda pedal is placed leftmost in the row of pedals. In grand pianos, it shifts the entire action, including the keyboard, to the right, so that the hammers hit only one of the three strings for each note (hence the name una corda, or 'one string'). The effect is to soften the note as well as to change the tone. In uprights, this action is not possible, and so the pedal moves the hammers closer to the strings, allowing the hammers to hit the strings with less kinetic energy to produce a softer sound.
On grand pianos, the middle pedal is a sostenuto pedal. This pedal keeps raised any damper that was already raised at the moment the pedal is depressed. This makes it possible to sustain some notes (by depressing the sostenuto pedal before notes to be sustained are released) while the player's hands are free to play other notes. This can be useful for musical passages with pedal points and other otherwise tricky or impossible situations.
On many upright pianos, there is a middle pedal called the 'practice' or celeste pedal. This drops a piece of felt between the hammers and strings, greatly muting the sounds.
There are also non-standard variants. On vertical pianos, the middle pedal can be a bass sustain pedal: that is, when it is depressed, the dampers lift off the strings only in the bass section. This pedal would be used only when a pianist needs to sustain a single bass note or chord over many measures, while playing the melody in the treble section. On the largest Fazioli piano, there is a fourth pedal to the left of the principal three. This fourth pedal works in the same way as the soft pedal of an upright piano, moving the hammers closer to the strings.
An upright pedal piano
The rare transposing piano, of which Irving Berlin possessed an example, had a middle pedal that functioned as a clutch which disengages the keyboard from the mechanism, enabling the keyboard to be moved to the left or right with a lever. The entire action of the piano is thus shifted to allow the pianist to play music written in one key so that it sounds in a different key. The pedalier piano, or pedal piano, is a rare type of piano that includes a pedalboard, enabling bass register notes to be played with the feet, as is standard on the organ. There are two types of pedal piano: the pedal board may be an integral part of the instrument, using the same strings and mechanism as the manual keyboard, or, less frequently, it may consist of two independent pianos (each with its separate mechanics and strings) which are placed one above the other, a regular piano played by the hands and a bass-register piano played by the feet.
Many parts of a piano are made of materials selected for sturdiness. In quality pianos, the outer rim of the piano is made of a hardwood, normally maple or beech. According to Harold A. Conklin, the purpose of a sturdy rim is so that "the vibrational energy will stay as much as possible in the soundboard instead of dissipating uselessly in the case parts, which are inefficient radiators of sound."
View from below of a 182-cm grand piano. In order of distance from viewer: softwood braces, tapered soundboard ribs, soundboard. The metal rod at lower right is a humidity control device.
The rim is normally made by laminating flexible strips of hardwood to the desired shape, a system that was developed by Theodore Steinway in 1880. The thick wooden braces at the bottom (grands) or back (uprights) of the piano are not as acoustically important as the rim, and are often made of a softwood, even in top-quality pianos, in order to save weight. The requirement of structural strength, fulfilled with stout hardwood and thick metal, makes a piano heavy; even a small upright can weigh 136 kg (300 lb), and the Steinway concert grand (Model D) weighs 480 kg (990 lb). The largest piano built, the Fazioli F308, weighs 691 kg (1520 lb).
The pinblock, which holds the tuning pins in place, is another area of the piano where toughness is important. It is made of hardwood, (often maple) and generally is laminated (built of multiple layers) for additional strength and gripping power. Piano strings (also called piano wire), which must endure years of extreme tension and hard blows, are made of high quality steel. They are manufactured to vary as little as possible in diameter, since all deviations from uniformity introduce tonal distortion. The bass strings of a piano are made of a steel core wrapped with copper wire, to increase their mass whilst retaining flexibility.
The plate, or metal frame, of a piano is usually made of cast iron. It is advantageous for the plate to be quite massive. Since the strings are attached to the plate at one end, any vibrations transmitted to the plate will result in loss of energy to the desired (efficient) channel of sound transmission, namely the bridge and the soundboard. Some manufacturers now use cast steel in their plates, for greater strength. The casting of the plate is a delicate art, since the dimensions are crucial and the iron shrinks by about one percent during cooling.
The inclusion in a piano of an extremely large piece of metal is potentially an aesthetic handicap, which piano makers overcome by polishing, painting and decorating the plate. Plates often include the manufacturer's ornamental medallion and can be strikingly attractive. In an effort to make pianos lighter, Alcoa worked with Winter and Company piano manufacturers to make pianos using an aluminum plate during the 1940s. The use of aluminum for piano plates, however, did not become widely accepted and was discontinued.
The numerous grand parts and upright parts of a piano action are generally hardwood (e.g. maple, beech. hornbeam). However, since World War II, plastics have become available. Early plastics were incorporated into some pianos in the late 1940s and 1950s, but proved disastrous because they crystallized and lost their strength after only a few decades of use. The Steinway firm once incorporated Teflon, a synthetic material developed by DuPont, for some grand action parts in place of cloth, but ultimately abandoned the experiment due to an inherent "clicking" which invariably developed over time. (Also Teflon is "humidity stable" whereas the wood adjacent to the Teflon will swell and shrink with humidity changes, causing problems.) More recently, the Kawai firm has built pianos with action parts made of more modern and effective plastics such as carbon fiber; these parts have held up better and have generally received the respect of piano technicians .
Ivorite and ebony keys on a modern Steinway & Sons concert grand piano.
The part of the piano where materials probably matter more than anywhere else is the soundboard. In quality pianos, this is made of solid spruce (that is, spruce boards glued together at their edges). Spruce is chosen for its high ratio of strength to weight. The best piano makers use close-grained, quarter-sawn, defect-free spruce, and make sure that it has been carefully dried over a long period of time before making it into soundboards. In cheap pianos, the soundboard is often made of plywood.
Piano keys are generally made of spruce or basswood, for lightness. Spruce is normally used in high-quality pianos. Traditionally, the black keys were made from ebony and the white keys were covered with strips of ivory, but since ivory-yielding species are now endangered and protected by treaty, plastics are now almost exclusively used. Also, ivory tends to chip more easily than plastic. Legal ivory can still be obtained in limited quantities. At one time, the Yamaha firm innovated a plastic called "Ivorine" or "Ivorite", since imitated by other makers, that mimics the look and feel of ivory.
A piano tuner
Pianos need regular tuning to keep them up to pitch, which is usually the internationally recognized standard concert pitch of A4 = 440 Hz. The hammers of pianos are voiced to compensate for gradual hardening, and other parts also need periodic regulation. Aged and worn pianos can be rebuilt or reconditioned. Often, by replacing a great number of their parts, they can be made to perform as well as new pianos. Older pianos are often more settled and produce a warmer tone.
Piano moving should be done by trained piano movers using adequate manpower and the correct equipment for any particular piano's size and weight. Pianos are heavy yet delicate instruments. Over the years, professional piano movers have developed special techniques for transporting both grands and uprights which prevent damage to the case and to the piano's mechanics.
The piano at the social center in the 19th century (Moritz von Schwind, 1868). The man at the piano is Franz Schubert.
The piano is a crucial instrument in Western classical music, jazz, film, television, and most other complex western musical genres. Since a large number of composers are proficient pianists â and because the piano keyboard offers an easy means of complex melodic and harmonic interplay â the piano is often used as a tool for composition.
Pianos were, and still are, popular instruments for private household ownership. Hence, pianos have gained a place in the popular consciousness, and are sometimes referred to by nicknames including: "the ivories", "the joanna", "the eighty-eight", and "the black(s) and white(s)", "the little joe(s)". Playing the piano is sometimes referred to as "tickling the ivories".
;General
* Innovations in the piano
* Jazz piano
* Piano acoustics
* Piano key frequencies (in equal temperament)
* Piano trio
* String piano
;Related lists
* List of films about pianists
* Lists of solo piano pieces
* List of piano makers
* List of piano brand names
* List of classical pianists (recorded)
;Related instruments
* Hammered dulcimer
* Harp
* Clavichord
* Harpsichord
* Organ and Pipe organ
* Electric piano
* Electronic piano
* The authoritative New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (available online by subscription), contains a wealth of information. Main article: "Pianoforte".
* The Encyclopædia Britannica (available online by subscription) also includes much information on the piano. In the 1988 edition, the primary article can be found in "Musical Instruments".
* The Piano Book by Larry Fine (4th ed. Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts: Brookside Press, 2001; ISBN 1-929145-01-2) gives the basics of how pianos work, and a thorough evaluative survey of current pianos and their manufacturers. It also includes advice on buying and owning pianos.
*Giraffes, black dragons, and other pianos: a technological history from Cristofori to the modern concert grand by Edwin M. Good (1982, second ed., 2001, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press) is a standard reference on the history of the piano.
*The Early Pianoforte by Stewart Pollens (1995, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) is an authoritative work covering the ancestry of the piano, its invention by Cristofori, and the early stages of its subsequent evolution.
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;Information
* Yamaha Musician - Yamaha piano reviews and enthusiast site
* Grand Piano information and images
* The Piano Page Lots of information from the Piano Technicians Guild
* WikiRecording's Guide to Recording Pianos
;History
* History of the Piano Forte, Association of Blind Piano Tuners, UK
* The Frederick Historical Piano Collection
;Piano Technique
* Principles of Piano Technique
;Sheet music for Piano
* All Piano Scores Free printable classical sheet music for piano + audio
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Piano | How many total keys does a typical modern piano have? | A modern piano has 88 keys. | data/set2/a1 | Piano
Baby Grand Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard that produces sound by striking steel strings with felt covered hammers. The hammers immediately rebound, allowing the strings to continue vibrating at their resonant frequency. " Hammer Time" by John Kiehl, Wolfram Demonstrations Project. These vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a soundboard that couples the acoustic energy to the air so that it can be heard as sound.
The piano is widely used in Western music for solo performance, ensemble use, chamber music, and accompaniment. It is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal. Although not portable and often expensive, the piano's versatility and ubiquity have made it one of the most familiar musical instruments. It is sometimes classified as both a percussion and a stringed instrument. According to the Hornbostel-Sachs method of music classification, it is grouped with Chordophones.
The word piano is a shortened form of the word pianoforte, which is seldom used except in formal language and derived from the original Italian name for the instrument, clavicembalo [or gravicembalo] col piano e forte (literally harpsichord with soft and loud). This refers to the instrument's responsiveness to keyboard touch, which allows the pianist to produce notes at different dynamic levels by controlling the speed with which the hammers hit the strings.
Early piano replica by the modern builder Paul McNulty, after Walter & Sohn, 1805
The piano was originally founded on earlier technological innovations. The first string instruments with struck strings were the hammered dulcimers originating from the Persian traditional musical instrument santur. David R. Peterson (1994), "Acoustics of the hammered dulcimer, its history, and recent developments", Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 95 (5), p. 3002. During the Middle Ages, there were several attempts at creating stringed keyboard instruments with struck strings, Pollens, 1995. chp. 1 the earliest being the hurdy gurdy which has uncertain origins. By the 17th century, 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.
Grand piano by Louis Bas of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, France, 1781. Earliest French grand piano known to survive; includes an inverted wrestplank and action derived from the work of Bartolomeo Cristofiori (ca. 1700) with ornately decorated soundboard.
The invention of the modern piano is credited to Bartolomeo Cristofori of Padua, Italy, who was employed by Prince Ferdinand de Medici as the Keeper of the Instruments. He was an expert harpsichord maker and was well acquainted with the previous body of knowledge on stringed keyboard instruments. It is not known exactly when Cristofori first built a piano. An inventory made by his employers, the Medici family, indicates the existence of a piano by the year 1700; another document of doubtful authenticity indicates a date of 1698. The three Cristofori pianos that survive today date from the 1720s.
Cristofori's great success was in solving, without any prior example, the fundamental mechanical problem of piano design: the hammer must strike the string, but not remain in contact with it (as a tangent remains in contact with a clavichord string) because this would damp the sound. Moreover, the hammer must return to its rest position without bouncing violently, and it must be possible to repeat a note rapidly. Cristofori's piano action served as a model for the many different approaches to piano actions that followed. While Cristofori's early instruments were made with thin strings and were much quieter than the modern piano, compared to the clavichord (the only previous keyboard instrument capable of minutely controlled dynamic nuance through the keyboard) they were considerably louder and had more sustaining power.
Cristofori's new instrument remained relatively unknown until an Italian writer, Scipione Maffei, wrote an enthusiastic article about it (1711), including a diagram of the mechanism. This article was widely distributed, and most of the next generation of piano builders started their work because of reading it. One of these builders was Gottfried Silbermann, better known as an organ builder. Silbermann's pianos were virtually direct copies of Cristofori's, with one important addition: Silbermann invented the forerunner of the modern damper pedal, which lifts all the dampers from the strings at once.
Silbermann showed Johann Sebastian Bach one of his early instruments in the 1730s, but Bach did not like it at that time, claiming that the higher notes were too soft to allow a full dynamic range. Although this earned him some animosity from Silbermann, the criticism was apparently heeded. Bach did approve of a later instrument he saw in 1747, and even served as an agent in selling Silbermann's pianos.
Piano making flourished during the late 18th century in the Viennese school, which included Johann Andreas Stein (who worked in Augsburg, Germany) and the Viennese makers Nannette Streicher (daughter of Johann Andreas Stein) and Anton Walter. Viennese-style pianos were built with wood frames, two strings per note, and had leather-covered hammers. Some of these Viennese pianos had the opposite coloring of modern-day pianos; the natural keys were black and the accidental keys white. It was for such instruments that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed his concertos and sonatas, and replicas of them are built today for use in authentic-instrument performance of his music. The pianos of Mozart's day had a softer, clearer tone than today's pianos or English pianos, with less sustaining power. The term fortepiano is nowadays often used to distinguish the 18th-century instrument from later pianos.
In the period lasting from about 1790 to 1860, the Mozart-era piano underwent tremendous changes that led to the modern form of the instrument. This revolution was in response to a consistent preference by composers and pianists for a more powerful, sustained piano sound, and made possible by the ongoing Industrial Revolution with technological resources such as high-quality steel, called piano wire, for strings, and precision casting for the production of iron frames. Over time, the tonal range of the piano was also increased from the five octaves of Mozart's day to the 7â
or more octaves found on modern pianos.
Broadwood square action
Early technological progress owed much to the English firm of Broadwood, who already had a reputation for the splendour and powerful tone of its harpsichords. Broadwood constructed instruments that were progressively larger, louder, and more robustly constructed. They sent pianos to both Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven, and were the first firm to build pianos with a range of more than five octaves: five octaves and a fifth during the 1790s, six octaves by 1810 (Beethoven used the extra notes in his later works), and seven octaves by 1820. The Viennese makers similarly followed these trends, however the two schools used different piano actions: Broadwoods were more robust, Viennese instruments were more sensitive.
Erard square action
By the 1820s, the center of innovation had shifted to Paris, where the Pleyel firm manufactured pianos used by Frédéric Chopin and the Ãrard firm manufactured those used by Franz Liszt. In 1821, Sébastien Ãrard invented the double escapement action, which permitted a note to be repeated even if the key had not yet risen to its maximum vertical position. This facilitated rapid playing of repeated notes - and this musical device was pioneered by Liszt. When the invention became public, as revised by Henri Herz, the double escapement action gradually became standard in grand pianos, and is still incorporated into all grand pianos currently produced.
One of the major technical innovations that helped to create the sound of the modern piano was the use of a strong iron frame. Also called the "plate", the iron frame sits atop the soundboard, and serves as the primary bulwark against the force of string tension. The increased structural integrity of the iron frame allowed the use of thicker, tenser, and more numerous strings. In a modern grand the total string tension can exceed 20 tons. The single piece cast iron frame was patented in 1825 in Boston by Alpheus Babcock, combining the metal hitch pin plate (1821, claimed by Broadwood on behalf of Samuel Hervé) and resisting bars (Thom and Allen, 1820, but also claimed by Broadwood and Ãrard). Babcock later worked for the Chickering & Mackays firm who patented the first full iron frame for grand pianos in 1843. Composite forged metal frames were preferred by many European makers until the American system was fully adopted by the early 20th century.
Other innovations for the mechanism included the use of felt hammer coverings instead of layered leather hammers. Felt hammers, which were first introduced by Henri Pape in 1826, were a more consistent material, permitting wider dynamic ranges as hammer weights and string tension increased. The sostenuto pedal (see below), invented in 1844 by Jean Louis Boisselot and improved by the Steinway firm in 1874, allowed a wider range of effects.
Other important technical innovations of this era included changes to the way the piano was strung, such as the use of a "choir" of three strings rather than two for all but the lower notes, and the use of different stringing methods. With the over strung scale, also called "cross-stringing", the strings are placed in a vertically overlapping slanted arrangement, with two heights of bridges on the soundboard instead of just one. This permits larger, but not necessarily longer, strings to fit within the case of the piano. Over stringing was invented by Jean-Henri Pape during the 1820s, and first patented for use in grand pianos in the United States by Henry Steinway Jr. in 1859.
Duplex scaling: Treble strings of a 182 cm. grand piano. From lower left to upper right: dampers, main sounding length of strings, treble bridge, duplex string length, duplex bridge (long bar perpendicular to strings), hitchpins. With duplexes or aliquot scales, which was patented in 1872 by Theodore Steinway, the different components of string vibrations are controlled by tuning their secondary parts in octave relationships with the sounding lengths. Similar systems developed by Blüthner (1872), as well as Taskin (1788), and Collard (1821) used more distinctly ringing undamped vibrations to modify tone.
Some early pianos had shapes and designs that are no longer in use. The square piano had horizontal strings arranged diagonally across the rectangular case above the hammers and with the keyboard set in the long side. This design is attributed to Gottfried Silbermann or Christian Ernst Friderici on the continent, and Johannes Zumpe or Harman Vietor in England and it was improved by changes first introduced by Guillaume-Lebrecht Petzold in France and Alpheus Babcock in the United States. Square pianos were built in great numbers through the 1840s in Europe and the 1890s in America, and saw the most visible changes of any type of piano: the celebrated iron framed over strung squares manufactured by Steinway & Sons were more than two and a half times the size of Zumpe's wood framed instruments from a century before. Their overwhelming popularity was due to inexpensive construction and price, although their performance and tone were often limited by simple actions and closely spaced strings.
The mechanism in upright pianos is perpendicular to the keys.
The tall, vertically strung upright grand was arranged like a grand set on end, with the soundboard and bridges above the keys, and tuning pins below them. The term was later revived by many manufacturers for advertising purposes. Giraffe, pyramid and lyre pianos were arranged in a somewhat similar fashion in evocatively shaped cases.
The very tall cabinet piano was introduced about 1805 and was built through the 1840s. It had strings arranged vertically on a continuous frame with bridges extended nearly to the floor, behind the keyboard and very large sticker action. The short cottage upright or pianino with vertical stringing, made popular by Robert Wornum around 1815, was built into the 20th century. They are informally called birdcage pianos because of their prominent damper mechanism. Pianinos were distinguished from the oblique, or diagonally strung upright made popular in France by Roller & Blanchet during the late 1820s. The tiny spinet upright was manufactured from the mid-1930s until recent times. The low position of the hammers required the use of a "drop action" to preserve a reasonable keyboard height.
Modern upright and grand pianos attained their present forms by the end of the 19th century. Improvements have been made in manufacturing processes, and many individual details of the instrument continue to receive attention.
Much of the most widely admired piano repertoire, for example, that of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, was composed for a type of instrument that is rather different from the modern instruments on which this music is normally performed today. Even the music of the Romantics, including Liszt, Chopin, Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn and Johannes Brahms, was written for pianos substantially different from ours.
A schematic depiction of the construction of a pianoforte.
Modern pianos come in two basic configurations (with subcategories): the grand piano and the upright piano.
Grand piano
In grand pianos, the frame and strings are horizontal, with the strings extending away from the keyboard. There are several sizes of grand piano. A rough generalization distinguishes the "concert grand" (between about and long) from the "parlor grand" or "boudoir grand" (about to ) and the smaller "baby grand".
All else being equal, longer pianos with longer strings have better sound and lower inharmonicity of the strings. Inharmonicity is the degree to which the frequencies of overtones (known as partials, partial tones, or harmonics) depart from whole multiples of the fundamental frequency. Pianos with shorter, thicker, and stiffer strings (e.g., baby grands) have more inharmonicity. The longer strings on a concert grand can vibrate more freely than the shorter, thicker strings on a baby grand, which means that a concert grand's strings will have truer overtones. This is partly because the strings will be tuned closer to equal temperament in relation to the standard pitch with less "stretching" in the piano tuning (See: Piano tuning). Full-size grands are usually used for public concerts, whereas smaller grands, introduced by Sohmer & Co. in 1884, are often chosen for domestic use where space and cost are considerations.
Upright piano
Upright pianos, also called vertical pianos, are more compact because the frame and strings are vertical. It is considered harder to produce a sensitive piano action when the hammers move horizontally, as the vertical hammer return is dependent on springs which are prone to wear and tear. However, a well-regulated vertical piano will probably play more smoothly than a poorly regulated grand piano, and the very best upright pianos approach the level of some grand pianos of the same size in tone quality and responsiveness.
One noticeable advantage that the grand piano action has over the vertical action is that all grand pianos have a special repetition lever in the playing action that is absent in all verticals. This repetition lever, a separate one for every key, catches the hammer close to the strings as long as the keys are played repeatedly and fairly quickly. In this position, with the hammer resting on the lever, a pianist can play repeated notes, staccato, and trills with much more speed and control than is possible on a vertical piano.
Upright pianos with unusually tall frames and long strings are sometimes called "upright grand" pianos.
Some authors classify modern pianos according to their height and, to modifications of the action that are necessary to accomodate the height.
* Studio pianos are around 42 to 45 inches tall. This is the shortest cabinet that can accomodate a 'full-sized' action located above the keyboard.
* Console pianos have a compact action (shorter hammers), and are a few inches shorter than studio models.
* The top of a Spinet model barely rises above the keyboard. The action is located below, operated by vertical wires that are attached to the backs of the keys.
* Anything taller than a studio piano is called an upright.
Player piano
Toy pianos began to be manufactured in the 19th century. In 1863, Henri Fourneaux invented the player piano, which "plays itself" from a piano roll without the need for a pianist. The player piano is a piano that records a performance using rolls of paper with perforations, and then replays the performance using pneumatic devices. A modern equivalent for the player piano is the Yamaha Disklavier system, which uses solenoids and midi instead of pneumatics and rolls. Silent pianos, which allow a regular piano to be used converted to a digital instrument, are a recent innovation and are becoming more popular.
Irving Berlin played a special piano called the transposing piano, which was invented in 1801 by Edward Ryley. It had a lever under the keyboard used to alter the music to any key. One of Berlin's pianos is in the Smithsonian Museum. For much of his career, Berlin only knew how to play the black keys. But with his 'trick piano' he was no longer limited to the key of F-sharp.
A relatively recent development is the prepared piano, which is used in contemporary art music. A prepared piano is a standard grand piano which has had objects placed inside it before a performance in order to alter its sound, or which has had its mechanism changed in some way. The scores for music for prepared piano often instruct the pianist to insert pieces of rubber or small pieces of metal (screws or washers) in between the strings. These added items either mute the strings or create unusual vibrating sounds.
Since the 1980s, digital pianos have been available, which use digital sampling technology to reproduce the sound of each piano note. The best digital pianos are sophisticated, with features including working pedals, weighted keys, multiple voices, and MIDI interfaces. However, with such technology, it is difficult to duplicate one particular aspect of acoustic pianos, namely that when the damper pedal (see below) is depressed, the strings not struck vibrate sympathetically when other strings are struck, as well as the unique instrument-specific mathematical non-linearity of partials on any given unison. Since this sympathetic vibration is considered central to piano tone, many digital pianos do not sound the same as the best acoustic pianos. Progress is being made in this area by including physical models of sympathetic vibration in the synthesis software. Some higher end digital pianos, such as the Yamaha Clavinova series, or the KAWAI MP8 series, produced in the last few years incorporate string resonance technology to overcome this limitation.
With the advent of powerful desktop computers, highly realistic sampled digital grand pianos have become available as affordable software modules. Some use multi-gigabyte piano sample sets with as many as 90 recordings, each lasting many seconds, for each of the 88 keys under different conditions, augmented by additional samples to emulate sympathetic resonance, key release, the drop of the dampers, and simulations of piano techniques like re-pedaling.
Keyboard
Almost every modern piano has 36 black keys and 52 white keys for a total of 88 keys (seven octaves plus a minor third, from A0 to C8). Many older pianos only have 85 keys (seven octaves from A0 to A7), while some manufacturers extend the range further in one or both directions.
Some Bösendorfer pianos extend the normal range downwards to F0, with one other model going as far as a bottom C0, making a full eight octave range. These extra keys are sometimes hidden under a small hinged lid that can be flipped down to cover the keys in order to avoid visual disorientation in a pianist unfamiliar with the extended keyboard. On others, the colours of the extra white keys are reversed (black instead of white).
The extra keys are added primarily for increased resonance from the associated strings; that is, they vibrate sympathetically with other strings whenever the damper pedal is depressed and thus give a fuller tone. Only a very small number of works composed for piano actually use these notes. More recently, the Stuart and Sons company has also manufactured extended-range pianos. On their instruments, the range is extended both down the bass to F0 and up the treble to F8 for a full eight octaves. The extra keys are the same as the other keys in appearance.
Small studio upright acoustical pianos with only 65 keys have been manufactured for use by roving pianists. Known as "gig" pianos and still containing a cast iron harp, these are comparatively lightweight and can be easily transported to and from engagements by only two men. As their harp is longer than that of a spinet or console piano, they have a stronger bass sound that to some pianists is well worth the trade-off in range that a reduced key-set offers.
Piano pedals from left to right: una corda, sostenuto, and damper.
Pianos have had pedals, or some close equivalent, since the earliest days. (In the 18th century, some pianos used levers pressed upward by the player's knee instead of pedals.) Most grand pianos have three pedals: soft pedal (una corda), sostenuto, and sustain pedal (from left to right, respectively). Most modern upright pianos have three pedals: soft pedal, practice pedal and sustain pedal, though older or cheaper models may lack the practice pedal.
The sustain pedal (or, damper pedal) is often simply called "the pedal", since it is the most frequently used. It is placed as the rightmost pedal in the group. It lifts the dampers from all keys, sustaining all played notes, and altering the overall tone.
The soft pedal or una corda pedal is placed leftmost in the row of pedals. In grand pianos, it shifts the entire action, including the keyboard, to the right, so that the hammers hit only one of the three strings for each note (hence the name una corda, or 'one string'). The effect is to soften the note as well as to change the tone. In uprights, this action is not possible, and so the pedal moves the hammers closer to the strings, allowing the hammers to hit the strings with less kinetic energy to produce a softer sound.
On grand pianos, the middle pedal is a sostenuto pedal. This pedal keeps raised any damper that was already raised at the moment the pedal is depressed. This makes it possible to sustain some notes (by depressing the sostenuto pedal before notes to be sustained are released) while the player's hands are free to play other notes. This can be useful for musical passages with pedal points and other otherwise tricky or impossible situations.
On many upright pianos, there is a middle pedal called the 'practice' or celeste pedal. This drops a piece of felt between the hammers and strings, greatly muting the sounds.
There are also non-standard variants. On vertical pianos, the middle pedal can be a bass sustain pedal: that is, when it is depressed, the dampers lift off the strings only in the bass section. This pedal would be used only when a pianist needs to sustain a single bass note or chord over many measures, while playing the melody in the treble section. On the largest Fazioli piano, there is a fourth pedal to the left of the principal three. This fourth pedal works in the same way as the soft pedal of an upright piano, moving the hammers closer to the strings.
An upright pedal piano
The rare transposing piano, of which Irving Berlin possessed an example, had a middle pedal that functioned as a clutch which disengages the keyboard from the mechanism, enabling the keyboard to be moved to the left or right with a lever. The entire action of the piano is thus shifted to allow the pianist to play music written in one key so that it sounds in a different key. The pedalier piano, or pedal piano, is a rare type of piano that includes a pedalboard, enabling bass register notes to be played with the feet, as is standard on the organ. There are two types of pedal piano: the pedal board may be an integral part of the instrument, using the same strings and mechanism as the manual keyboard, or, less frequently, it may consist of two independent pianos (each with its separate mechanics and strings) which are placed one above the other, a regular piano played by the hands and a bass-register piano played by the feet.
Many parts of a piano are made of materials selected for sturdiness. In quality pianos, the outer rim of the piano is made of a hardwood, normally maple or beech. According to Harold A. Conklin, the purpose of a sturdy rim is so that "the vibrational energy will stay as much as possible in the soundboard instead of dissipating uselessly in the case parts, which are inefficient radiators of sound."
View from below of a 182-cm grand piano. In order of distance from viewer: softwood braces, tapered soundboard ribs, soundboard. The metal rod at lower right is a humidity control device.
The rim is normally made by laminating flexible strips of hardwood to the desired shape, a system that was developed by Theodore Steinway in 1880. The thick wooden braces at the bottom (grands) or back (uprights) of the piano are not as acoustically important as the rim, and are often made of a softwood, even in top-quality pianos, in order to save weight. The requirement of structural strength, fulfilled with stout hardwood and thick metal, makes a piano heavy; even a small upright can weigh 136 kg (300 lb), and the Steinway concert grand (Model D) weighs 480 kg (990 lb). The largest piano built, the Fazioli F308, weighs 691 kg (1520 lb).
The pinblock, which holds the tuning pins in place, is another area of the piano where toughness is important. It is made of hardwood, (often maple) and generally is laminated (built of multiple layers) for additional strength and gripping power. Piano strings (also called piano wire), which must endure years of extreme tension and hard blows, are made of high quality steel. They are manufactured to vary as little as possible in diameter, since all deviations from uniformity introduce tonal distortion. The bass strings of a piano are made of a steel core wrapped with copper wire, to increase their mass whilst retaining flexibility.
The plate, or metal frame, of a piano is usually made of cast iron. It is advantageous for the plate to be quite massive. Since the strings are attached to the plate at one end, any vibrations transmitted to the plate will result in loss of energy to the desired (efficient) channel of sound transmission, namely the bridge and the soundboard. Some manufacturers now use cast steel in their plates, for greater strength. The casting of the plate is a delicate art, since the dimensions are crucial and the iron shrinks by about one percent during cooling.
The inclusion in a piano of an extremely large piece of metal is potentially an aesthetic handicap, which piano makers overcome by polishing, painting and decorating the plate. Plates often include the manufacturer's ornamental medallion and can be strikingly attractive. In an effort to make pianos lighter, Alcoa worked with Winter and Company piano manufacturers to make pianos using an aluminum plate during the 1940s. The use of aluminum for piano plates, however, did not become widely accepted and was discontinued.
The numerous grand parts and upright parts of a piano action are generally hardwood (e.g. maple, beech. hornbeam). However, since World War II, plastics have become available. Early plastics were incorporated into some pianos in the late 1940s and 1950s, but proved disastrous because they crystallized and lost their strength after only a few decades of use. The Steinway firm once incorporated Teflon, a synthetic material developed by DuPont, for some grand action parts in place of cloth, but ultimately abandoned the experiment due to an inherent "clicking" which invariably developed over time. (Also Teflon is "humidity stable" whereas the wood adjacent to the Teflon will swell and shrink with humidity changes, causing problems.) More recently, the Kawai firm has built pianos with action parts made of more modern and effective plastics such as carbon fiber; these parts have held up better and have generally received the respect of piano technicians .
Ivorite and ebony keys on a modern Steinway & Sons concert grand piano.
The part of the piano where materials probably matter more than anywhere else is the soundboard. In quality pianos, this is made of solid spruce (that is, spruce boards glued together at their edges). Spruce is chosen for its high ratio of strength to weight. The best piano makers use close-grained, quarter-sawn, defect-free spruce, and make sure that it has been carefully dried over a long period of time before making it into soundboards. In cheap pianos, the soundboard is often made of plywood.
Piano keys are generally made of spruce or basswood, for lightness. Spruce is normally used in high-quality pianos. Traditionally, the black keys were made from ebony and the white keys were covered with strips of ivory, but since ivory-yielding species are now endangered and protected by treaty, plastics are now almost exclusively used. Also, ivory tends to chip more easily than plastic. Legal ivory can still be obtained in limited quantities. At one time, the Yamaha firm innovated a plastic called "Ivorine" or "Ivorite", since imitated by other makers, that mimics the look and feel of ivory.
A piano tuner
Pianos need regular tuning to keep them up to pitch, which is usually the internationally recognized standard concert pitch of A4 = 440 Hz. The hammers of pianos are voiced to compensate for gradual hardening, and other parts also need periodic regulation. Aged and worn pianos can be rebuilt or reconditioned. Often, by replacing a great number of their parts, they can be made to perform as well as new pianos. Older pianos are often more settled and produce a warmer tone.
Piano moving should be done by trained piano movers using adequate manpower and the correct equipment for any particular piano's size and weight. Pianos are heavy yet delicate instruments. Over the years, professional piano movers have developed special techniques for transporting both grands and uprights which prevent damage to the case and to the piano's mechanics.
The piano at the social center in the 19th century (Moritz von Schwind, 1868). The man at the piano is Franz Schubert.
The piano is a crucial instrument in Western classical music, jazz, film, television, and most other complex western musical genres. Since a large number of composers are proficient pianists â and because the piano keyboard offers an easy means of complex melodic and harmonic interplay â the piano is often used as a tool for composition.
Pianos were, and still are, popular instruments for private household ownership. Hence, pianos have gained a place in the popular consciousness, and are sometimes referred to by nicknames including: "the ivories", "the joanna", "the eighty-eight", and "the black(s) and white(s)", "the little joe(s)". Playing the piano is sometimes referred to as "tickling the ivories".
;General
* Innovations in the piano
* Jazz piano
* Piano acoustics
* Piano key frequencies (in equal temperament)
* Piano trio
* String piano
;Related lists
* List of films about pianists
* Lists of solo piano pieces
* List of piano makers
* List of piano brand names
* List of classical pianists (recorded)
;Related instruments
* Hammered dulcimer
* Harp
* Clavichord
* Harpsichord
* Organ and Pipe organ
* Electric piano
* Electronic piano
* The authoritative New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (available online by subscription), contains a wealth of information. Main article: "Pianoforte".
* The Encyclopædia Britannica (available online by subscription) also includes much information on the piano. In the 1988 edition, the primary article can be found in "Musical Instruments".
* The Piano Book by Larry Fine (4th ed. Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts: Brookside Press, 2001; ISBN 1-929145-01-2) gives the basics of how pianos work, and a thorough evaluative survey of current pianos and their manufacturers. It also includes advice on buying and owning pianos.
*Giraffes, black dragons, and other pianos: a technological history from Cristofori to the modern concert grand by Edwin M. Good (1982, second ed., 2001, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press) is a standard reference on the history of the piano.
*The Early Pianoforte by Stewart Pollens (1995, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) is an authoritative work covering the ancestry of the piano, its invention by Cristofori, and the early stages of its subsequent evolution.
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;Information
* Yamaha Musician - Yamaha piano reviews and enthusiast site
* Grand Piano information and images
* The Piano Page Lots of information from the Piano Technicians Guild
* WikiRecording's Guide to Recording Pianos
;History
* History of the Piano Forte, Association of Blind Piano Tuners, UK
* The Frederick Historical Piano Collection
;Piano Technique
* Principles of Piano Technique
;Sheet music for Piano
* All Piano Scores Free printable classical sheet music for piano + audio
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Piano | Why are upright pianos more compact? | Upright pianos are more compact because the frame and strings are vertical. | data/set2/a1 | Piano
Baby Grand Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard that produces sound by striking steel strings with felt covered hammers. The hammers immediately rebound, allowing the strings to continue vibrating at their resonant frequency. " Hammer Time" by John Kiehl, Wolfram Demonstrations Project. These vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a soundboard that couples the acoustic energy to the air so that it can be heard as sound.
The piano is widely used in Western music for solo performance, ensemble use, chamber music, and accompaniment. It is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal. Although not portable and often expensive, the piano's versatility and ubiquity have made it one of the most familiar musical instruments. It is sometimes classified as both a percussion and a stringed instrument. According to the Hornbostel-Sachs method of music classification, it is grouped with Chordophones.
The word piano is a shortened form of the word pianoforte, which is seldom used except in formal language and derived from the original Italian name for the instrument, clavicembalo [or gravicembalo] col piano e forte (literally harpsichord with soft and loud). This refers to the instrument's responsiveness to keyboard touch, which allows the pianist to produce notes at different dynamic levels by controlling the speed with which the hammers hit the strings.
Early piano replica by the modern builder Paul McNulty, after Walter & Sohn, 1805
The piano was originally founded on earlier technological innovations. The first string instruments with struck strings were the hammered dulcimers originating from the Persian traditional musical instrument santur. David R. Peterson (1994), "Acoustics of the hammered dulcimer, its history, and recent developments", Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 95 (5), p. 3002. During the Middle Ages, there were several attempts at creating stringed keyboard instruments with struck strings, Pollens, 1995. chp. 1 the earliest being the hurdy gurdy which has uncertain origins. By the 17th century, 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.
Grand piano by Louis Bas of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, France, 1781. Earliest French grand piano known to survive; includes an inverted wrestplank and action derived from the work of Bartolomeo Cristofiori (ca. 1700) with ornately decorated soundboard.
The invention of the modern piano is credited to Bartolomeo Cristofori of Padua, Italy, who was employed by Prince Ferdinand de Medici as the Keeper of the Instruments. He was an expert harpsichord maker and was well acquainted with the previous body of knowledge on stringed keyboard instruments. It is not known exactly when Cristofori first built a piano. An inventory made by his employers, the Medici family, indicates the existence of a piano by the year 1700; another document of doubtful authenticity indicates a date of 1698. The three Cristofori pianos that survive today date from the 1720s.
Cristofori's great success was in solving, without any prior example, the fundamental mechanical problem of piano design: the hammer must strike the string, but not remain in contact with it (as a tangent remains in contact with a clavichord string) because this would damp the sound. Moreover, the hammer must return to its rest position without bouncing violently, and it must be possible to repeat a note rapidly. Cristofori's piano action served as a model for the many different approaches to piano actions that followed. While Cristofori's early instruments were made with thin strings and were much quieter than the modern piano, compared to the clavichord (the only previous keyboard instrument capable of minutely controlled dynamic nuance through the keyboard) they were considerably louder and had more sustaining power.
Cristofori's new instrument remained relatively unknown until an Italian writer, Scipione Maffei, wrote an enthusiastic article about it (1711), including a diagram of the mechanism. This article was widely distributed, and most of the next generation of piano builders started their work because of reading it. One of these builders was Gottfried Silbermann, better known as an organ builder. Silbermann's pianos were virtually direct copies of Cristofori's, with one important addition: Silbermann invented the forerunner of the modern damper pedal, which lifts all the dampers from the strings at once.
Silbermann showed Johann Sebastian Bach one of his early instruments in the 1730s, but Bach did not like it at that time, claiming that the higher notes were too soft to allow a full dynamic range. Although this earned him some animosity from Silbermann, the criticism was apparently heeded. Bach did approve of a later instrument he saw in 1747, and even served as an agent in selling Silbermann's pianos.
Piano making flourished during the late 18th century in the Viennese school, which included Johann Andreas Stein (who worked in Augsburg, Germany) and the Viennese makers Nannette Streicher (daughter of Johann Andreas Stein) and Anton Walter. Viennese-style pianos were built with wood frames, two strings per note, and had leather-covered hammers. Some of these Viennese pianos had the opposite coloring of modern-day pianos; the natural keys were black and the accidental keys white. It was for such instruments that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed his concertos and sonatas, and replicas of them are built today for use in authentic-instrument performance of his music. The pianos of Mozart's day had a softer, clearer tone than today's pianos or English pianos, with less sustaining power. The term fortepiano is nowadays often used to distinguish the 18th-century instrument from later pianos.
In the period lasting from about 1790 to 1860, the Mozart-era piano underwent tremendous changes that led to the modern form of the instrument. This revolution was in response to a consistent preference by composers and pianists for a more powerful, sustained piano sound, and made possible by the ongoing Industrial Revolution with technological resources such as high-quality steel, called piano wire, for strings, and precision casting for the production of iron frames. Over time, the tonal range of the piano was also increased from the five octaves of Mozart's day to the 7â
or more octaves found on modern pianos.
Broadwood square action
Early technological progress owed much to the English firm of Broadwood, who already had a reputation for the splendour and powerful tone of its harpsichords. Broadwood constructed instruments that were progressively larger, louder, and more robustly constructed. They sent pianos to both Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven, and were the first firm to build pianos with a range of more than five octaves: five octaves and a fifth during the 1790s, six octaves by 1810 (Beethoven used the extra notes in his later works), and seven octaves by 1820. The Viennese makers similarly followed these trends, however the two schools used different piano actions: Broadwoods were more robust, Viennese instruments were more sensitive.
Erard square action
By the 1820s, the center of innovation had shifted to Paris, where the Pleyel firm manufactured pianos used by Frédéric Chopin and the Ãrard firm manufactured those used by Franz Liszt. In 1821, Sébastien Ãrard invented the double escapement action, which permitted a note to be repeated even if the key had not yet risen to its maximum vertical position. This facilitated rapid playing of repeated notes - and this musical device was pioneered by Liszt. When the invention became public, as revised by Henri Herz, the double escapement action gradually became standard in grand pianos, and is still incorporated into all grand pianos currently produced.
One of the major technical innovations that helped to create the sound of the modern piano was the use of a strong iron frame. Also called the "plate", the iron frame sits atop the soundboard, and serves as the primary bulwark against the force of string tension. The increased structural integrity of the iron frame allowed the use of thicker, tenser, and more numerous strings. In a modern grand the total string tension can exceed 20 tons. The single piece cast iron frame was patented in 1825 in Boston by Alpheus Babcock, combining the metal hitch pin plate (1821, claimed by Broadwood on behalf of Samuel Hervé) and resisting bars (Thom and Allen, 1820, but also claimed by Broadwood and Ãrard). Babcock later worked for the Chickering & Mackays firm who patented the first full iron frame for grand pianos in 1843. Composite forged metal frames were preferred by many European makers until the American system was fully adopted by the early 20th century.
Other innovations for the mechanism included the use of felt hammer coverings instead of layered leather hammers. Felt hammers, which were first introduced by Henri Pape in 1826, were a more consistent material, permitting wider dynamic ranges as hammer weights and string tension increased. The sostenuto pedal (see below), invented in 1844 by Jean Louis Boisselot and improved by the Steinway firm in 1874, allowed a wider range of effects.
Other important technical innovations of this era included changes to the way the piano was strung, such as the use of a "choir" of three strings rather than two for all but the lower notes, and the use of different stringing methods. With the over strung scale, also called "cross-stringing", the strings are placed in a vertically overlapping slanted arrangement, with two heights of bridges on the soundboard instead of just one. This permits larger, but not necessarily longer, strings to fit within the case of the piano. Over stringing was invented by Jean-Henri Pape during the 1820s, and first patented for use in grand pianos in the United States by Henry Steinway Jr. in 1859.
Duplex scaling: Treble strings of a 182 cm. grand piano. From lower left to upper right: dampers, main sounding length of strings, treble bridge, duplex string length, duplex bridge (long bar perpendicular to strings), hitchpins. With duplexes or aliquot scales, which was patented in 1872 by Theodore Steinway, the different components of string vibrations are controlled by tuning their secondary parts in octave relationships with the sounding lengths. Similar systems developed by Blüthner (1872), as well as Taskin (1788), and Collard (1821) used more distinctly ringing undamped vibrations to modify tone.
Some early pianos had shapes and designs that are no longer in use. The square piano had horizontal strings arranged diagonally across the rectangular case above the hammers and with the keyboard set in the long side. This design is attributed to Gottfried Silbermann or Christian Ernst Friderici on the continent, and Johannes Zumpe or Harman Vietor in England and it was improved by changes first introduced by Guillaume-Lebrecht Petzold in France and Alpheus Babcock in the United States. Square pianos were built in great numbers through the 1840s in Europe and the 1890s in America, and saw the most visible changes of any type of piano: the celebrated iron framed over strung squares manufactured by Steinway & Sons were more than two and a half times the size of Zumpe's wood framed instruments from a century before. Their overwhelming popularity was due to inexpensive construction and price, although their performance and tone were often limited by simple actions and closely spaced strings.
The mechanism in upright pianos is perpendicular to the keys.
The tall, vertically strung upright grand was arranged like a grand set on end, with the soundboard and bridges above the keys, and tuning pins below them. The term was later revived by many manufacturers for advertising purposes. Giraffe, pyramid and lyre pianos were arranged in a somewhat similar fashion in evocatively shaped cases.
The very tall cabinet piano was introduced about 1805 and was built through the 1840s. It had strings arranged vertically on a continuous frame with bridges extended nearly to the floor, behind the keyboard and very large sticker action. The short cottage upright or pianino with vertical stringing, made popular by Robert Wornum around 1815, was built into the 20th century. They are informally called birdcage pianos because of their prominent damper mechanism. Pianinos were distinguished from the oblique, or diagonally strung upright made popular in France by Roller & Blanchet during the late 1820s. The tiny spinet upright was manufactured from the mid-1930s until recent times. The low position of the hammers required the use of a "drop action" to preserve a reasonable keyboard height.
Modern upright and grand pianos attained their present forms by the end of the 19th century. Improvements have been made in manufacturing processes, and many individual details of the instrument continue to receive attention.
Much of the most widely admired piano repertoire, for example, that of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, was composed for a type of instrument that is rather different from the modern instruments on which this music is normally performed today. Even the music of the Romantics, including Liszt, Chopin, Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn and Johannes Brahms, was written for pianos substantially different from ours.
A schematic depiction of the construction of a pianoforte.
Modern pianos come in two basic configurations (with subcategories): the grand piano and the upright piano.
Grand piano
In grand pianos, the frame and strings are horizontal, with the strings extending away from the keyboard. There are several sizes of grand piano. A rough generalization distinguishes the "concert grand" (between about and long) from the "parlor grand" or "boudoir grand" (about to ) and the smaller "baby grand".
All else being equal, longer pianos with longer strings have better sound and lower inharmonicity of the strings. Inharmonicity is the degree to which the frequencies of overtones (known as partials, partial tones, or harmonics) depart from whole multiples of the fundamental frequency. Pianos with shorter, thicker, and stiffer strings (e.g., baby grands) have more inharmonicity. The longer strings on a concert grand can vibrate more freely than the shorter, thicker strings on a baby grand, which means that a concert grand's strings will have truer overtones. This is partly because the strings will be tuned closer to equal temperament in relation to the standard pitch with less "stretching" in the piano tuning (See: Piano tuning). Full-size grands are usually used for public concerts, whereas smaller grands, introduced by Sohmer & Co. in 1884, are often chosen for domestic use where space and cost are considerations.
Upright piano
Upright pianos, also called vertical pianos, are more compact because the frame and strings are vertical. It is considered harder to produce a sensitive piano action when the hammers move horizontally, as the vertical hammer return is dependent on springs which are prone to wear and tear. However, a well-regulated vertical piano will probably play more smoothly than a poorly regulated grand piano, and the very best upright pianos approach the level of some grand pianos of the same size in tone quality and responsiveness.
One noticeable advantage that the grand piano action has over the vertical action is that all grand pianos have a special repetition lever in the playing action that is absent in all verticals. This repetition lever, a separate one for every key, catches the hammer close to the strings as long as the keys are played repeatedly and fairly quickly. In this position, with the hammer resting on the lever, a pianist can play repeated notes, staccato, and trills with much more speed and control than is possible on a vertical piano.
Upright pianos with unusually tall frames and long strings are sometimes called "upright grand" pianos.
Some authors classify modern pianos according to their height and, to modifications of the action that are necessary to accomodate the height.
* Studio pianos are around 42 to 45 inches tall. This is the shortest cabinet that can accomodate a 'full-sized' action located above the keyboard.
* Console pianos have a compact action (shorter hammers), and are a few inches shorter than studio models.
* The top of a Spinet model barely rises above the keyboard. The action is located below, operated by vertical wires that are attached to the backs of the keys.
* Anything taller than a studio piano is called an upright.
Player piano
Toy pianos began to be manufactured in the 19th century. In 1863, Henri Fourneaux invented the player piano, which "plays itself" from a piano roll without the need for a pianist. The player piano is a piano that records a performance using rolls of paper with perforations, and then replays the performance using pneumatic devices. A modern equivalent for the player piano is the Yamaha Disklavier system, which uses solenoids and midi instead of pneumatics and rolls. Silent pianos, which allow a regular piano to be used converted to a digital instrument, are a recent innovation and are becoming more popular.
Irving Berlin played a special piano called the transposing piano, which was invented in 1801 by Edward Ryley. It had a lever under the keyboard used to alter the music to any key. One of Berlin's pianos is in the Smithsonian Museum. For much of his career, Berlin only knew how to play the black keys. But with his 'trick piano' he was no longer limited to the key of F-sharp.
A relatively recent development is the prepared piano, which is used in contemporary art music. A prepared piano is a standard grand piano which has had objects placed inside it before a performance in order to alter its sound, or which has had its mechanism changed in some way. The scores for music for prepared piano often instruct the pianist to insert pieces of rubber or small pieces of metal (screws or washers) in between the strings. These added items either mute the strings or create unusual vibrating sounds.
Since the 1980s, digital pianos have been available, which use digital sampling technology to reproduce the sound of each piano note. The best digital pianos are sophisticated, with features including working pedals, weighted keys, multiple voices, and MIDI interfaces. However, with such technology, it is difficult to duplicate one particular aspect of acoustic pianos, namely that when the damper pedal (see below) is depressed, the strings not struck vibrate sympathetically when other strings are struck, as well as the unique instrument-specific mathematical non-linearity of partials on any given unison. Since this sympathetic vibration is considered central to piano tone, many digital pianos do not sound the same as the best acoustic pianos. Progress is being made in this area by including physical models of sympathetic vibration in the synthesis software. Some higher end digital pianos, such as the Yamaha Clavinova series, or the KAWAI MP8 series, produced in the last few years incorporate string resonance technology to overcome this limitation.
With the advent of powerful desktop computers, highly realistic sampled digital grand pianos have become available as affordable software modules. Some use multi-gigabyte piano sample sets with as many as 90 recordings, each lasting many seconds, for each of the 88 keys under different conditions, augmented by additional samples to emulate sympathetic resonance, key release, the drop of the dampers, and simulations of piano techniques like re-pedaling.
Keyboard
Almost every modern piano has 36 black keys and 52 white keys for a total of 88 keys (seven octaves plus a minor third, from A0 to C8). Many older pianos only have 85 keys (seven octaves from A0 to A7), while some manufacturers extend the range further in one or both directions.
Some Bösendorfer pianos extend the normal range downwards to F0, with one other model going as far as a bottom C0, making a full eight octave range. These extra keys are sometimes hidden under a small hinged lid that can be flipped down to cover the keys in order to avoid visual disorientation in a pianist unfamiliar with the extended keyboard. On others, the colours of the extra white keys are reversed (black instead of white).
The extra keys are added primarily for increased resonance from the associated strings; that is, they vibrate sympathetically with other strings whenever the damper pedal is depressed and thus give a fuller tone. Only a very small number of works composed for piano actually use these notes. More recently, the Stuart and Sons company has also manufactured extended-range pianos. On their instruments, the range is extended both down the bass to F0 and up the treble to F8 for a full eight octaves. The extra keys are the same as the other keys in appearance.
Small studio upright acoustical pianos with only 65 keys have been manufactured for use by roving pianists. Known as "gig" pianos and still containing a cast iron harp, these are comparatively lightweight and can be easily transported to and from engagements by only two men. As their harp is longer than that of a spinet or console piano, they have a stronger bass sound that to some pianists is well worth the trade-off in range that a reduced key-set offers.
Piano pedals from left to right: una corda, sostenuto, and damper.
Pianos have had pedals, or some close equivalent, since the earliest days. (In the 18th century, some pianos used levers pressed upward by the player's knee instead of pedals.) Most grand pianos have three pedals: soft pedal (una corda), sostenuto, and sustain pedal (from left to right, respectively). Most modern upright pianos have three pedals: soft pedal, practice pedal and sustain pedal, though older or cheaper models may lack the practice pedal.
The sustain pedal (or, damper pedal) is often simply called "the pedal", since it is the most frequently used. It is placed as the rightmost pedal in the group. It lifts the dampers from all keys, sustaining all played notes, and altering the overall tone.
The soft pedal or una corda pedal is placed leftmost in the row of pedals. In grand pianos, it shifts the entire action, including the keyboard, to the right, so that the hammers hit only one of the three strings for each note (hence the name una corda, or 'one string'). The effect is to soften the note as well as to change the tone. In uprights, this action is not possible, and so the pedal moves the hammers closer to the strings, allowing the hammers to hit the strings with less kinetic energy to produce a softer sound.
On grand pianos, the middle pedal is a sostenuto pedal. This pedal keeps raised any damper that was already raised at the moment the pedal is depressed. This makes it possible to sustain some notes (by depressing the sostenuto pedal before notes to be sustained are released) while the player's hands are free to play other notes. This can be useful for musical passages with pedal points and other otherwise tricky or impossible situations.
On many upright pianos, there is a middle pedal called the 'practice' or celeste pedal. This drops a piece of felt between the hammers and strings, greatly muting the sounds.
There are also non-standard variants. On vertical pianos, the middle pedal can be a bass sustain pedal: that is, when it is depressed, the dampers lift off the strings only in the bass section. This pedal would be used only when a pianist needs to sustain a single bass note or chord over many measures, while playing the melody in the treble section. On the largest Fazioli piano, there is a fourth pedal to the left of the principal three. This fourth pedal works in the same way as the soft pedal of an upright piano, moving the hammers closer to the strings.
An upright pedal piano
The rare transposing piano, of which Irving Berlin possessed an example, had a middle pedal that functioned as a clutch which disengages the keyboard from the mechanism, enabling the keyboard to be moved to the left or right with a lever. The entire action of the piano is thus shifted to allow the pianist to play music written in one key so that it sounds in a different key. The pedalier piano, or pedal piano, is a rare type of piano that includes a pedalboard, enabling bass register notes to be played with the feet, as is standard on the organ. There are two types of pedal piano: the pedal board may be an integral part of the instrument, using the same strings and mechanism as the manual keyboard, or, less frequently, it may consist of two independent pianos (each with its separate mechanics and strings) which are placed one above the other, a regular piano played by the hands and a bass-register piano played by the feet.
Many parts of a piano are made of materials selected for sturdiness. In quality pianos, the outer rim of the piano is made of a hardwood, normally maple or beech. According to Harold A. Conklin, the purpose of a sturdy rim is so that "the vibrational energy will stay as much as possible in the soundboard instead of dissipating uselessly in the case parts, which are inefficient radiators of sound."
View from below of a 182-cm grand piano. In order of distance from viewer: softwood braces, tapered soundboard ribs, soundboard. The metal rod at lower right is a humidity control device.
The rim is normally made by laminating flexible strips of hardwood to the desired shape, a system that was developed by Theodore Steinway in 1880. The thick wooden braces at the bottom (grands) or back (uprights) of the piano are not as acoustically important as the rim, and are often made of a softwood, even in top-quality pianos, in order to save weight. The requirement of structural strength, fulfilled with stout hardwood and thick metal, makes a piano heavy; even a small upright can weigh 136 kg (300 lb), and the Steinway concert grand (Model D) weighs 480 kg (990 lb). The largest piano built, the Fazioli F308, weighs 691 kg (1520 lb).
The pinblock, which holds the tuning pins in place, is another area of the piano where toughness is important. It is made of hardwood, (often maple) and generally is laminated (built of multiple layers) for additional strength and gripping power. Piano strings (also called piano wire), which must endure years of extreme tension and hard blows, are made of high quality steel. They are manufactured to vary as little as possible in diameter, since all deviations from uniformity introduce tonal distortion. The bass strings of a piano are made of a steel core wrapped with copper wire, to increase their mass whilst retaining flexibility.
The plate, or metal frame, of a piano is usually made of cast iron. It is advantageous for the plate to be quite massive. Since the strings are attached to the plate at one end, any vibrations transmitted to the plate will result in loss of energy to the desired (efficient) channel of sound transmission, namely the bridge and the soundboard. Some manufacturers now use cast steel in their plates, for greater strength. The casting of the plate is a delicate art, since the dimensions are crucial and the iron shrinks by about one percent during cooling.
The inclusion in a piano of an extremely large piece of metal is potentially an aesthetic handicap, which piano makers overcome by polishing, painting and decorating the plate. Plates often include the manufacturer's ornamental medallion and can be strikingly attractive. In an effort to make pianos lighter, Alcoa worked with Winter and Company piano manufacturers to make pianos using an aluminum plate during the 1940s. The use of aluminum for piano plates, however, did not become widely accepted and was discontinued.
The numerous grand parts and upright parts of a piano action are generally hardwood (e.g. maple, beech. hornbeam). However, since World War II, plastics have become available. Early plastics were incorporated into some pianos in the late 1940s and 1950s, but proved disastrous because they crystallized and lost their strength after only a few decades of use. The Steinway firm once incorporated Teflon, a synthetic material developed by DuPont, for some grand action parts in place of cloth, but ultimately abandoned the experiment due to an inherent "clicking" which invariably developed over time. (Also Teflon is "humidity stable" whereas the wood adjacent to the Teflon will swell and shrink with humidity changes, causing problems.) More recently, the Kawai firm has built pianos with action parts made of more modern and effective plastics such as carbon fiber; these parts have held up better and have generally received the respect of piano technicians .
Ivorite and ebony keys on a modern Steinway & Sons concert grand piano.
The part of the piano where materials probably matter more than anywhere else is the soundboard. In quality pianos, this is made of solid spruce (that is, spruce boards glued together at their edges). Spruce is chosen for its high ratio of strength to weight. The best piano makers use close-grained, quarter-sawn, defect-free spruce, and make sure that it has been carefully dried over a long period of time before making it into soundboards. In cheap pianos, the soundboard is often made of plywood.
Piano keys are generally made of spruce or basswood, for lightness. Spruce is normally used in high-quality pianos. Traditionally, the black keys were made from ebony and the white keys were covered with strips of ivory, but since ivory-yielding species are now endangered and protected by treaty, plastics are now almost exclusively used. Also, ivory tends to chip more easily than plastic. Legal ivory can still be obtained in limited quantities. At one time, the Yamaha firm innovated a plastic called "Ivorine" or "Ivorite", since imitated by other makers, that mimics the look and feel of ivory.
A piano tuner
Pianos need regular tuning to keep them up to pitch, which is usually the internationally recognized standard concert pitch of A4 = 440 Hz. The hammers of pianos are voiced to compensate for gradual hardening, and other parts also need periodic regulation. Aged and worn pianos can be rebuilt or reconditioned. Often, by replacing a great number of their parts, they can be made to perform as well as new pianos. Older pianos are often more settled and produce a warmer tone.
Piano moving should be done by trained piano movers using adequate manpower and the correct equipment for any particular piano's size and weight. Pianos are heavy yet delicate instruments. Over the years, professional piano movers have developed special techniques for transporting both grands and uprights which prevent damage to the case and to the piano's mechanics.
The piano at the social center in the 19th century (Moritz von Schwind, 1868). The man at the piano is Franz Schubert.
The piano is a crucial instrument in Western classical music, jazz, film, television, and most other complex western musical genres. Since a large number of composers are proficient pianists â and because the piano keyboard offers an easy means of complex melodic and harmonic interplay â the piano is often used as a tool for composition.
Pianos were, and still are, popular instruments for private household ownership. Hence, pianos have gained a place in the popular consciousness, and are sometimes referred to by nicknames including: "the ivories", "the joanna", "the eighty-eight", and "the black(s) and white(s)", "the little joe(s)". Playing the piano is sometimes referred to as "tickling the ivories".
;General
* Innovations in the piano
* Jazz piano
* Piano acoustics
* Piano key frequencies (in equal temperament)
* Piano trio
* String piano
;Related lists
* List of films about pianists
* Lists of solo piano pieces
* List of piano makers
* List of piano brand names
* List of classical pianists (recorded)
;Related instruments
* Hammered dulcimer
* Harp
* Clavichord
* Harpsichord
* Organ and Pipe organ
* Electric piano
* Electronic piano
* The authoritative New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (available online by subscription), contains a wealth of information. Main article: "Pianoforte".
* The Encyclopædia Britannica (available online by subscription) also includes much information on the piano. In the 1988 edition, the primary article can be found in "Musical Instruments".
* The Piano Book by Larry Fine (4th ed. Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts: Brookside Press, 2001; ISBN 1-929145-01-2) gives the basics of how pianos work, and a thorough evaluative survey of current pianos and their manufacturers. It also includes advice on buying and owning pianos.
*Giraffes, black dragons, and other pianos: a technological history from Cristofori to the modern concert grand by Edwin M. Good (1982, second ed., 2001, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press) is a standard reference on the history of the piano.
*The Early Pianoforte by Stewart Pollens (1995, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) is an authoritative work covering the ancestry of the piano, its invention by Cristofori, and the early stages of its subsequent evolution.
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;Information
* Yamaha Musician - Yamaha piano reviews and enthusiast site
* Grand Piano information and images
* The Piano Page Lots of information from the Piano Technicians Guild
* WikiRecording's Guide to Recording Pianos
;History
* History of the Piano Forte, Association of Blind Piano Tuners, UK
* The Frederick Historical Piano Collection
;Piano Technique
* Principles of Piano Technique
;Sheet music for Piano
* All Piano Scores Free printable classical sheet music for piano + audio
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Piano | Why are upright pianos more compact? | Upright pianos are more compact because the frame and strings are vertical. | data/set2/a1 | Piano
Baby Grand Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard that produces sound by striking steel strings with felt covered hammers. The hammers immediately rebound, allowing the strings to continue vibrating at their resonant frequency. " Hammer Time" by John Kiehl, Wolfram Demonstrations Project. These vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a soundboard that couples the acoustic energy to the air so that it can be heard as sound.
The piano is widely used in Western music for solo performance, ensemble use, chamber music, and accompaniment. It is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal. Although not portable and often expensive, the piano's versatility and ubiquity have made it one of the most familiar musical instruments. It is sometimes classified as both a percussion and a stringed instrument. According to the Hornbostel-Sachs method of music classification, it is grouped with Chordophones.
The word piano is a shortened form of the word pianoforte, which is seldom used except in formal language and derived from the original Italian name for the instrument, clavicembalo [or gravicembalo] col piano e forte (literally harpsichord with soft and loud). This refers to the instrument's responsiveness to keyboard touch, which allows the pianist to produce notes at different dynamic levels by controlling the speed with which the hammers hit the strings.
Early piano replica by the modern builder Paul McNulty, after Walter & Sohn, 1805
The piano was originally founded on earlier technological innovations. The first string instruments with struck strings were the hammered dulcimers originating from the Persian traditional musical instrument santur. David R. Peterson (1994), "Acoustics of the hammered dulcimer, its history, and recent developments", Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 95 (5), p. 3002. During the Middle Ages, there were several attempts at creating stringed keyboard instruments with struck strings, Pollens, 1995. chp. 1 the earliest being the hurdy gurdy which has uncertain origins. By the 17th century, 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.
Grand piano by Louis Bas of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, France, 1781. Earliest French grand piano known to survive; includes an inverted wrestplank and action derived from the work of Bartolomeo Cristofiori (ca. 1700) with ornately decorated soundboard.
The invention of the modern piano is credited to Bartolomeo Cristofori of Padua, Italy, who was employed by Prince Ferdinand de Medici as the Keeper of the Instruments. He was an expert harpsichord maker and was well acquainted with the previous body of knowledge on stringed keyboard instruments. It is not known exactly when Cristofori first built a piano. An inventory made by his employers, the Medici family, indicates the existence of a piano by the year 1700; another document of doubtful authenticity indicates a date of 1698. The three Cristofori pianos that survive today date from the 1720s.
Cristofori's great success was in solving, without any prior example, the fundamental mechanical problem of piano design: the hammer must strike the string, but not remain in contact with it (as a tangent remains in contact with a clavichord string) because this would damp the sound. Moreover, the hammer must return to its rest position without bouncing violently, and it must be possible to repeat a note rapidly. Cristofori's piano action served as a model for the many different approaches to piano actions that followed. While Cristofori's early instruments were made with thin strings and were much quieter than the modern piano, compared to the clavichord (the only previous keyboard instrument capable of minutely controlled dynamic nuance through the keyboard) they were considerably louder and had more sustaining power.
Cristofori's new instrument remained relatively unknown until an Italian writer, Scipione Maffei, wrote an enthusiastic article about it (1711), including a diagram of the mechanism. This article was widely distributed, and most of the next generation of piano builders started their work because of reading it. One of these builders was Gottfried Silbermann, better known as an organ builder. Silbermann's pianos were virtually direct copies of Cristofori's, with one important addition: Silbermann invented the forerunner of the modern damper pedal, which lifts all the dampers from the strings at once.
Silbermann showed Johann Sebastian Bach one of his early instruments in the 1730s, but Bach did not like it at that time, claiming that the higher notes were too soft to allow a full dynamic range. Although this earned him some animosity from Silbermann, the criticism was apparently heeded. Bach did approve of a later instrument he saw in 1747, and even served as an agent in selling Silbermann's pianos.
Piano making flourished during the late 18th century in the Viennese school, which included Johann Andreas Stein (who worked in Augsburg, Germany) and the Viennese makers Nannette Streicher (daughter of Johann Andreas Stein) and Anton Walter. Viennese-style pianos were built with wood frames, two strings per note, and had leather-covered hammers. Some of these Viennese pianos had the opposite coloring of modern-day pianos; the natural keys were black and the accidental keys white. It was for such instruments that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed his concertos and sonatas, and replicas of them are built today for use in authentic-instrument performance of his music. The pianos of Mozart's day had a softer, clearer tone than today's pianos or English pianos, with less sustaining power. The term fortepiano is nowadays often used to distinguish the 18th-century instrument from later pianos.
In the period lasting from about 1790 to 1860, the Mozart-era piano underwent tremendous changes that led to the modern form of the instrument. This revolution was in response to a consistent preference by composers and pianists for a more powerful, sustained piano sound, and made possible by the ongoing Industrial Revolution with technological resources such as high-quality steel, called piano wire, for strings, and precision casting for the production of iron frames. Over time, the tonal range of the piano was also increased from the five octaves of Mozart's day to the 7â
or more octaves found on modern pianos.
Broadwood square action
Early technological progress owed much to the English firm of Broadwood, who already had a reputation for the splendour and powerful tone of its harpsichords. Broadwood constructed instruments that were progressively larger, louder, and more robustly constructed. They sent pianos to both Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven, and were the first firm to build pianos with a range of more than five octaves: five octaves and a fifth during the 1790s, six octaves by 1810 (Beethoven used the extra notes in his later works), and seven octaves by 1820. The Viennese makers similarly followed these trends, however the two schools used different piano actions: Broadwoods were more robust, Viennese instruments were more sensitive.
Erard square action
By the 1820s, the center of innovation had shifted to Paris, where the Pleyel firm manufactured pianos used by Frédéric Chopin and the Ãrard firm manufactured those used by Franz Liszt. In 1821, Sébastien Ãrard invented the double escapement action, which permitted a note to be repeated even if the key had not yet risen to its maximum vertical position. This facilitated rapid playing of repeated notes - and this musical device was pioneered by Liszt. When the invention became public, as revised by Henri Herz, the double escapement action gradually became standard in grand pianos, and is still incorporated into all grand pianos currently produced.
One of the major technical innovations that helped to create the sound of the modern piano was the use of a strong iron frame. Also called the "plate", the iron frame sits atop the soundboard, and serves as the primary bulwark against the force of string tension. The increased structural integrity of the iron frame allowed the use of thicker, tenser, and more numerous strings. In a modern grand the total string tension can exceed 20 tons. The single piece cast iron frame was patented in 1825 in Boston by Alpheus Babcock, combining the metal hitch pin plate (1821, claimed by Broadwood on behalf of Samuel Hervé) and resisting bars (Thom and Allen, 1820, but also claimed by Broadwood and Ãrard). Babcock later worked for the Chickering & Mackays firm who patented the first full iron frame for grand pianos in 1843. Composite forged metal frames were preferred by many European makers until the American system was fully adopted by the early 20th century.
Other innovations for the mechanism included the use of felt hammer coverings instead of layered leather hammers. Felt hammers, which were first introduced by Henri Pape in 1826, were a more consistent material, permitting wider dynamic ranges as hammer weights and string tension increased. The sostenuto pedal (see below), invented in 1844 by Jean Louis Boisselot and improved by the Steinway firm in 1874, allowed a wider range of effects.
Other important technical innovations of this era included changes to the way the piano was strung, such as the use of a "choir" of three strings rather than two for all but the lower notes, and the use of different stringing methods. With the over strung scale, also called "cross-stringing", the strings are placed in a vertically overlapping slanted arrangement, with two heights of bridges on the soundboard instead of just one. This permits larger, but not necessarily longer, strings to fit within the case of the piano. Over stringing was invented by Jean-Henri Pape during the 1820s, and first patented for use in grand pianos in the United States by Henry Steinway Jr. in 1859.
Duplex scaling: Treble strings of a 182 cm. grand piano. From lower left to upper right: dampers, main sounding length of strings, treble bridge, duplex string length, duplex bridge (long bar perpendicular to strings), hitchpins. With duplexes or aliquot scales, which was patented in 1872 by Theodore Steinway, the different components of string vibrations are controlled by tuning their secondary parts in octave relationships with the sounding lengths. Similar systems developed by Blüthner (1872), as well as Taskin (1788), and Collard (1821) used more distinctly ringing undamped vibrations to modify tone.
Some early pianos had shapes and designs that are no longer in use. The square piano had horizontal strings arranged diagonally across the rectangular case above the hammers and with the keyboard set in the long side. This design is attributed to Gottfried Silbermann or Christian Ernst Friderici on the continent, and Johannes Zumpe or Harman Vietor in England and it was improved by changes first introduced by Guillaume-Lebrecht Petzold in France and Alpheus Babcock in the United States. Square pianos were built in great numbers through the 1840s in Europe and the 1890s in America, and saw the most visible changes of any type of piano: the celebrated iron framed over strung squares manufactured by Steinway & Sons were more than two and a half times the size of Zumpe's wood framed instruments from a century before. Their overwhelming popularity was due to inexpensive construction and price, although their performance and tone were often limited by simple actions and closely spaced strings.
The mechanism in upright pianos is perpendicular to the keys.
The tall, vertically strung upright grand was arranged like a grand set on end, with the soundboard and bridges above the keys, and tuning pins below them. The term was later revived by many manufacturers for advertising purposes. Giraffe, pyramid and lyre pianos were arranged in a somewhat similar fashion in evocatively shaped cases.
The very tall cabinet piano was introduced about 1805 and was built through the 1840s. It had strings arranged vertically on a continuous frame with bridges extended nearly to the floor, behind the keyboard and very large sticker action. The short cottage upright or pianino with vertical stringing, made popular by Robert Wornum around 1815, was built into the 20th century. They are informally called birdcage pianos because of their prominent damper mechanism. Pianinos were distinguished from the oblique, or diagonally strung upright made popular in France by Roller & Blanchet during the late 1820s. The tiny spinet upright was manufactured from the mid-1930s until recent times. The low position of the hammers required the use of a "drop action" to preserve a reasonable keyboard height.
Modern upright and grand pianos attained their present forms by the end of the 19th century. Improvements have been made in manufacturing processes, and many individual details of the instrument continue to receive attention.
Much of the most widely admired piano repertoire, for example, that of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, was composed for a type of instrument that is rather different from the modern instruments on which this music is normally performed today. Even the music of the Romantics, including Liszt, Chopin, Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn and Johannes Brahms, was written for pianos substantially different from ours.
A schematic depiction of the construction of a pianoforte.
Modern pianos come in two basic configurations (with subcategories): the grand piano and the upright piano.
Grand piano
In grand pianos, the frame and strings are horizontal, with the strings extending away from the keyboard. There are several sizes of grand piano. A rough generalization distinguishes the "concert grand" (between about and long) from the "parlor grand" or "boudoir grand" (about to ) and the smaller "baby grand".
All else being equal, longer pianos with longer strings have better sound and lower inharmonicity of the strings. Inharmonicity is the degree to which the frequencies of overtones (known as partials, partial tones, or harmonics) depart from whole multiples of the fundamental frequency. Pianos with shorter, thicker, and stiffer strings (e.g., baby grands) have more inharmonicity. The longer strings on a concert grand can vibrate more freely than the shorter, thicker strings on a baby grand, which means that a concert grand's strings will have truer overtones. This is partly because the strings will be tuned closer to equal temperament in relation to the standard pitch with less "stretching" in the piano tuning (See: Piano tuning). Full-size grands are usually used for public concerts, whereas smaller grands, introduced by Sohmer & Co. in 1884, are often chosen for domestic use where space and cost are considerations.
Upright piano
Upright pianos, also called vertical pianos, are more compact because the frame and strings are vertical. It is considered harder to produce a sensitive piano action when the hammers move horizontally, as the vertical hammer return is dependent on springs which are prone to wear and tear. However, a well-regulated vertical piano will probably play more smoothly than a poorly regulated grand piano, and the very best upright pianos approach the level of some grand pianos of the same size in tone quality and responsiveness.
One noticeable advantage that the grand piano action has over the vertical action is that all grand pianos have a special repetition lever in the playing action that is absent in all verticals. This repetition lever, a separate one for every key, catches the hammer close to the strings as long as the keys are played repeatedly and fairly quickly. In this position, with the hammer resting on the lever, a pianist can play repeated notes, staccato, and trills with much more speed and control than is possible on a vertical piano.
Upright pianos with unusually tall frames and long strings are sometimes called "upright grand" pianos.
Some authors classify modern pianos according to their height and, to modifications of the action that are necessary to accomodate the height.
* Studio pianos are around 42 to 45 inches tall. This is the shortest cabinet that can accomodate a 'full-sized' action located above the keyboard.
* Console pianos have a compact action (shorter hammers), and are a few inches shorter than studio models.
* The top of a Spinet model barely rises above the keyboard. The action is located below, operated by vertical wires that are attached to the backs of the keys.
* Anything taller than a studio piano is called an upright.
Player piano
Toy pianos began to be manufactured in the 19th century. In 1863, Henri Fourneaux invented the player piano, which "plays itself" from a piano roll without the need for a pianist. The player piano is a piano that records a performance using rolls of paper with perforations, and then replays the performance using pneumatic devices. A modern equivalent for the player piano is the Yamaha Disklavier system, which uses solenoids and midi instead of pneumatics and rolls. Silent pianos, which allow a regular piano to be used converted to a digital instrument, are a recent innovation and are becoming more popular.
Irving Berlin played a special piano called the transposing piano, which was invented in 1801 by Edward Ryley. It had a lever under the keyboard used to alter the music to any key. One of Berlin's pianos is in the Smithsonian Museum. For much of his career, Berlin only knew how to play the black keys. But with his 'trick piano' he was no longer limited to the key of F-sharp.
A relatively recent development is the prepared piano, which is used in contemporary art music. A prepared piano is a standard grand piano which has had objects placed inside it before a performance in order to alter its sound, or which has had its mechanism changed in some way. The scores for music for prepared piano often instruct the pianist to insert pieces of rubber or small pieces of metal (screws or washers) in between the strings. These added items either mute the strings or create unusual vibrating sounds.
Since the 1980s, digital pianos have been available, which use digital sampling technology to reproduce the sound of each piano note. The best digital pianos are sophisticated, with features including working pedals, weighted keys, multiple voices, and MIDI interfaces. However, with such technology, it is difficult to duplicate one particular aspect of acoustic pianos, namely that when the damper pedal (see below) is depressed, the strings not struck vibrate sympathetically when other strings are struck, as well as the unique instrument-specific mathematical non-linearity of partials on any given unison. Since this sympathetic vibration is considered central to piano tone, many digital pianos do not sound the same as the best acoustic pianos. Progress is being made in this area by including physical models of sympathetic vibration in the synthesis software. Some higher end digital pianos, such as the Yamaha Clavinova series, or the KAWAI MP8 series, produced in the last few years incorporate string resonance technology to overcome this limitation.
With the advent of powerful desktop computers, highly realistic sampled digital grand pianos have become available as affordable software modules. Some use multi-gigabyte piano sample sets with as many as 90 recordings, each lasting many seconds, for each of the 88 keys under different conditions, augmented by additional samples to emulate sympathetic resonance, key release, the drop of the dampers, and simulations of piano techniques like re-pedaling.
Keyboard
Almost every modern piano has 36 black keys and 52 white keys for a total of 88 keys (seven octaves plus a minor third, from A0 to C8). Many older pianos only have 85 keys (seven octaves from A0 to A7), while some manufacturers extend the range further in one or both directions.
Some Bösendorfer pianos extend the normal range downwards to F0, with one other model going as far as a bottom C0, making a full eight octave range. These extra keys are sometimes hidden under a small hinged lid that can be flipped down to cover the keys in order to avoid visual disorientation in a pianist unfamiliar with the extended keyboard. On others, the colours of the extra white keys are reversed (black instead of white).
The extra keys are added primarily for increased resonance from the associated strings; that is, they vibrate sympathetically with other strings whenever the damper pedal is depressed and thus give a fuller tone. Only a very small number of works composed for piano actually use these notes. More recently, the Stuart and Sons company has also manufactured extended-range pianos. On their instruments, the range is extended both down the bass to F0 and up the treble to F8 for a full eight octaves. The extra keys are the same as the other keys in appearance.
Small studio upright acoustical pianos with only 65 keys have been manufactured for use by roving pianists. Known as "gig" pianos and still containing a cast iron harp, these are comparatively lightweight and can be easily transported to and from engagements by only two men. As their harp is longer than that of a spinet or console piano, they have a stronger bass sound that to some pianists is well worth the trade-off in range that a reduced key-set offers.
Piano pedals from left to right: una corda, sostenuto, and damper.
Pianos have had pedals, or some close equivalent, since the earliest days. (In the 18th century, some pianos used levers pressed upward by the player's knee instead of pedals.) Most grand pianos have three pedals: soft pedal (una corda), sostenuto, and sustain pedal (from left to right, respectively). Most modern upright pianos have three pedals: soft pedal, practice pedal and sustain pedal, though older or cheaper models may lack the practice pedal.
The sustain pedal (or, damper pedal) is often simply called "the pedal", since it is the most frequently used. It is placed as the rightmost pedal in the group. It lifts the dampers from all keys, sustaining all played notes, and altering the overall tone.
The soft pedal or una corda pedal is placed leftmost in the row of pedals. In grand pianos, it shifts the entire action, including the keyboard, to the right, so that the hammers hit only one of the three strings for each note (hence the name una corda, or 'one string'). The effect is to soften the note as well as to change the tone. In uprights, this action is not possible, and so the pedal moves the hammers closer to the strings, allowing the hammers to hit the strings with less kinetic energy to produce a softer sound.
On grand pianos, the middle pedal is a sostenuto pedal. This pedal keeps raised any damper that was already raised at the moment the pedal is depressed. This makes it possible to sustain some notes (by depressing the sostenuto pedal before notes to be sustained are released) while the player's hands are free to play other notes. This can be useful for musical passages with pedal points and other otherwise tricky or impossible situations.
On many upright pianos, there is a middle pedal called the 'practice' or celeste pedal. This drops a piece of felt between the hammers and strings, greatly muting the sounds.
There are also non-standard variants. On vertical pianos, the middle pedal can be a bass sustain pedal: that is, when it is depressed, the dampers lift off the strings only in the bass section. This pedal would be used only when a pianist needs to sustain a single bass note or chord over many measures, while playing the melody in the treble section. On the largest Fazioli piano, there is a fourth pedal to the left of the principal three. This fourth pedal works in the same way as the soft pedal of an upright piano, moving the hammers closer to the strings.
An upright pedal piano
The rare transposing piano, of which Irving Berlin possessed an example, had a middle pedal that functioned as a clutch which disengages the keyboard from the mechanism, enabling the keyboard to be moved to the left or right with a lever. The entire action of the piano is thus shifted to allow the pianist to play music written in one key so that it sounds in a different key. The pedalier piano, or pedal piano, is a rare type of piano that includes a pedalboard, enabling bass register notes to be played with the feet, as is standard on the organ. There are two types of pedal piano: the pedal board may be an integral part of the instrument, using the same strings and mechanism as the manual keyboard, or, less frequently, it may consist of two independent pianos (each with its separate mechanics and strings) which are placed one above the other, a regular piano played by the hands and a bass-register piano played by the feet.
Many parts of a piano are made of materials selected for sturdiness. In quality pianos, the outer rim of the piano is made of a hardwood, normally maple or beech. According to Harold A. Conklin, the purpose of a sturdy rim is so that "the vibrational energy will stay as much as possible in the soundboard instead of dissipating uselessly in the case parts, which are inefficient radiators of sound."
View from below of a 182-cm grand piano. In order of distance from viewer: softwood braces, tapered soundboard ribs, soundboard. The metal rod at lower right is a humidity control device.
The rim is normally made by laminating flexible strips of hardwood to the desired shape, a system that was developed by Theodore Steinway in 1880. The thick wooden braces at the bottom (grands) or back (uprights) of the piano are not as acoustically important as the rim, and are often made of a softwood, even in top-quality pianos, in order to save weight. The requirement of structural strength, fulfilled with stout hardwood and thick metal, makes a piano heavy; even a small upright can weigh 136 kg (300 lb), and the Steinway concert grand (Model D) weighs 480 kg (990 lb). The largest piano built, the Fazioli F308, weighs 691 kg (1520 lb).
The pinblock, which holds the tuning pins in place, is another area of the piano where toughness is important. It is made of hardwood, (often maple) and generally is laminated (built of multiple layers) for additional strength and gripping power. Piano strings (also called piano wire), which must endure years of extreme tension and hard blows, are made of high quality steel. They are manufactured to vary as little as possible in diameter, since all deviations from uniformity introduce tonal distortion. The bass strings of a piano are made of a steel core wrapped with copper wire, to increase their mass whilst retaining flexibility.
The plate, or metal frame, of a piano is usually made of cast iron. It is advantageous for the plate to be quite massive. Since the strings are attached to the plate at one end, any vibrations transmitted to the plate will result in loss of energy to the desired (efficient) channel of sound transmission, namely the bridge and the soundboard. Some manufacturers now use cast steel in their plates, for greater strength. The casting of the plate is a delicate art, since the dimensions are crucial and the iron shrinks by about one percent during cooling.
The inclusion in a piano of an extremely large piece of metal is potentially an aesthetic handicap, which piano makers overcome by polishing, painting and decorating the plate. Plates often include the manufacturer's ornamental medallion and can be strikingly attractive. In an effort to make pianos lighter, Alcoa worked with Winter and Company piano manufacturers to make pianos using an aluminum plate during the 1940s. The use of aluminum for piano plates, however, did not become widely accepted and was discontinued.
The numerous grand parts and upright parts of a piano action are generally hardwood (e.g. maple, beech. hornbeam). However, since World War II, plastics have become available. Early plastics were incorporated into some pianos in the late 1940s and 1950s, but proved disastrous because they crystallized and lost their strength after only a few decades of use. The Steinway firm once incorporated Teflon, a synthetic material developed by DuPont, for some grand action parts in place of cloth, but ultimately abandoned the experiment due to an inherent "clicking" which invariably developed over time. (Also Teflon is "humidity stable" whereas the wood adjacent to the Teflon will swell and shrink with humidity changes, causing problems.) More recently, the Kawai firm has built pianos with action parts made of more modern and effective plastics such as carbon fiber; these parts have held up better and have generally received the respect of piano technicians .
Ivorite and ebony keys on a modern Steinway & Sons concert grand piano.
The part of the piano where materials probably matter more than anywhere else is the soundboard. In quality pianos, this is made of solid spruce (that is, spruce boards glued together at their edges). Spruce is chosen for its high ratio of strength to weight. The best piano makers use close-grained, quarter-sawn, defect-free spruce, and make sure that it has been carefully dried over a long period of time before making it into soundboards. In cheap pianos, the soundboard is often made of plywood.
Piano keys are generally made of spruce or basswood, for lightness. Spruce is normally used in high-quality pianos. Traditionally, the black keys were made from ebony and the white keys were covered with strips of ivory, but since ivory-yielding species are now endangered and protected by treaty, plastics are now almost exclusively used. Also, ivory tends to chip more easily than plastic. Legal ivory can still be obtained in limited quantities. At one time, the Yamaha firm innovated a plastic called "Ivorine" or "Ivorite", since imitated by other makers, that mimics the look and feel of ivory.
A piano tuner
Pianos need regular tuning to keep them up to pitch, which is usually the internationally recognized standard concert pitch of A4 = 440 Hz. The hammers of pianos are voiced to compensate for gradual hardening, and other parts also need periodic regulation. Aged and worn pianos can be rebuilt or reconditioned. Often, by replacing a great number of their parts, they can be made to perform as well as new pianos. Older pianos are often more settled and produce a warmer tone.
Piano moving should be done by trained piano movers using adequate manpower and the correct equipment for any particular piano's size and weight. Pianos are heavy yet delicate instruments. Over the years, professional piano movers have developed special techniques for transporting both grands and uprights which prevent damage to the case and to the piano's mechanics.
The piano at the social center in the 19th century (Moritz von Schwind, 1868). The man at the piano is Franz Schubert.
The piano is a crucial instrument in Western classical music, jazz, film, television, and most other complex western musical genres. Since a large number of composers are proficient pianists â and because the piano keyboard offers an easy means of complex melodic and harmonic interplay â the piano is often used as a tool for composition.
Pianos were, and still are, popular instruments for private household ownership. Hence, pianos have gained a place in the popular consciousness, and are sometimes referred to by nicknames including: "the ivories", "the joanna", "the eighty-eight", and "the black(s) and white(s)", "the little joe(s)". Playing the piano is sometimes referred to as "tickling the ivories".
;General
* Innovations in the piano
* Jazz piano
* Piano acoustics
* Piano key frequencies (in equal temperament)
* Piano trio
* String piano
;Related lists
* List of films about pianists
* Lists of solo piano pieces
* List of piano makers
* List of piano brand names
* List of classical pianists (recorded)
;Related instruments
* Hammered dulcimer
* Harp
* Clavichord
* Harpsichord
* Organ and Pipe organ
* Electric piano
* Electronic piano
* The authoritative New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (available online by subscription), contains a wealth of information. Main article: "Pianoforte".
* The Encyclopædia Britannica (available online by subscription) also includes much information on the piano. In the 1988 edition, the primary article can be found in "Musical Instruments".
* The Piano Book by Larry Fine (4th ed. Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts: Brookside Press, 2001; ISBN 1-929145-01-2) gives the basics of how pianos work, and a thorough evaluative survey of current pianos and their manufacturers. It also includes advice on buying and owning pianos.
*Giraffes, black dragons, and other pianos: a technological history from Cristofori to the modern concert grand by Edwin M. Good (1982, second ed., 2001, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press) is a standard reference on the history of the piano.
*The Early Pianoforte by Stewart Pollens (1995, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) is an authoritative work covering the ancestry of the piano, its invention by Cristofori, and the early stages of its subsequent evolution.
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;Information
* Yamaha Musician - Yamaha piano reviews and enthusiast site
* Grand Piano information and images
* The Piano Page Lots of information from the Piano Technicians Guild
* WikiRecording's Guide to Recording Pianos
;History
* History of the Piano Forte, Association of Blind Piano Tuners, UK
* The Frederick Historical Piano Collection
;Piano Technique
* Principles of Piano Technique
;Sheet music for Piano
* All Piano Scores Free printable classical sheet music for piano + audio
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Piano | Do older pianos have more keys than modern pianos? | no. | data/set2/a1 | Piano
Baby Grand Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard that produces sound by striking steel strings with felt covered hammers. The hammers immediately rebound, allowing the strings to continue vibrating at their resonant frequency. " Hammer Time" by John Kiehl, Wolfram Demonstrations Project. These vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a soundboard that couples the acoustic energy to the air so that it can be heard as sound.
The piano is widely used in Western music for solo performance, ensemble use, chamber music, and accompaniment. It is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal. Although not portable and often expensive, the piano's versatility and ubiquity have made it one of the most familiar musical instruments. It is sometimes classified as both a percussion and a stringed instrument. According to the Hornbostel-Sachs method of music classification, it is grouped with Chordophones.
The word piano is a shortened form of the word pianoforte, which is seldom used except in formal language and derived from the original Italian name for the instrument, clavicembalo [or gravicembalo] col piano e forte (literally harpsichord with soft and loud). This refers to the instrument's responsiveness to keyboard touch, which allows the pianist to produce notes at different dynamic levels by controlling the speed with which the hammers hit the strings.
Early piano replica by the modern builder Paul McNulty, after Walter & Sohn, 1805
The piano was originally founded on earlier technological innovations. The first string instruments with struck strings were the hammered dulcimers originating from the Persian traditional musical instrument santur. David R. Peterson (1994), "Acoustics of the hammered dulcimer, its history, and recent developments", Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 95 (5), p. 3002. During the Middle Ages, there were several attempts at creating stringed keyboard instruments with struck strings, Pollens, 1995. chp. 1 the earliest being the hurdy gurdy which has uncertain origins. By the 17th century, 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.
Grand piano by Louis Bas of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, France, 1781. Earliest French grand piano known to survive; includes an inverted wrestplank and action derived from the work of Bartolomeo Cristofiori (ca. 1700) with ornately decorated soundboard.
The invention of the modern piano is credited to Bartolomeo Cristofori of Padua, Italy, who was employed by Prince Ferdinand de Medici as the Keeper of the Instruments. He was an expert harpsichord maker and was well acquainted with the previous body of knowledge on stringed keyboard instruments. It is not known exactly when Cristofori first built a piano. An inventory made by his employers, the Medici family, indicates the existence of a piano by the year 1700; another document of doubtful authenticity indicates a date of 1698. The three Cristofori pianos that survive today date from the 1720s.
Cristofori's great success was in solving, without any prior example, the fundamental mechanical problem of piano design: the hammer must strike the string, but not remain in contact with it (as a tangent remains in contact with a clavichord string) because this would damp the sound. Moreover, the hammer must return to its rest position without bouncing violently, and it must be possible to repeat a note rapidly. Cristofori's piano action served as a model for the many different approaches to piano actions that followed. While Cristofori's early instruments were made with thin strings and were much quieter than the modern piano, compared to the clavichord (the only previous keyboard instrument capable of minutely controlled dynamic nuance through the keyboard) they were considerably louder and had more sustaining power.
Cristofori's new instrument remained relatively unknown until an Italian writer, Scipione Maffei, wrote an enthusiastic article about it (1711), including a diagram of the mechanism. This article was widely distributed, and most of the next generation of piano builders started their work because of reading it. One of these builders was Gottfried Silbermann, better known as an organ builder. Silbermann's pianos were virtually direct copies of Cristofori's, with one important addition: Silbermann invented the forerunner of the modern damper pedal, which lifts all the dampers from the strings at once.
Silbermann showed Johann Sebastian Bach one of his early instruments in the 1730s, but Bach did not like it at that time, claiming that the higher notes were too soft to allow a full dynamic range. Although this earned him some animosity from Silbermann, the criticism was apparently heeded. Bach did approve of a later instrument he saw in 1747, and even served as an agent in selling Silbermann's pianos.
Piano making flourished during the late 18th century in the Viennese school, which included Johann Andreas Stein (who worked in Augsburg, Germany) and the Viennese makers Nannette Streicher (daughter of Johann Andreas Stein) and Anton Walter. Viennese-style pianos were built with wood frames, two strings per note, and had leather-covered hammers. Some of these Viennese pianos had the opposite coloring of modern-day pianos; the natural keys were black and the accidental keys white. It was for such instruments that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed his concertos and sonatas, and replicas of them are built today for use in authentic-instrument performance of his music. The pianos of Mozart's day had a softer, clearer tone than today's pianos or English pianos, with less sustaining power. The term fortepiano is nowadays often used to distinguish the 18th-century instrument from later pianos.
In the period lasting from about 1790 to 1860, the Mozart-era piano underwent tremendous changes that led to the modern form of the instrument. This revolution was in response to a consistent preference by composers and pianists for a more powerful, sustained piano sound, and made possible by the ongoing Industrial Revolution with technological resources such as high-quality steel, called piano wire, for strings, and precision casting for the production of iron frames. Over time, the tonal range of the piano was also increased from the five octaves of Mozart's day to the 7â
or more octaves found on modern pianos.
Broadwood square action
Early technological progress owed much to the English firm of Broadwood, who already had a reputation for the splendour and powerful tone of its harpsichords. Broadwood constructed instruments that were progressively larger, louder, and more robustly constructed. They sent pianos to both Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven, and were the first firm to build pianos with a range of more than five octaves: five octaves and a fifth during the 1790s, six octaves by 1810 (Beethoven used the extra notes in his later works), and seven octaves by 1820. The Viennese makers similarly followed these trends, however the two schools used different piano actions: Broadwoods were more robust, Viennese instruments were more sensitive.
Erard square action
By the 1820s, the center of innovation had shifted to Paris, where the Pleyel firm manufactured pianos used by Frédéric Chopin and the Ãrard firm manufactured those used by Franz Liszt. In 1821, Sébastien Ãrard invented the double escapement action, which permitted a note to be repeated even if the key had not yet risen to its maximum vertical position. This facilitated rapid playing of repeated notes - and this musical device was pioneered by Liszt. When the invention became public, as revised by Henri Herz, the double escapement action gradually became standard in grand pianos, and is still incorporated into all grand pianos currently produced.
One of the major technical innovations that helped to create the sound of the modern piano was the use of a strong iron frame. Also called the "plate", the iron frame sits atop the soundboard, and serves as the primary bulwark against the force of string tension. The increased structural integrity of the iron frame allowed the use of thicker, tenser, and more numerous strings. In a modern grand the total string tension can exceed 20 tons. The single piece cast iron frame was patented in 1825 in Boston by Alpheus Babcock, combining the metal hitch pin plate (1821, claimed by Broadwood on behalf of Samuel Hervé) and resisting bars (Thom and Allen, 1820, but also claimed by Broadwood and Ãrard). Babcock later worked for the Chickering & Mackays firm who patented the first full iron frame for grand pianos in 1843. Composite forged metal frames were preferred by many European makers until the American system was fully adopted by the early 20th century.
Other innovations for the mechanism included the use of felt hammer coverings instead of layered leather hammers. Felt hammers, which were first introduced by Henri Pape in 1826, were a more consistent material, permitting wider dynamic ranges as hammer weights and string tension increased. The sostenuto pedal (see below), invented in 1844 by Jean Louis Boisselot and improved by the Steinway firm in 1874, allowed a wider range of effects.
Other important technical innovations of this era included changes to the way the piano was strung, such as the use of a "choir" of three strings rather than two for all but the lower notes, and the use of different stringing methods. With the over strung scale, also called "cross-stringing", the strings are placed in a vertically overlapping slanted arrangement, with two heights of bridges on the soundboard instead of just one. This permits larger, but not necessarily longer, strings to fit within the case of the piano. Over stringing was invented by Jean-Henri Pape during the 1820s, and first patented for use in grand pianos in the United States by Henry Steinway Jr. in 1859.
Duplex scaling: Treble strings of a 182 cm. grand piano. From lower left to upper right: dampers, main sounding length of strings, treble bridge, duplex string length, duplex bridge (long bar perpendicular to strings), hitchpins. With duplexes or aliquot scales, which was patented in 1872 by Theodore Steinway, the different components of string vibrations are controlled by tuning their secondary parts in octave relationships with the sounding lengths. Similar systems developed by Blüthner (1872), as well as Taskin (1788), and Collard (1821) used more distinctly ringing undamped vibrations to modify tone.
Some early pianos had shapes and designs that are no longer in use. The square piano had horizontal strings arranged diagonally across the rectangular case above the hammers and with the keyboard set in the long side. This design is attributed to Gottfried Silbermann or Christian Ernst Friderici on the continent, and Johannes Zumpe or Harman Vietor in England and it was improved by changes first introduced by Guillaume-Lebrecht Petzold in France and Alpheus Babcock in the United States. Square pianos were built in great numbers through the 1840s in Europe and the 1890s in America, and saw the most visible changes of any type of piano: the celebrated iron framed over strung squares manufactured by Steinway & Sons were more than two and a half times the size of Zumpe's wood framed instruments from a century before. Their overwhelming popularity was due to inexpensive construction and price, although their performance and tone were often limited by simple actions and closely spaced strings.
The mechanism in upright pianos is perpendicular to the keys.
The tall, vertically strung upright grand was arranged like a grand set on end, with the soundboard and bridges above the keys, and tuning pins below them. The term was later revived by many manufacturers for advertising purposes. Giraffe, pyramid and lyre pianos were arranged in a somewhat similar fashion in evocatively shaped cases.
The very tall cabinet piano was introduced about 1805 and was built through the 1840s. It had strings arranged vertically on a continuous frame with bridges extended nearly to the floor, behind the keyboard and very large sticker action. The short cottage upright or pianino with vertical stringing, made popular by Robert Wornum around 1815, was built into the 20th century. They are informally called birdcage pianos because of their prominent damper mechanism. Pianinos were distinguished from the oblique, or diagonally strung upright made popular in France by Roller & Blanchet during the late 1820s. The tiny spinet upright was manufactured from the mid-1930s until recent times. The low position of the hammers required the use of a "drop action" to preserve a reasonable keyboard height.
Modern upright and grand pianos attained their present forms by the end of the 19th century. Improvements have been made in manufacturing processes, and many individual details of the instrument continue to receive attention.
Much of the most widely admired piano repertoire, for example, that of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, was composed for a type of instrument that is rather different from the modern instruments on which this music is normally performed today. Even the music of the Romantics, including Liszt, Chopin, Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn and Johannes Brahms, was written for pianos substantially different from ours.
A schematic depiction of the construction of a pianoforte.
Modern pianos come in two basic configurations (with subcategories): the grand piano and the upright piano.
Grand piano
In grand pianos, the frame and strings are horizontal, with the strings extending away from the keyboard. There are several sizes of grand piano. A rough generalization distinguishes the "concert grand" (between about and long) from the "parlor grand" or "boudoir grand" (about to ) and the smaller "baby grand".
All else being equal, longer pianos with longer strings have better sound and lower inharmonicity of the strings. Inharmonicity is the degree to which the frequencies of overtones (known as partials, partial tones, or harmonics) depart from whole multiples of the fundamental frequency. Pianos with shorter, thicker, and stiffer strings (e.g., baby grands) have more inharmonicity. The longer strings on a concert grand can vibrate more freely than the shorter, thicker strings on a baby grand, which means that a concert grand's strings will have truer overtones. This is partly because the strings will be tuned closer to equal temperament in relation to the standard pitch with less "stretching" in the piano tuning (See: Piano tuning). Full-size grands are usually used for public concerts, whereas smaller grands, introduced by Sohmer & Co. in 1884, are often chosen for domestic use where space and cost are considerations.
Upright piano
Upright pianos, also called vertical pianos, are more compact because the frame and strings are vertical. It is considered harder to produce a sensitive piano action when the hammers move horizontally, as the vertical hammer return is dependent on springs which are prone to wear and tear. However, a well-regulated vertical piano will probably play more smoothly than a poorly regulated grand piano, and the very best upright pianos approach the level of some grand pianos of the same size in tone quality and responsiveness.
One noticeable advantage that the grand piano action has over the vertical action is that all grand pianos have a special repetition lever in the playing action that is absent in all verticals. This repetition lever, a separate one for every key, catches the hammer close to the strings as long as the keys are played repeatedly and fairly quickly. In this position, with the hammer resting on the lever, a pianist can play repeated notes, staccato, and trills with much more speed and control than is possible on a vertical piano.
Upright pianos with unusually tall frames and long strings are sometimes called "upright grand" pianos.
Some authors classify modern pianos according to their height and, to modifications of the action that are necessary to accomodate the height.
* Studio pianos are around 42 to 45 inches tall. This is the shortest cabinet that can accomodate a 'full-sized' action located above the keyboard.
* Console pianos have a compact action (shorter hammers), and are a few inches shorter than studio models.
* The top of a Spinet model barely rises above the keyboard. The action is located below, operated by vertical wires that are attached to the backs of the keys.
* Anything taller than a studio piano is called an upright.
Player piano
Toy pianos began to be manufactured in the 19th century. In 1863, Henri Fourneaux invented the player piano, which "plays itself" from a piano roll without the need for a pianist. The player piano is a piano that records a performance using rolls of paper with perforations, and then replays the performance using pneumatic devices. A modern equivalent for the player piano is the Yamaha Disklavier system, which uses solenoids and midi instead of pneumatics and rolls. Silent pianos, which allow a regular piano to be used converted to a digital instrument, are a recent innovation and are becoming more popular.
Irving Berlin played a special piano called the transposing piano, which was invented in 1801 by Edward Ryley. It had a lever under the keyboard used to alter the music to any key. One of Berlin's pianos is in the Smithsonian Museum. For much of his career, Berlin only knew how to play the black keys. But with his 'trick piano' he was no longer limited to the key of F-sharp.
A relatively recent development is the prepared piano, which is used in contemporary art music. A prepared piano is a standard grand piano which has had objects placed inside it before a performance in order to alter its sound, or which has had its mechanism changed in some way. The scores for music for prepared piano often instruct the pianist to insert pieces of rubber or small pieces of metal (screws or washers) in between the strings. These added items either mute the strings or create unusual vibrating sounds.
Since the 1980s, digital pianos have been available, which use digital sampling technology to reproduce the sound of each piano note. The best digital pianos are sophisticated, with features including working pedals, weighted keys, multiple voices, and MIDI interfaces. However, with such technology, it is difficult to duplicate one particular aspect of acoustic pianos, namely that when the damper pedal (see below) is depressed, the strings not struck vibrate sympathetically when other strings are struck, as well as the unique instrument-specific mathematical non-linearity of partials on any given unison. Since this sympathetic vibration is considered central to piano tone, many digital pianos do not sound the same as the best acoustic pianos. Progress is being made in this area by including physical models of sympathetic vibration in the synthesis software. Some higher end digital pianos, such as the Yamaha Clavinova series, or the KAWAI MP8 series, produced in the last few years incorporate string resonance technology to overcome this limitation.
With the advent of powerful desktop computers, highly realistic sampled digital grand pianos have become available as affordable software modules. Some use multi-gigabyte piano sample sets with as many as 90 recordings, each lasting many seconds, for each of the 88 keys under different conditions, augmented by additional samples to emulate sympathetic resonance, key release, the drop of the dampers, and simulations of piano techniques like re-pedaling.
Keyboard
Almost every modern piano has 36 black keys and 52 white keys for a total of 88 keys (seven octaves plus a minor third, from A0 to C8). Many older pianos only have 85 keys (seven octaves from A0 to A7), while some manufacturers extend the range further in one or both directions.
Some Bösendorfer pianos extend the normal range downwards to F0, with one other model going as far as a bottom C0, making a full eight octave range. These extra keys are sometimes hidden under a small hinged lid that can be flipped down to cover the keys in order to avoid visual disorientation in a pianist unfamiliar with the extended keyboard. On others, the colours of the extra white keys are reversed (black instead of white).
The extra keys are added primarily for increased resonance from the associated strings; that is, they vibrate sympathetically with other strings whenever the damper pedal is depressed and thus give a fuller tone. Only a very small number of works composed for piano actually use these notes. More recently, the Stuart and Sons company has also manufactured extended-range pianos. On their instruments, the range is extended both down the bass to F0 and up the treble to F8 for a full eight octaves. The extra keys are the same as the other keys in appearance.
Small studio upright acoustical pianos with only 65 keys have been manufactured for use by roving pianists. Known as "gig" pianos and still containing a cast iron harp, these are comparatively lightweight and can be easily transported to and from engagements by only two men. As their harp is longer than that of a spinet or console piano, they have a stronger bass sound that to some pianists is well worth the trade-off in range that a reduced key-set offers.
Piano pedals from left to right: una corda, sostenuto, and damper.
Pianos have had pedals, or some close equivalent, since the earliest days. (In the 18th century, some pianos used levers pressed upward by the player's knee instead of pedals.) Most grand pianos have three pedals: soft pedal (una corda), sostenuto, and sustain pedal (from left to right, respectively). Most modern upright pianos have three pedals: soft pedal, practice pedal and sustain pedal, though older or cheaper models may lack the practice pedal.
The sustain pedal (or, damper pedal) is often simply called "the pedal", since it is the most frequently used. It is placed as the rightmost pedal in the group. It lifts the dampers from all keys, sustaining all played notes, and altering the overall tone.
The soft pedal or una corda pedal is placed leftmost in the row of pedals. In grand pianos, it shifts the entire action, including the keyboard, to the right, so that the hammers hit only one of the three strings for each note (hence the name una corda, or 'one string'). The effect is to soften the note as well as to change the tone. In uprights, this action is not possible, and so the pedal moves the hammers closer to the strings, allowing the hammers to hit the strings with less kinetic energy to produce a softer sound.
On grand pianos, the middle pedal is a sostenuto pedal. This pedal keeps raised any damper that was already raised at the moment the pedal is depressed. This makes it possible to sustain some notes (by depressing the sostenuto pedal before notes to be sustained are released) while the player's hands are free to play other notes. This can be useful for musical passages with pedal points and other otherwise tricky or impossible situations.
On many upright pianos, there is a middle pedal called the 'practice' or celeste pedal. This drops a piece of felt between the hammers and strings, greatly muting the sounds.
There are also non-standard variants. On vertical pianos, the middle pedal can be a bass sustain pedal: that is, when it is depressed, the dampers lift off the strings only in the bass section. This pedal would be used only when a pianist needs to sustain a single bass note or chord over many measures, while playing the melody in the treble section. On the largest Fazioli piano, there is a fourth pedal to the left of the principal three. This fourth pedal works in the same way as the soft pedal of an upright piano, moving the hammers closer to the strings.
An upright pedal piano
The rare transposing piano, of which Irving Berlin possessed an example, had a middle pedal that functioned as a clutch which disengages the keyboard from the mechanism, enabling the keyboard to be moved to the left or right with a lever. The entire action of the piano is thus shifted to allow the pianist to play music written in one key so that it sounds in a different key. The pedalier piano, or pedal piano, is a rare type of piano that includes a pedalboard, enabling bass register notes to be played with the feet, as is standard on the organ. There are two types of pedal piano: the pedal board may be an integral part of the instrument, using the same strings and mechanism as the manual keyboard, or, less frequently, it may consist of two independent pianos (each with its separate mechanics and strings) which are placed one above the other, a regular piano played by the hands and a bass-register piano played by the feet.
Many parts of a piano are made of materials selected for sturdiness. In quality pianos, the outer rim of the piano is made of a hardwood, normally maple or beech. According to Harold A. Conklin, the purpose of a sturdy rim is so that "the vibrational energy will stay as much as possible in the soundboard instead of dissipating uselessly in the case parts, which are inefficient radiators of sound."
View from below of a 182-cm grand piano. In order of distance from viewer: softwood braces, tapered soundboard ribs, soundboard. The metal rod at lower right is a humidity control device.
The rim is normally made by laminating flexible strips of hardwood to the desired shape, a system that was developed by Theodore Steinway in 1880. The thick wooden braces at the bottom (grands) or back (uprights) of the piano are not as acoustically important as the rim, and are often made of a softwood, even in top-quality pianos, in order to save weight. The requirement of structural strength, fulfilled with stout hardwood and thick metal, makes a piano heavy; even a small upright can weigh 136 kg (300 lb), and the Steinway concert grand (Model D) weighs 480 kg (990 lb). The largest piano built, the Fazioli F308, weighs 691 kg (1520 lb).
The pinblock, which holds the tuning pins in place, is another area of the piano where toughness is important. It is made of hardwood, (often maple) and generally is laminated (built of multiple layers) for additional strength and gripping power. Piano strings (also called piano wire), which must endure years of extreme tension and hard blows, are made of high quality steel. They are manufactured to vary as little as possible in diameter, since all deviations from uniformity introduce tonal distortion. The bass strings of a piano are made of a steel core wrapped with copper wire, to increase their mass whilst retaining flexibility.
The plate, or metal frame, of a piano is usually made of cast iron. It is advantageous for the plate to be quite massive. Since the strings are attached to the plate at one end, any vibrations transmitted to the plate will result in loss of energy to the desired (efficient) channel of sound transmission, namely the bridge and the soundboard. Some manufacturers now use cast steel in their plates, for greater strength. The casting of the plate is a delicate art, since the dimensions are crucial and the iron shrinks by about one percent during cooling.
The inclusion in a piano of an extremely large piece of metal is potentially an aesthetic handicap, which piano makers overcome by polishing, painting and decorating the plate. Plates often include the manufacturer's ornamental medallion and can be strikingly attractive. In an effort to make pianos lighter, Alcoa worked with Winter and Company piano manufacturers to make pianos using an aluminum plate during the 1940s. The use of aluminum for piano plates, however, did not become widely accepted and was discontinued.
The numerous grand parts and upright parts of a piano action are generally hardwood (e.g. maple, beech. hornbeam). However, since World War II, plastics have become available. Early plastics were incorporated into some pianos in the late 1940s and 1950s, but proved disastrous because they crystallized and lost their strength after only a few decades of use. The Steinway firm once incorporated Teflon, a synthetic material developed by DuPont, for some grand action parts in place of cloth, but ultimately abandoned the experiment due to an inherent "clicking" which invariably developed over time. (Also Teflon is "humidity stable" whereas the wood adjacent to the Teflon will swell and shrink with humidity changes, causing problems.) More recently, the Kawai firm has built pianos with action parts made of more modern and effective plastics such as carbon fiber; these parts have held up better and have generally received the respect of piano technicians .
Ivorite and ebony keys on a modern Steinway & Sons concert grand piano.
The part of the piano where materials probably matter more than anywhere else is the soundboard. In quality pianos, this is made of solid spruce (that is, spruce boards glued together at their edges). Spruce is chosen for its high ratio of strength to weight. The best piano makers use close-grained, quarter-sawn, defect-free spruce, and make sure that it has been carefully dried over a long period of time before making it into soundboards. In cheap pianos, the soundboard is often made of plywood.
Piano keys are generally made of spruce or basswood, for lightness. Spruce is normally used in high-quality pianos. Traditionally, the black keys were made from ebony and the white keys were covered with strips of ivory, but since ivory-yielding species are now endangered and protected by treaty, plastics are now almost exclusively used. Also, ivory tends to chip more easily than plastic. Legal ivory can still be obtained in limited quantities. At one time, the Yamaha firm innovated a plastic called "Ivorine" or "Ivorite", since imitated by other makers, that mimics the look and feel of ivory.
A piano tuner
Pianos need regular tuning to keep them up to pitch, which is usually the internationally recognized standard concert pitch of A4 = 440 Hz. The hammers of pianos are voiced to compensate for gradual hardening, and other parts also need periodic regulation. Aged and worn pianos can be rebuilt or reconditioned. Often, by replacing a great number of their parts, they can be made to perform as well as new pianos. Older pianos are often more settled and produce a warmer tone.
Piano moving should be done by trained piano movers using adequate manpower and the correct equipment for any particular piano's size and weight. Pianos are heavy yet delicate instruments. Over the years, professional piano movers have developed special techniques for transporting both grands and uprights which prevent damage to the case and to the piano's mechanics.
The piano at the social center in the 19th century (Moritz von Schwind, 1868). The man at the piano is Franz Schubert.
The piano is a crucial instrument in Western classical music, jazz, film, television, and most other complex western musical genres. Since a large number of composers are proficient pianists â and because the piano keyboard offers an easy means of complex melodic and harmonic interplay â the piano is often used as a tool for composition.
Pianos were, and still are, popular instruments for private household ownership. Hence, pianos have gained a place in the popular consciousness, and are sometimes referred to by nicknames including: "the ivories", "the joanna", "the eighty-eight", and "the black(s) and white(s)", "the little joe(s)". Playing the piano is sometimes referred to as "tickling the ivories".
;General
* Innovations in the piano
* Jazz piano
* Piano acoustics
* Piano key frequencies (in equal temperament)
* Piano trio
* String piano
;Related lists
* List of films about pianists
* Lists of solo piano pieces
* List of piano makers
* List of piano brand names
* List of classical pianists (recorded)
;Related instruments
* Hammered dulcimer
* Harp
* Clavichord
* Harpsichord
* Organ and Pipe organ
* Electric piano
* Electronic piano
* The authoritative New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (available online by subscription), contains a wealth of information. Main article: "Pianoforte".
* The Encyclopædia Britannica (available online by subscription) also includes much information on the piano. In the 1988 edition, the primary article can be found in "Musical Instruments".
* The Piano Book by Larry Fine (4th ed. Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts: Brookside Press, 2001; ISBN 1-929145-01-2) gives the basics of how pianos work, and a thorough evaluative survey of current pianos and their manufacturers. It also includes advice on buying and owning pianos.
*Giraffes, black dragons, and other pianos: a technological history from Cristofori to the modern concert grand by Edwin M. Good (1982, second ed., 2001, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press) is a standard reference on the history of the piano.
*The Early Pianoforte by Stewart Pollens (1995, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) is an authoritative work covering the ancestry of the piano, its invention by Cristofori, and the early stages of its subsequent evolution.
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;Information
* Yamaha Musician - Yamaha piano reviews and enthusiast site
* Grand Piano information and images
* The Piano Page Lots of information from the Piano Technicians Guild
* WikiRecording's Guide to Recording Pianos
;History
* History of the Piano Forte, Association of Blind Piano Tuners, UK
* The Frederick Historical Piano Collection
;Piano Technique
* Principles of Piano Technique
;Sheet music for Piano
* All Piano Scores Free printable classical sheet music for piano + audio
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Piano | Do older pianos have more keys than modern pianos? | Many older pianos only have 85 keys. | data/set2/a1 | Piano
Baby Grand Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard that produces sound by striking steel strings with felt covered hammers. The hammers immediately rebound, allowing the strings to continue vibrating at their resonant frequency. " Hammer Time" by John Kiehl, Wolfram Demonstrations Project. These vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a soundboard that couples the acoustic energy to the air so that it can be heard as sound.
The piano is widely used in Western music for solo performance, ensemble use, chamber music, and accompaniment. It is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal. Although not portable and often expensive, the piano's versatility and ubiquity have made it one of the most familiar musical instruments. It is sometimes classified as both a percussion and a stringed instrument. According to the Hornbostel-Sachs method of music classification, it is grouped with Chordophones.
The word piano is a shortened form of the word pianoforte, which is seldom used except in formal language and derived from the original Italian name for the instrument, clavicembalo [or gravicembalo] col piano e forte (literally harpsichord with soft and loud). This refers to the instrument's responsiveness to keyboard touch, which allows the pianist to produce notes at different dynamic levels by controlling the speed with which the hammers hit the strings.
Early piano replica by the modern builder Paul McNulty, after Walter & Sohn, 1805
The piano was originally founded on earlier technological innovations. The first string instruments with struck strings were the hammered dulcimers originating from the Persian traditional musical instrument santur. David R. Peterson (1994), "Acoustics of the hammered dulcimer, its history, and recent developments", Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 95 (5), p. 3002. During the Middle Ages, there were several attempts at creating stringed keyboard instruments with struck strings, Pollens, 1995. chp. 1 the earliest being the hurdy gurdy which has uncertain origins. By the 17th century, 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.
Grand piano by Louis Bas of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, France, 1781. Earliest French grand piano known to survive; includes an inverted wrestplank and action derived from the work of Bartolomeo Cristofiori (ca. 1700) with ornately decorated soundboard.
The invention of the modern piano is credited to Bartolomeo Cristofori of Padua, Italy, who was employed by Prince Ferdinand de Medici as the Keeper of the Instruments. He was an expert harpsichord maker and was well acquainted with the previous body of knowledge on stringed keyboard instruments. It is not known exactly when Cristofori first built a piano. An inventory made by his employers, the Medici family, indicates the existence of a piano by the year 1700; another document of doubtful authenticity indicates a date of 1698. The three Cristofori pianos that survive today date from the 1720s.
Cristofori's great success was in solving, without any prior example, the fundamental mechanical problem of piano design: the hammer must strike the string, but not remain in contact with it (as a tangent remains in contact with a clavichord string) because this would damp the sound. Moreover, the hammer must return to its rest position without bouncing violently, and it must be possible to repeat a note rapidly. Cristofori's piano action served as a model for the many different approaches to piano actions that followed. While Cristofori's early instruments were made with thin strings and were much quieter than the modern piano, compared to the clavichord (the only previous keyboard instrument capable of minutely controlled dynamic nuance through the keyboard) they were considerably louder and had more sustaining power.
Cristofori's new instrument remained relatively unknown until an Italian writer, Scipione Maffei, wrote an enthusiastic article about it (1711), including a diagram of the mechanism. This article was widely distributed, and most of the next generation of piano builders started their work because of reading it. One of these builders was Gottfried Silbermann, better known as an organ builder. Silbermann's pianos were virtually direct copies of Cristofori's, with one important addition: Silbermann invented the forerunner of the modern damper pedal, which lifts all the dampers from the strings at once.
Silbermann showed Johann Sebastian Bach one of his early instruments in the 1730s, but Bach did not like it at that time, claiming that the higher notes were too soft to allow a full dynamic range. Although this earned him some animosity from Silbermann, the criticism was apparently heeded. Bach did approve of a later instrument he saw in 1747, and even served as an agent in selling Silbermann's pianos.
Piano making flourished during the late 18th century in the Viennese school, which included Johann Andreas Stein (who worked in Augsburg, Germany) and the Viennese makers Nannette Streicher (daughter of Johann Andreas Stein) and Anton Walter. Viennese-style pianos were built with wood frames, two strings per note, and had leather-covered hammers. Some of these Viennese pianos had the opposite coloring of modern-day pianos; the natural keys were black and the accidental keys white. It was for such instruments that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed his concertos and sonatas, and replicas of them are built today for use in authentic-instrument performance of his music. The pianos of Mozart's day had a softer, clearer tone than today's pianos or English pianos, with less sustaining power. The term fortepiano is nowadays often used to distinguish the 18th-century instrument from later pianos.
In the period lasting from about 1790 to 1860, the Mozart-era piano underwent tremendous changes that led to the modern form of the instrument. This revolution was in response to a consistent preference by composers and pianists for a more powerful, sustained piano sound, and made possible by the ongoing Industrial Revolution with technological resources such as high-quality steel, called piano wire, for strings, and precision casting for the production of iron frames. Over time, the tonal range of the piano was also increased from the five octaves of Mozart's day to the 7â
or more octaves found on modern pianos.
Broadwood square action
Early technological progress owed much to the English firm of Broadwood, who already had a reputation for the splendour and powerful tone of its harpsichords. Broadwood constructed instruments that were progressively larger, louder, and more robustly constructed. They sent pianos to both Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven, and were the first firm to build pianos with a range of more than five octaves: five octaves and a fifth during the 1790s, six octaves by 1810 (Beethoven used the extra notes in his later works), and seven octaves by 1820. The Viennese makers similarly followed these trends, however the two schools used different piano actions: Broadwoods were more robust, Viennese instruments were more sensitive.
Erard square action
By the 1820s, the center of innovation had shifted to Paris, where the Pleyel firm manufactured pianos used by Frédéric Chopin and the Ãrard firm manufactured those used by Franz Liszt. In 1821, Sébastien Ãrard invented the double escapement action, which permitted a note to be repeated even if the key had not yet risen to its maximum vertical position. This facilitated rapid playing of repeated notes - and this musical device was pioneered by Liszt. When the invention became public, as revised by Henri Herz, the double escapement action gradually became standard in grand pianos, and is still incorporated into all grand pianos currently produced.
One of the major technical innovations that helped to create the sound of the modern piano was the use of a strong iron frame. Also called the "plate", the iron frame sits atop the soundboard, and serves as the primary bulwark against the force of string tension. The increased structural integrity of the iron frame allowed the use of thicker, tenser, and more numerous strings. In a modern grand the total string tension can exceed 20 tons. The single piece cast iron frame was patented in 1825 in Boston by Alpheus Babcock, combining the metal hitch pin plate (1821, claimed by Broadwood on behalf of Samuel Hervé) and resisting bars (Thom and Allen, 1820, but also claimed by Broadwood and Ãrard). Babcock later worked for the Chickering & Mackays firm who patented the first full iron frame for grand pianos in 1843. Composite forged metal frames were preferred by many European makers until the American system was fully adopted by the early 20th century.
Other innovations for the mechanism included the use of felt hammer coverings instead of layered leather hammers. Felt hammers, which were first introduced by Henri Pape in 1826, were a more consistent material, permitting wider dynamic ranges as hammer weights and string tension increased. The sostenuto pedal (see below), invented in 1844 by Jean Louis Boisselot and improved by the Steinway firm in 1874, allowed a wider range of effects.
Other important technical innovations of this era included changes to the way the piano was strung, such as the use of a "choir" of three strings rather than two for all but the lower notes, and the use of different stringing methods. With the over strung scale, also called "cross-stringing", the strings are placed in a vertically overlapping slanted arrangement, with two heights of bridges on the soundboard instead of just one. This permits larger, but not necessarily longer, strings to fit within the case of the piano. Over stringing was invented by Jean-Henri Pape during the 1820s, and first patented for use in grand pianos in the United States by Henry Steinway Jr. in 1859.
Duplex scaling: Treble strings of a 182 cm. grand piano. From lower left to upper right: dampers, main sounding length of strings, treble bridge, duplex string length, duplex bridge (long bar perpendicular to strings), hitchpins. With duplexes or aliquot scales, which was patented in 1872 by Theodore Steinway, the different components of string vibrations are controlled by tuning their secondary parts in octave relationships with the sounding lengths. Similar systems developed by Blüthner (1872), as well as Taskin (1788), and Collard (1821) used more distinctly ringing undamped vibrations to modify tone.
Some early pianos had shapes and designs that are no longer in use. The square piano had horizontal strings arranged diagonally across the rectangular case above the hammers and with the keyboard set in the long side. This design is attributed to Gottfried Silbermann or Christian Ernst Friderici on the continent, and Johannes Zumpe or Harman Vietor in England and it was improved by changes first introduced by Guillaume-Lebrecht Petzold in France and Alpheus Babcock in the United States. Square pianos were built in great numbers through the 1840s in Europe and the 1890s in America, and saw the most visible changes of any type of piano: the celebrated iron framed over strung squares manufactured by Steinway & Sons were more than two and a half times the size of Zumpe's wood framed instruments from a century before. Their overwhelming popularity was due to inexpensive construction and price, although their performance and tone were often limited by simple actions and closely spaced strings.
The mechanism in upright pianos is perpendicular to the keys.
The tall, vertically strung upright grand was arranged like a grand set on end, with the soundboard and bridges above the keys, and tuning pins below them. The term was later revived by many manufacturers for advertising purposes. Giraffe, pyramid and lyre pianos were arranged in a somewhat similar fashion in evocatively shaped cases.
The very tall cabinet piano was introduced about 1805 and was built through the 1840s. It had strings arranged vertically on a continuous frame with bridges extended nearly to the floor, behind the keyboard and very large sticker action. The short cottage upright or pianino with vertical stringing, made popular by Robert Wornum around 1815, was built into the 20th century. They are informally called birdcage pianos because of their prominent damper mechanism. Pianinos were distinguished from the oblique, or diagonally strung upright made popular in France by Roller & Blanchet during the late 1820s. The tiny spinet upright was manufactured from the mid-1930s until recent times. The low position of the hammers required the use of a "drop action" to preserve a reasonable keyboard height.
Modern upright and grand pianos attained their present forms by the end of the 19th century. Improvements have been made in manufacturing processes, and many individual details of the instrument continue to receive attention.
Much of the most widely admired piano repertoire, for example, that of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, was composed for a type of instrument that is rather different from the modern instruments on which this music is normally performed today. Even the music of the Romantics, including Liszt, Chopin, Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn and Johannes Brahms, was written for pianos substantially different from ours.
A schematic depiction of the construction of a pianoforte.
Modern pianos come in two basic configurations (with subcategories): the grand piano and the upright piano.
Grand piano
In grand pianos, the frame and strings are horizontal, with the strings extending away from the keyboard. There are several sizes of grand piano. A rough generalization distinguishes the "concert grand" (between about and long) from the "parlor grand" or "boudoir grand" (about to ) and the smaller "baby grand".
All else being equal, longer pianos with longer strings have better sound and lower inharmonicity of the strings. Inharmonicity is the degree to which the frequencies of overtones (known as partials, partial tones, or harmonics) depart from whole multiples of the fundamental frequency. Pianos with shorter, thicker, and stiffer strings (e.g., baby grands) have more inharmonicity. The longer strings on a concert grand can vibrate more freely than the shorter, thicker strings on a baby grand, which means that a concert grand's strings will have truer overtones. This is partly because the strings will be tuned closer to equal temperament in relation to the standard pitch with less "stretching" in the piano tuning (See: Piano tuning). Full-size grands are usually used for public concerts, whereas smaller grands, introduced by Sohmer & Co. in 1884, are often chosen for domestic use where space and cost are considerations.
Upright piano
Upright pianos, also called vertical pianos, are more compact because the frame and strings are vertical. It is considered harder to produce a sensitive piano action when the hammers move horizontally, as the vertical hammer return is dependent on springs which are prone to wear and tear. However, a well-regulated vertical piano will probably play more smoothly than a poorly regulated grand piano, and the very best upright pianos approach the level of some grand pianos of the same size in tone quality and responsiveness.
One noticeable advantage that the grand piano action has over the vertical action is that all grand pianos have a special repetition lever in the playing action that is absent in all verticals. This repetition lever, a separate one for every key, catches the hammer close to the strings as long as the keys are played repeatedly and fairly quickly. In this position, with the hammer resting on the lever, a pianist can play repeated notes, staccato, and trills with much more speed and control than is possible on a vertical piano.
Upright pianos with unusually tall frames and long strings are sometimes called "upright grand" pianos.
Some authors classify modern pianos according to their height and, to modifications of the action that are necessary to accomodate the height.
* Studio pianos are around 42 to 45 inches tall. This is the shortest cabinet that can accomodate a 'full-sized' action located above the keyboard.
* Console pianos have a compact action (shorter hammers), and are a few inches shorter than studio models.
* The top of a Spinet model barely rises above the keyboard. The action is located below, operated by vertical wires that are attached to the backs of the keys.
* Anything taller than a studio piano is called an upright.
Player piano
Toy pianos began to be manufactured in the 19th century. In 1863, Henri Fourneaux invented the player piano, which "plays itself" from a piano roll without the need for a pianist. The player piano is a piano that records a performance using rolls of paper with perforations, and then replays the performance using pneumatic devices. A modern equivalent for the player piano is the Yamaha Disklavier system, which uses solenoids and midi instead of pneumatics and rolls. Silent pianos, which allow a regular piano to be used converted to a digital instrument, are a recent innovation and are becoming more popular.
Irving Berlin played a special piano called the transposing piano, which was invented in 1801 by Edward Ryley. It had a lever under the keyboard used to alter the music to any key. One of Berlin's pianos is in the Smithsonian Museum. For much of his career, Berlin only knew how to play the black keys. But with his 'trick piano' he was no longer limited to the key of F-sharp.
A relatively recent development is the prepared piano, which is used in contemporary art music. A prepared piano is a standard grand piano which has had objects placed inside it before a performance in order to alter its sound, or which has had its mechanism changed in some way. The scores for music for prepared piano often instruct the pianist to insert pieces of rubber or small pieces of metal (screws or washers) in between the strings. These added items either mute the strings or create unusual vibrating sounds.
Since the 1980s, digital pianos have been available, which use digital sampling technology to reproduce the sound of each piano note. The best digital pianos are sophisticated, with features including working pedals, weighted keys, multiple voices, and MIDI interfaces. However, with such technology, it is difficult to duplicate one particular aspect of acoustic pianos, namely that when the damper pedal (see below) is depressed, the strings not struck vibrate sympathetically when other strings are struck, as well as the unique instrument-specific mathematical non-linearity of partials on any given unison. Since this sympathetic vibration is considered central to piano tone, many digital pianos do not sound the same as the best acoustic pianos. Progress is being made in this area by including physical models of sympathetic vibration in the synthesis software. Some higher end digital pianos, such as the Yamaha Clavinova series, or the KAWAI MP8 series, produced in the last few years incorporate string resonance technology to overcome this limitation.
With the advent of powerful desktop computers, highly realistic sampled digital grand pianos have become available as affordable software modules. Some use multi-gigabyte piano sample sets with as many as 90 recordings, each lasting many seconds, for each of the 88 keys under different conditions, augmented by additional samples to emulate sympathetic resonance, key release, the drop of the dampers, and simulations of piano techniques like re-pedaling.
Keyboard
Almost every modern piano has 36 black keys and 52 white keys for a total of 88 keys (seven octaves plus a minor third, from A0 to C8). Many older pianos only have 85 keys (seven octaves from A0 to A7), while some manufacturers extend the range further in one or both directions.
Some Bösendorfer pianos extend the normal range downwards to F0, with one other model going as far as a bottom C0, making a full eight octave range. These extra keys are sometimes hidden under a small hinged lid that can be flipped down to cover the keys in order to avoid visual disorientation in a pianist unfamiliar with the extended keyboard. On others, the colours of the extra white keys are reversed (black instead of white).
The extra keys are added primarily for increased resonance from the associated strings; that is, they vibrate sympathetically with other strings whenever the damper pedal is depressed and thus give a fuller tone. Only a very small number of works composed for piano actually use these notes. More recently, the Stuart and Sons company has also manufactured extended-range pianos. On their instruments, the range is extended both down the bass to F0 and up the treble to F8 for a full eight octaves. The extra keys are the same as the other keys in appearance.
Small studio upright acoustical pianos with only 65 keys have been manufactured for use by roving pianists. Known as "gig" pianos and still containing a cast iron harp, these are comparatively lightweight and can be easily transported to and from engagements by only two men. As their harp is longer than that of a spinet or console piano, they have a stronger bass sound that to some pianists is well worth the trade-off in range that a reduced key-set offers.
Piano pedals from left to right: una corda, sostenuto, and damper.
Pianos have had pedals, or some close equivalent, since the earliest days. (In the 18th century, some pianos used levers pressed upward by the player's knee instead of pedals.) Most grand pianos have three pedals: soft pedal (una corda), sostenuto, and sustain pedal (from left to right, respectively). Most modern upright pianos have three pedals: soft pedal, practice pedal and sustain pedal, though older or cheaper models may lack the practice pedal.
The sustain pedal (or, damper pedal) is often simply called "the pedal", since it is the most frequently used. It is placed as the rightmost pedal in the group. It lifts the dampers from all keys, sustaining all played notes, and altering the overall tone.
The soft pedal or una corda pedal is placed leftmost in the row of pedals. In grand pianos, it shifts the entire action, including the keyboard, to the right, so that the hammers hit only one of the three strings for each note (hence the name una corda, or 'one string'). The effect is to soften the note as well as to change the tone. In uprights, this action is not possible, and so the pedal moves the hammers closer to the strings, allowing the hammers to hit the strings with less kinetic energy to produce a softer sound.
On grand pianos, the middle pedal is a sostenuto pedal. This pedal keeps raised any damper that was already raised at the moment the pedal is depressed. This makes it possible to sustain some notes (by depressing the sostenuto pedal before notes to be sustained are released) while the player's hands are free to play other notes. This can be useful for musical passages with pedal points and other otherwise tricky or impossible situations.
On many upright pianos, there is a middle pedal called the 'practice' or celeste pedal. This drops a piece of felt between the hammers and strings, greatly muting the sounds.
There are also non-standard variants. On vertical pianos, the middle pedal can be a bass sustain pedal: that is, when it is depressed, the dampers lift off the strings only in the bass section. This pedal would be used only when a pianist needs to sustain a single bass note or chord over many measures, while playing the melody in the treble section. On the largest Fazioli piano, there is a fourth pedal to the left of the principal three. This fourth pedal works in the same way as the soft pedal of an upright piano, moving the hammers closer to the strings.
An upright pedal piano
The rare transposing piano, of which Irving Berlin possessed an example, had a middle pedal that functioned as a clutch which disengages the keyboard from the mechanism, enabling the keyboard to be moved to the left or right with a lever. The entire action of the piano is thus shifted to allow the pianist to play music written in one key so that it sounds in a different key. The pedalier piano, or pedal piano, is a rare type of piano that includes a pedalboard, enabling bass register notes to be played with the feet, as is standard on the organ. There are two types of pedal piano: the pedal board may be an integral part of the instrument, using the same strings and mechanism as the manual keyboard, or, less frequently, it may consist of two independent pianos (each with its separate mechanics and strings) which are placed one above the other, a regular piano played by the hands and a bass-register piano played by the feet.
Many parts of a piano are made of materials selected for sturdiness. In quality pianos, the outer rim of the piano is made of a hardwood, normally maple or beech. According to Harold A. Conklin, the purpose of a sturdy rim is so that "the vibrational energy will stay as much as possible in the soundboard instead of dissipating uselessly in the case parts, which are inefficient radiators of sound."
View from below of a 182-cm grand piano. In order of distance from viewer: softwood braces, tapered soundboard ribs, soundboard. The metal rod at lower right is a humidity control device.
The rim is normally made by laminating flexible strips of hardwood to the desired shape, a system that was developed by Theodore Steinway in 1880. The thick wooden braces at the bottom (grands) or back (uprights) of the piano are not as acoustically important as the rim, and are often made of a softwood, even in top-quality pianos, in order to save weight. The requirement of structural strength, fulfilled with stout hardwood and thick metal, makes a piano heavy; even a small upright can weigh 136 kg (300 lb), and the Steinway concert grand (Model D) weighs 480 kg (990 lb). The largest piano built, the Fazioli F308, weighs 691 kg (1520 lb).
The pinblock, which holds the tuning pins in place, is another area of the piano where toughness is important. It is made of hardwood, (often maple) and generally is laminated (built of multiple layers) for additional strength and gripping power. Piano strings (also called piano wire), which must endure years of extreme tension and hard blows, are made of high quality steel. They are manufactured to vary as little as possible in diameter, since all deviations from uniformity introduce tonal distortion. The bass strings of a piano are made of a steel core wrapped with copper wire, to increase their mass whilst retaining flexibility.
The plate, or metal frame, of a piano is usually made of cast iron. It is advantageous for the plate to be quite massive. Since the strings are attached to the plate at one end, any vibrations transmitted to the plate will result in loss of energy to the desired (efficient) channel of sound transmission, namely the bridge and the soundboard. Some manufacturers now use cast steel in their plates, for greater strength. The casting of the plate is a delicate art, since the dimensions are crucial and the iron shrinks by about one percent during cooling.
The inclusion in a piano of an extremely large piece of metal is potentially an aesthetic handicap, which piano makers overcome by polishing, painting and decorating the plate. Plates often include the manufacturer's ornamental medallion and can be strikingly attractive. In an effort to make pianos lighter, Alcoa worked with Winter and Company piano manufacturers to make pianos using an aluminum plate during the 1940s. The use of aluminum for piano plates, however, did not become widely accepted and was discontinued.
The numerous grand parts and upright parts of a piano action are generally hardwood (e.g. maple, beech. hornbeam). However, since World War II, plastics have become available. Early plastics were incorporated into some pianos in the late 1940s and 1950s, but proved disastrous because they crystallized and lost their strength after only a few decades of use. The Steinway firm once incorporated Teflon, a synthetic material developed by DuPont, for some grand action parts in place of cloth, but ultimately abandoned the experiment due to an inherent "clicking" which invariably developed over time. (Also Teflon is "humidity stable" whereas the wood adjacent to the Teflon will swell and shrink with humidity changes, causing problems.) More recently, the Kawai firm has built pianos with action parts made of more modern and effective plastics such as carbon fiber; these parts have held up better and have generally received the respect of piano technicians .
Ivorite and ebony keys on a modern Steinway & Sons concert grand piano.
The part of the piano where materials probably matter more than anywhere else is the soundboard. In quality pianos, this is made of solid spruce (that is, spruce boards glued together at their edges). Spruce is chosen for its high ratio of strength to weight. The best piano makers use close-grained, quarter-sawn, defect-free spruce, and make sure that it has been carefully dried over a long period of time before making it into soundboards. In cheap pianos, the soundboard is often made of plywood.
Piano keys are generally made of spruce or basswood, for lightness. Spruce is normally used in high-quality pianos. Traditionally, the black keys were made from ebony and the white keys were covered with strips of ivory, but since ivory-yielding species are now endangered and protected by treaty, plastics are now almost exclusively used. Also, ivory tends to chip more easily than plastic. Legal ivory can still be obtained in limited quantities. At one time, the Yamaha firm innovated a plastic called "Ivorine" or "Ivorite", since imitated by other makers, that mimics the look and feel of ivory.
A piano tuner
Pianos need regular tuning to keep them up to pitch, which is usually the internationally recognized standard concert pitch of A4 = 440 Hz. The hammers of pianos are voiced to compensate for gradual hardening, and other parts also need periodic regulation. Aged and worn pianos can be rebuilt or reconditioned. Often, by replacing a great number of their parts, they can be made to perform as well as new pianos. Older pianos are often more settled and produce a warmer tone.
Piano moving should be done by trained piano movers using adequate manpower and the correct equipment for any particular piano's size and weight. Pianos are heavy yet delicate instruments. Over the years, professional piano movers have developed special techniques for transporting both grands and uprights which prevent damage to the case and to the piano's mechanics.
The piano at the social center in the 19th century (Moritz von Schwind, 1868). The man at the piano is Franz Schubert.
The piano is a crucial instrument in Western classical music, jazz, film, television, and most other complex western musical genres. Since a large number of composers are proficient pianists â and because the piano keyboard offers an easy means of complex melodic and harmonic interplay â the piano is often used as a tool for composition.
Pianos were, and still are, popular instruments for private household ownership. Hence, pianos have gained a place in the popular consciousness, and are sometimes referred to by nicknames including: "the ivories", "the joanna", "the eighty-eight", and "the black(s) and white(s)", "the little joe(s)". Playing the piano is sometimes referred to as "tickling the ivories".
;General
* Innovations in the piano
* Jazz piano
* Piano acoustics
* Piano key frequencies (in equal temperament)
* Piano trio
* String piano
;Related lists
* List of films about pianists
* Lists of solo piano pieces
* List of piano makers
* List of piano brand names
* List of classical pianists (recorded)
;Related instruments
* Hammered dulcimer
* Harp
* Clavichord
* Harpsichord
* Organ and Pipe organ
* Electric piano
* Electronic piano
* The authoritative New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (available online by subscription), contains a wealth of information. Main article: "Pianoforte".
* The Encyclopædia Britannica (available online by subscription) also includes much information on the piano. In the 1988 edition, the primary article can be found in "Musical Instruments".
* The Piano Book by Larry Fine (4th ed. Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts: Brookside Press, 2001; ISBN 1-929145-01-2) gives the basics of how pianos work, and a thorough evaluative survey of current pianos and their manufacturers. It also includes advice on buying and owning pianos.
*Giraffes, black dragons, and other pianos: a technological history from Cristofori to the modern concert grand by Edwin M. Good (1982, second ed., 2001, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press) is a standard reference on the history of the piano.
*The Early Pianoforte by Stewart Pollens (1995, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) is an authoritative work covering the ancestry of the piano, its invention by Cristofori, and the early stages of its subsequent evolution.
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;Information
* Yamaha Musician - Yamaha piano reviews and enthusiast site
* Grand Piano information and images
* The Piano Page Lots of information from the Piano Technicians Guild
* WikiRecording's Guide to Recording Pianos
;History
* History of the Piano Forte, Association of Blind Piano Tuners, UK
* The Frederick Historical Piano Collection
;Piano Technique
* Principles of Piano Technique
;Sheet music for Piano
* All Piano Scores Free printable classical sheet music for piano + audio
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Piano | What are the names of a piano's pedals? | Piano pedals from left to right: una corda, sostenuto, and damper. | data/set2/a1 | Piano
Baby Grand Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard that produces sound by striking steel strings with felt covered hammers. The hammers immediately rebound, allowing the strings to continue vibrating at their resonant frequency. " Hammer Time" by John Kiehl, Wolfram Demonstrations Project. These vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a soundboard that couples the acoustic energy to the air so that it can be heard as sound.
The piano is widely used in Western music for solo performance, ensemble use, chamber music, and accompaniment. It is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal. Although not portable and often expensive, the piano's versatility and ubiquity have made it one of the most familiar musical instruments. It is sometimes classified as both a percussion and a stringed instrument. According to the Hornbostel-Sachs method of music classification, it is grouped with Chordophones.
The word piano is a shortened form of the word pianoforte, which is seldom used except in formal language and derived from the original Italian name for the instrument, clavicembalo [or gravicembalo] col piano e forte (literally harpsichord with soft and loud). This refers to the instrument's responsiveness to keyboard touch, which allows the pianist to produce notes at different dynamic levels by controlling the speed with which the hammers hit the strings.
Early piano replica by the modern builder Paul McNulty, after Walter & Sohn, 1805
The piano was originally founded on earlier technological innovations. The first string instruments with struck strings were the hammered dulcimers originating from the Persian traditional musical instrument santur. David R. Peterson (1994), "Acoustics of the hammered dulcimer, its history, and recent developments", Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 95 (5), p. 3002. During the Middle Ages, there were several attempts at creating stringed keyboard instruments with struck strings, Pollens, 1995. chp. 1 the earliest being the hurdy gurdy which has uncertain origins. By the 17th century, 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.
Grand piano by Louis Bas of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, France, 1781. Earliest French grand piano known to survive; includes an inverted wrestplank and action derived from the work of Bartolomeo Cristofiori (ca. 1700) with ornately decorated soundboard.
The invention of the modern piano is credited to Bartolomeo Cristofori of Padua, Italy, who was employed by Prince Ferdinand de Medici as the Keeper of the Instruments. He was an expert harpsichord maker and was well acquainted with the previous body of knowledge on stringed keyboard instruments. It is not known exactly when Cristofori first built a piano. An inventory made by his employers, the Medici family, indicates the existence of a piano by the year 1700; another document of doubtful authenticity indicates a date of 1698. The three Cristofori pianos that survive today date from the 1720s.
Cristofori's great success was in solving, without any prior example, the fundamental mechanical problem of piano design: the hammer must strike the string, but not remain in contact with it (as a tangent remains in contact with a clavichord string) because this would damp the sound. Moreover, the hammer must return to its rest position without bouncing violently, and it must be possible to repeat a note rapidly. Cristofori's piano action served as a model for the many different approaches to piano actions that followed. While Cristofori's early instruments were made with thin strings and were much quieter than the modern piano, compared to the clavichord (the only previous keyboard instrument capable of minutely controlled dynamic nuance through the keyboard) they were considerably louder and had more sustaining power.
Cristofori's new instrument remained relatively unknown until an Italian writer, Scipione Maffei, wrote an enthusiastic article about it (1711), including a diagram of the mechanism. This article was widely distributed, and most of the next generation of piano builders started their work because of reading it. One of these builders was Gottfried Silbermann, better known as an organ builder. Silbermann's pianos were virtually direct copies of Cristofori's, with one important addition: Silbermann invented the forerunner of the modern damper pedal, which lifts all the dampers from the strings at once.
Silbermann showed Johann Sebastian Bach one of his early instruments in the 1730s, but Bach did not like it at that time, claiming that the higher notes were too soft to allow a full dynamic range. Although this earned him some animosity from Silbermann, the criticism was apparently heeded. Bach did approve of a later instrument he saw in 1747, and even served as an agent in selling Silbermann's pianos.
Piano making flourished during the late 18th century in the Viennese school, which included Johann Andreas Stein (who worked in Augsburg, Germany) and the Viennese makers Nannette Streicher (daughter of Johann Andreas Stein) and Anton Walter. Viennese-style pianos were built with wood frames, two strings per note, and had leather-covered hammers. Some of these Viennese pianos had the opposite coloring of modern-day pianos; the natural keys were black and the accidental keys white. It was for such instruments that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed his concertos and sonatas, and replicas of them are built today for use in authentic-instrument performance of his music. The pianos of Mozart's day had a softer, clearer tone than today's pianos or English pianos, with less sustaining power. The term fortepiano is nowadays often used to distinguish the 18th-century instrument from later pianos.
In the period lasting from about 1790 to 1860, the Mozart-era piano underwent tremendous changes that led to the modern form of the instrument. This revolution was in response to a consistent preference by composers and pianists for a more powerful, sustained piano sound, and made possible by the ongoing Industrial Revolution with technological resources such as high-quality steel, called piano wire, for strings, and precision casting for the production of iron frames. Over time, the tonal range of the piano was also increased from the five octaves of Mozart's day to the 7â
or more octaves found on modern pianos.
Broadwood square action
Early technological progress owed much to the English firm of Broadwood, who already had a reputation for the splendour and powerful tone of its harpsichords. Broadwood constructed instruments that were progressively larger, louder, and more robustly constructed. They sent pianos to both Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven, and were the first firm to build pianos with a range of more than five octaves: five octaves and a fifth during the 1790s, six octaves by 1810 (Beethoven used the extra notes in his later works), and seven octaves by 1820. The Viennese makers similarly followed these trends, however the two schools used different piano actions: Broadwoods were more robust, Viennese instruments were more sensitive.
Erard square action
By the 1820s, the center of innovation had shifted to Paris, where the Pleyel firm manufactured pianos used by Frédéric Chopin and the Ãrard firm manufactured those used by Franz Liszt. In 1821, Sébastien Ãrard invented the double escapement action, which permitted a note to be repeated even if the key had not yet risen to its maximum vertical position. This facilitated rapid playing of repeated notes - and this musical device was pioneered by Liszt. When the invention became public, as revised by Henri Herz, the double escapement action gradually became standard in grand pianos, and is still incorporated into all grand pianos currently produced.
One of the major technical innovations that helped to create the sound of the modern piano was the use of a strong iron frame. Also called the "plate", the iron frame sits atop the soundboard, and serves as the primary bulwark against the force of string tension. The increased structural integrity of the iron frame allowed the use of thicker, tenser, and more numerous strings. In a modern grand the total string tension can exceed 20 tons. The single piece cast iron frame was patented in 1825 in Boston by Alpheus Babcock, combining the metal hitch pin plate (1821, claimed by Broadwood on behalf of Samuel Hervé) and resisting bars (Thom and Allen, 1820, but also claimed by Broadwood and Ãrard). Babcock later worked for the Chickering & Mackays firm who patented the first full iron frame for grand pianos in 1843. Composite forged metal frames were preferred by many European makers until the American system was fully adopted by the early 20th century.
Other innovations for the mechanism included the use of felt hammer coverings instead of layered leather hammers. Felt hammers, which were first introduced by Henri Pape in 1826, were a more consistent material, permitting wider dynamic ranges as hammer weights and string tension increased. The sostenuto pedal (see below), invented in 1844 by Jean Louis Boisselot and improved by the Steinway firm in 1874, allowed a wider range of effects.
Other important technical innovations of this era included changes to the way the piano was strung, such as the use of a "choir" of three strings rather than two for all but the lower notes, and the use of different stringing methods. With the over strung scale, also called "cross-stringing", the strings are placed in a vertically overlapping slanted arrangement, with two heights of bridges on the soundboard instead of just one. This permits larger, but not necessarily longer, strings to fit within the case of the piano. Over stringing was invented by Jean-Henri Pape during the 1820s, and first patented for use in grand pianos in the United States by Henry Steinway Jr. in 1859.
Duplex scaling: Treble strings of a 182 cm. grand piano. From lower left to upper right: dampers, main sounding length of strings, treble bridge, duplex string length, duplex bridge (long bar perpendicular to strings), hitchpins. With duplexes or aliquot scales, which was patented in 1872 by Theodore Steinway, the different components of string vibrations are controlled by tuning their secondary parts in octave relationships with the sounding lengths. Similar systems developed by Blüthner (1872), as well as Taskin (1788), and Collard (1821) used more distinctly ringing undamped vibrations to modify tone.
Some early pianos had shapes and designs that are no longer in use. The square piano had horizontal strings arranged diagonally across the rectangular case above the hammers and with the keyboard set in the long side. This design is attributed to Gottfried Silbermann or Christian Ernst Friderici on the continent, and Johannes Zumpe or Harman Vietor in England and it was improved by changes first introduced by Guillaume-Lebrecht Petzold in France and Alpheus Babcock in the United States. Square pianos were built in great numbers through the 1840s in Europe and the 1890s in America, and saw the most visible changes of any type of piano: the celebrated iron framed over strung squares manufactured by Steinway & Sons were more than two and a half times the size of Zumpe's wood framed instruments from a century before. Their overwhelming popularity was due to inexpensive construction and price, although their performance and tone were often limited by simple actions and closely spaced strings.
The mechanism in upright pianos is perpendicular to the keys.
The tall, vertically strung upright grand was arranged like a grand set on end, with the soundboard and bridges above the keys, and tuning pins below them. The term was later revived by many manufacturers for advertising purposes. Giraffe, pyramid and lyre pianos were arranged in a somewhat similar fashion in evocatively shaped cases.
The very tall cabinet piano was introduced about 1805 and was built through the 1840s. It had strings arranged vertically on a continuous frame with bridges extended nearly to the floor, behind the keyboard and very large sticker action. The short cottage upright or pianino with vertical stringing, made popular by Robert Wornum around 1815, was built into the 20th century. They are informally called birdcage pianos because of their prominent damper mechanism. Pianinos were distinguished from the oblique, or diagonally strung upright made popular in France by Roller & Blanchet during the late 1820s. The tiny spinet upright was manufactured from the mid-1930s until recent times. The low position of the hammers required the use of a "drop action" to preserve a reasonable keyboard height.
Modern upright and grand pianos attained their present forms by the end of the 19th century. Improvements have been made in manufacturing processes, and many individual details of the instrument continue to receive attention.
Much of the most widely admired piano repertoire, for example, that of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, was composed for a type of instrument that is rather different from the modern instruments on which this music is normally performed today. Even the music of the Romantics, including Liszt, Chopin, Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn and Johannes Brahms, was written for pianos substantially different from ours.
A schematic depiction of the construction of a pianoforte.
Modern pianos come in two basic configurations (with subcategories): the grand piano and the upright piano.
Grand piano
In grand pianos, the frame and strings are horizontal, with the strings extending away from the keyboard. There are several sizes of grand piano. A rough generalization distinguishes the "concert grand" (between about and long) from the "parlor grand" or "boudoir grand" (about to ) and the smaller "baby grand".
All else being equal, longer pianos with longer strings have better sound and lower inharmonicity of the strings. Inharmonicity is the degree to which the frequencies of overtones (known as partials, partial tones, or harmonics) depart from whole multiples of the fundamental frequency. Pianos with shorter, thicker, and stiffer strings (e.g., baby grands) have more inharmonicity. The longer strings on a concert grand can vibrate more freely than the shorter, thicker strings on a baby grand, which means that a concert grand's strings will have truer overtones. This is partly because the strings will be tuned closer to equal temperament in relation to the standard pitch with less "stretching" in the piano tuning (See: Piano tuning). Full-size grands are usually used for public concerts, whereas smaller grands, introduced by Sohmer & Co. in 1884, are often chosen for domestic use where space and cost are considerations.
Upright piano
Upright pianos, also called vertical pianos, are more compact because the frame and strings are vertical. It is considered harder to produce a sensitive piano action when the hammers move horizontally, as the vertical hammer return is dependent on springs which are prone to wear and tear. However, a well-regulated vertical piano will probably play more smoothly than a poorly regulated grand piano, and the very best upright pianos approach the level of some grand pianos of the same size in tone quality and responsiveness.
One noticeable advantage that the grand piano action has over the vertical action is that all grand pianos have a special repetition lever in the playing action that is absent in all verticals. This repetition lever, a separate one for every key, catches the hammer close to the strings as long as the keys are played repeatedly and fairly quickly. In this position, with the hammer resting on the lever, a pianist can play repeated notes, staccato, and trills with much more speed and control than is possible on a vertical piano.
Upright pianos with unusually tall frames and long strings are sometimes called "upright grand" pianos.
Some authors classify modern pianos according to their height and, to modifications of the action that are necessary to accomodate the height.
* Studio pianos are around 42 to 45 inches tall. This is the shortest cabinet that can accomodate a 'full-sized' action located above the keyboard.
* Console pianos have a compact action (shorter hammers), and are a few inches shorter than studio models.
* The top of a Spinet model barely rises above the keyboard. The action is located below, operated by vertical wires that are attached to the backs of the keys.
* Anything taller than a studio piano is called an upright.
Player piano
Toy pianos began to be manufactured in the 19th century. In 1863, Henri Fourneaux invented the player piano, which "plays itself" from a piano roll without the need for a pianist. The player piano is a piano that records a performance using rolls of paper with perforations, and then replays the performance using pneumatic devices. A modern equivalent for the player piano is the Yamaha Disklavier system, which uses solenoids and midi instead of pneumatics and rolls. Silent pianos, which allow a regular piano to be used converted to a digital instrument, are a recent innovation and are becoming more popular.
Irving Berlin played a special piano called the transposing piano, which was invented in 1801 by Edward Ryley. It had a lever under the keyboard used to alter the music to any key. One of Berlin's pianos is in the Smithsonian Museum. For much of his career, Berlin only knew how to play the black keys. But with his 'trick piano' he was no longer limited to the key of F-sharp.
A relatively recent development is the prepared piano, which is used in contemporary art music. A prepared piano is a standard grand piano which has had objects placed inside it before a performance in order to alter its sound, or which has had its mechanism changed in some way. The scores for music for prepared piano often instruct the pianist to insert pieces of rubber or small pieces of metal (screws or washers) in between the strings. These added items either mute the strings or create unusual vibrating sounds.
Since the 1980s, digital pianos have been available, which use digital sampling technology to reproduce the sound of each piano note. The best digital pianos are sophisticated, with features including working pedals, weighted keys, multiple voices, and MIDI interfaces. However, with such technology, it is difficult to duplicate one particular aspect of acoustic pianos, namely that when the damper pedal (see below) is depressed, the strings not struck vibrate sympathetically when other strings are struck, as well as the unique instrument-specific mathematical non-linearity of partials on any given unison. Since this sympathetic vibration is considered central to piano tone, many digital pianos do not sound the same as the best acoustic pianos. Progress is being made in this area by including physical models of sympathetic vibration in the synthesis software. Some higher end digital pianos, such as the Yamaha Clavinova series, or the KAWAI MP8 series, produced in the last few years incorporate string resonance technology to overcome this limitation.
With the advent of powerful desktop computers, highly realistic sampled digital grand pianos have become available as affordable software modules. Some use multi-gigabyte piano sample sets with as many as 90 recordings, each lasting many seconds, for each of the 88 keys under different conditions, augmented by additional samples to emulate sympathetic resonance, key release, the drop of the dampers, and simulations of piano techniques like re-pedaling.
Keyboard
Almost every modern piano has 36 black keys and 52 white keys for a total of 88 keys (seven octaves plus a minor third, from A0 to C8). Many older pianos only have 85 keys (seven octaves from A0 to A7), while some manufacturers extend the range further in one or both directions.
Some Bösendorfer pianos extend the normal range downwards to F0, with one other model going as far as a bottom C0, making a full eight octave range. These extra keys are sometimes hidden under a small hinged lid that can be flipped down to cover the keys in order to avoid visual disorientation in a pianist unfamiliar with the extended keyboard. On others, the colours of the extra white keys are reversed (black instead of white).
The extra keys are added primarily for increased resonance from the associated strings; that is, they vibrate sympathetically with other strings whenever the damper pedal is depressed and thus give a fuller tone. Only a very small number of works composed for piano actually use these notes. More recently, the Stuart and Sons company has also manufactured extended-range pianos. On their instruments, the range is extended both down the bass to F0 and up the treble to F8 for a full eight octaves. The extra keys are the same as the other keys in appearance.
Small studio upright acoustical pianos with only 65 keys have been manufactured for use by roving pianists. Known as "gig" pianos and still containing a cast iron harp, these are comparatively lightweight and can be easily transported to and from engagements by only two men. As their harp is longer than that of a spinet or console piano, they have a stronger bass sound that to some pianists is well worth the trade-off in range that a reduced key-set offers.
Piano pedals from left to right: una corda, sostenuto, and damper.
Pianos have had pedals, or some close equivalent, since the earliest days. (In the 18th century, some pianos used levers pressed upward by the player's knee instead of pedals.) Most grand pianos have three pedals: soft pedal (una corda), sostenuto, and sustain pedal (from left to right, respectively). Most modern upright pianos have three pedals: soft pedal, practice pedal and sustain pedal, though older or cheaper models may lack the practice pedal.
The sustain pedal (or, damper pedal) is often simply called "the pedal", since it is the most frequently used. It is placed as the rightmost pedal in the group. It lifts the dampers from all keys, sustaining all played notes, and altering the overall tone.
The soft pedal or una corda pedal is placed leftmost in the row of pedals. In grand pianos, it shifts the entire action, including the keyboard, to the right, so that the hammers hit only one of the three strings for each note (hence the name una corda, or 'one string'). The effect is to soften the note as well as to change the tone. In uprights, this action is not possible, and so the pedal moves the hammers closer to the strings, allowing the hammers to hit the strings with less kinetic energy to produce a softer sound.
On grand pianos, the middle pedal is a sostenuto pedal. This pedal keeps raised any damper that was already raised at the moment the pedal is depressed. This makes it possible to sustain some notes (by depressing the sostenuto pedal before notes to be sustained are released) while the player's hands are free to play other notes. This can be useful for musical passages with pedal points and other otherwise tricky or impossible situations.
On many upright pianos, there is a middle pedal called the 'practice' or celeste pedal. This drops a piece of felt between the hammers and strings, greatly muting the sounds.
There are also non-standard variants. On vertical pianos, the middle pedal can be a bass sustain pedal: that is, when it is depressed, the dampers lift off the strings only in the bass section. This pedal would be used only when a pianist needs to sustain a single bass note or chord over many measures, while playing the melody in the treble section. On the largest Fazioli piano, there is a fourth pedal to the left of the principal three. This fourth pedal works in the same way as the soft pedal of an upright piano, moving the hammers closer to the strings.
An upright pedal piano
The rare transposing piano, of which Irving Berlin possessed an example, had a middle pedal that functioned as a clutch which disengages the keyboard from the mechanism, enabling the keyboard to be moved to the left or right with a lever. The entire action of the piano is thus shifted to allow the pianist to play music written in one key so that it sounds in a different key. The pedalier piano, or pedal piano, is a rare type of piano that includes a pedalboard, enabling bass register notes to be played with the feet, as is standard on the organ. There are two types of pedal piano: the pedal board may be an integral part of the instrument, using the same strings and mechanism as the manual keyboard, or, less frequently, it may consist of two independent pianos (each with its separate mechanics and strings) which are placed one above the other, a regular piano played by the hands and a bass-register piano played by the feet.
Many parts of a piano are made of materials selected for sturdiness. In quality pianos, the outer rim of the piano is made of a hardwood, normally maple or beech. According to Harold A. Conklin, the purpose of a sturdy rim is so that "the vibrational energy will stay as much as possible in the soundboard instead of dissipating uselessly in the case parts, which are inefficient radiators of sound."
View from below of a 182-cm grand piano. In order of distance from viewer: softwood braces, tapered soundboard ribs, soundboard. The metal rod at lower right is a humidity control device.
The rim is normally made by laminating flexible strips of hardwood to the desired shape, a system that was developed by Theodore Steinway in 1880. The thick wooden braces at the bottom (grands) or back (uprights) of the piano are not as acoustically important as the rim, and are often made of a softwood, even in top-quality pianos, in order to save weight. The requirement of structural strength, fulfilled with stout hardwood and thick metal, makes a piano heavy; even a small upright can weigh 136 kg (300 lb), and the Steinway concert grand (Model D) weighs 480 kg (990 lb). The largest piano built, the Fazioli F308, weighs 691 kg (1520 lb).
The pinblock, which holds the tuning pins in place, is another area of the piano where toughness is important. It is made of hardwood, (often maple) and generally is laminated (built of multiple layers) for additional strength and gripping power. Piano strings (also called piano wire), which must endure years of extreme tension and hard blows, are made of high quality steel. They are manufactured to vary as little as possible in diameter, since all deviations from uniformity introduce tonal distortion. The bass strings of a piano are made of a steel core wrapped with copper wire, to increase their mass whilst retaining flexibility.
The plate, or metal frame, of a piano is usually made of cast iron. It is advantageous for the plate to be quite massive. Since the strings are attached to the plate at one end, any vibrations transmitted to the plate will result in loss of energy to the desired (efficient) channel of sound transmission, namely the bridge and the soundboard. Some manufacturers now use cast steel in their plates, for greater strength. The casting of the plate is a delicate art, since the dimensions are crucial and the iron shrinks by about one percent during cooling.
The inclusion in a piano of an extremely large piece of metal is potentially an aesthetic handicap, which piano makers overcome by polishing, painting and decorating the plate. Plates often include the manufacturer's ornamental medallion and can be strikingly attractive. In an effort to make pianos lighter, Alcoa worked with Winter and Company piano manufacturers to make pianos using an aluminum plate during the 1940s. The use of aluminum for piano plates, however, did not become widely accepted and was discontinued.
The numerous grand parts and upright parts of a piano action are generally hardwood (e.g. maple, beech. hornbeam). However, since World War II, plastics have become available. Early plastics were incorporated into some pianos in the late 1940s and 1950s, but proved disastrous because they crystallized and lost their strength after only a few decades of use. The Steinway firm once incorporated Teflon, a synthetic material developed by DuPont, for some grand action parts in place of cloth, but ultimately abandoned the experiment due to an inherent "clicking" which invariably developed over time. (Also Teflon is "humidity stable" whereas the wood adjacent to the Teflon will swell and shrink with humidity changes, causing problems.) More recently, the Kawai firm has built pianos with action parts made of more modern and effective plastics such as carbon fiber; these parts have held up better and have generally received the respect of piano technicians .
Ivorite and ebony keys on a modern Steinway & Sons concert grand piano.
The part of the piano where materials probably matter more than anywhere else is the soundboard. In quality pianos, this is made of solid spruce (that is, spruce boards glued together at their edges). Spruce is chosen for its high ratio of strength to weight. The best piano makers use close-grained, quarter-sawn, defect-free spruce, and make sure that it has been carefully dried over a long period of time before making it into soundboards. In cheap pianos, the soundboard is often made of plywood.
Piano keys are generally made of spruce or basswood, for lightness. Spruce is normally used in high-quality pianos. Traditionally, the black keys were made from ebony and the white keys were covered with strips of ivory, but since ivory-yielding species are now endangered and protected by treaty, plastics are now almost exclusively used. Also, ivory tends to chip more easily than plastic. Legal ivory can still be obtained in limited quantities. At one time, the Yamaha firm innovated a plastic called "Ivorine" or "Ivorite", since imitated by other makers, that mimics the look and feel of ivory.
A piano tuner
Pianos need regular tuning to keep them up to pitch, which is usually the internationally recognized standard concert pitch of A4 = 440 Hz. The hammers of pianos are voiced to compensate for gradual hardening, and other parts also need periodic regulation. Aged and worn pianos can be rebuilt or reconditioned. Often, by replacing a great number of their parts, they can be made to perform as well as new pianos. Older pianos are often more settled and produce a warmer tone.
Piano moving should be done by trained piano movers using adequate manpower and the correct equipment for any particular piano's size and weight. Pianos are heavy yet delicate instruments. Over the years, professional piano movers have developed special techniques for transporting both grands and uprights which prevent damage to the case and to the piano's mechanics.
The piano at the social center in the 19th century (Moritz von Schwind, 1868). The man at the piano is Franz Schubert.
The piano is a crucial instrument in Western classical music, jazz, film, television, and most other complex western musical genres. Since a large number of composers are proficient pianists â and because the piano keyboard offers an easy means of complex melodic and harmonic interplay â the piano is often used as a tool for composition.
Pianos were, and still are, popular instruments for private household ownership. Hence, pianos have gained a place in the popular consciousness, and are sometimes referred to by nicknames including: "the ivories", "the joanna", "the eighty-eight", and "the black(s) and white(s)", "the little joe(s)". Playing the piano is sometimes referred to as "tickling the ivories".
;General
* Innovations in the piano
* Jazz piano
* Piano acoustics
* Piano key frequencies (in equal temperament)
* Piano trio
* String piano
;Related lists
* List of films about pianists
* Lists of solo piano pieces
* List of piano makers
* List of piano brand names
* List of classical pianists (recorded)
;Related instruments
* Hammered dulcimer
* Harp
* Clavichord
* Harpsichord
* Organ and Pipe organ
* Electric piano
* Electronic piano
* The authoritative New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (available online by subscription), contains a wealth of information. Main article: "Pianoforte".
* The Encyclopædia Britannica (available online by subscription) also includes much information on the piano. In the 1988 edition, the primary article can be found in "Musical Instruments".
* The Piano Book by Larry Fine (4th ed. Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts: Brookside Press, 2001; ISBN 1-929145-01-2) gives the basics of how pianos work, and a thorough evaluative survey of current pianos and their manufacturers. It also includes advice on buying and owning pianos.
*Giraffes, black dragons, and other pianos: a technological history from Cristofori to the modern concert grand by Edwin M. Good (1982, second ed., 2001, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press) is a standard reference on the history of the piano.
*The Early Pianoforte by Stewart Pollens (1995, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) is an authoritative work covering the ancestry of the piano, its invention by Cristofori, and the early stages of its subsequent evolution.
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;Information
* Yamaha Musician - Yamaha piano reviews and enthusiast site
* Grand Piano information and images
* The Piano Page Lots of information from the Piano Technicians Guild
* WikiRecording's Guide to Recording Pianos
;History
* History of the Piano Forte, Association of Blind Piano Tuners, UK
* The Frederick Historical Piano Collection
;Piano Technique
* Principles of Piano Technique
;Sheet music for Piano
* All Piano Scores Free printable classical sheet music for piano + audio
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Piano | What are the names of a piano's pedals? | The names of a piano's pedals are una corda, sostenuto, and damper. | data/set2/a1 | Piano
Baby Grand Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard that produces sound by striking steel strings with felt covered hammers. The hammers immediately rebound, allowing the strings to continue vibrating at their resonant frequency. " Hammer Time" by John Kiehl, Wolfram Demonstrations Project. These vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a soundboard that couples the acoustic energy to the air so that it can be heard as sound.
The piano is widely used in Western music for solo performance, ensemble use, chamber music, and accompaniment. It is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal. Although not portable and often expensive, the piano's versatility and ubiquity have made it one of the most familiar musical instruments. It is sometimes classified as both a percussion and a stringed instrument. According to the Hornbostel-Sachs method of music classification, it is grouped with Chordophones.
The word piano is a shortened form of the word pianoforte, which is seldom used except in formal language and derived from the original Italian name for the instrument, clavicembalo [or gravicembalo] col piano e forte (literally harpsichord with soft and loud). This refers to the instrument's responsiveness to keyboard touch, which allows the pianist to produce notes at different dynamic levels by controlling the speed with which the hammers hit the strings.
Early piano replica by the modern builder Paul McNulty, after Walter & Sohn, 1805
The piano was originally founded on earlier technological innovations. The first string instruments with struck strings were the hammered dulcimers originating from the Persian traditional musical instrument santur. David R. Peterson (1994), "Acoustics of the hammered dulcimer, its history, and recent developments", Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 95 (5), p. 3002. During the Middle Ages, there were several attempts at creating stringed keyboard instruments with struck strings, Pollens, 1995. chp. 1 the earliest being the hurdy gurdy which has uncertain origins. By the 17th century, 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.
Grand piano by Louis Bas of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, France, 1781. Earliest French grand piano known to survive; includes an inverted wrestplank and action derived from the work of Bartolomeo Cristofiori (ca. 1700) with ornately decorated soundboard.
The invention of the modern piano is credited to Bartolomeo Cristofori of Padua, Italy, who was employed by Prince Ferdinand de Medici as the Keeper of the Instruments. He was an expert harpsichord maker and was well acquainted with the previous body of knowledge on stringed keyboard instruments. It is not known exactly when Cristofori first built a piano. An inventory made by his employers, the Medici family, indicates the existence of a piano by the year 1700; another document of doubtful authenticity indicates a date of 1698. The three Cristofori pianos that survive today date from the 1720s.
Cristofori's great success was in solving, without any prior example, the fundamental mechanical problem of piano design: the hammer must strike the string, but not remain in contact with it (as a tangent remains in contact with a clavichord string) because this would damp the sound. Moreover, the hammer must return to its rest position without bouncing violently, and it must be possible to repeat a note rapidly. Cristofori's piano action served as a model for the many different approaches to piano actions that followed. While Cristofori's early instruments were made with thin strings and were much quieter than the modern piano, compared to the clavichord (the only previous keyboard instrument capable of minutely controlled dynamic nuance through the keyboard) they were considerably louder and had more sustaining power.
Cristofori's new instrument remained relatively unknown until an Italian writer, Scipione Maffei, wrote an enthusiastic article about it (1711), including a diagram of the mechanism. This article was widely distributed, and most of the next generation of piano builders started their work because of reading it. One of these builders was Gottfried Silbermann, better known as an organ builder. Silbermann's pianos were virtually direct copies of Cristofori's, with one important addition: Silbermann invented the forerunner of the modern damper pedal, which lifts all the dampers from the strings at once.
Silbermann showed Johann Sebastian Bach one of his early instruments in the 1730s, but Bach did not like it at that time, claiming that the higher notes were too soft to allow a full dynamic range. Although this earned him some animosity from Silbermann, the criticism was apparently heeded. Bach did approve of a later instrument he saw in 1747, and even served as an agent in selling Silbermann's pianos.
Piano making flourished during the late 18th century in the Viennese school, which included Johann Andreas Stein (who worked in Augsburg, Germany) and the Viennese makers Nannette Streicher (daughter of Johann Andreas Stein) and Anton Walter. Viennese-style pianos were built with wood frames, two strings per note, and had leather-covered hammers. Some of these Viennese pianos had the opposite coloring of modern-day pianos; the natural keys were black and the accidental keys white. It was for such instruments that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed his concertos and sonatas, and replicas of them are built today for use in authentic-instrument performance of his music. The pianos of Mozart's day had a softer, clearer tone than today's pianos or English pianos, with less sustaining power. The term fortepiano is nowadays often used to distinguish the 18th-century instrument from later pianos.
In the period lasting from about 1790 to 1860, the Mozart-era piano underwent tremendous changes that led to the modern form of the instrument. This revolution was in response to a consistent preference by composers and pianists for a more powerful, sustained piano sound, and made possible by the ongoing Industrial Revolution with technological resources such as high-quality steel, called piano wire, for strings, and precision casting for the production of iron frames. Over time, the tonal range of the piano was also increased from the five octaves of Mozart's day to the 7â
or more octaves found on modern pianos.
Broadwood square action
Early technological progress owed much to the English firm of Broadwood, who already had a reputation for the splendour and powerful tone of its harpsichords. Broadwood constructed instruments that were progressively larger, louder, and more robustly constructed. They sent pianos to both Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven, and were the first firm to build pianos with a range of more than five octaves: five octaves and a fifth during the 1790s, six octaves by 1810 (Beethoven used the extra notes in his later works), and seven octaves by 1820. The Viennese makers similarly followed these trends, however the two schools used different piano actions: Broadwoods were more robust, Viennese instruments were more sensitive.
Erard square action
By the 1820s, the center of innovation had shifted to Paris, where the Pleyel firm manufactured pianos used by Frédéric Chopin and the Ãrard firm manufactured those used by Franz Liszt. In 1821, Sébastien Ãrard invented the double escapement action, which permitted a note to be repeated even if the key had not yet risen to its maximum vertical position. This facilitated rapid playing of repeated notes - and this musical device was pioneered by Liszt. When the invention became public, as revised by Henri Herz, the double escapement action gradually became standard in grand pianos, and is still incorporated into all grand pianos currently produced.
One of the major technical innovations that helped to create the sound of the modern piano was the use of a strong iron frame. Also called the "plate", the iron frame sits atop the soundboard, and serves as the primary bulwark against the force of string tension. The increased structural integrity of the iron frame allowed the use of thicker, tenser, and more numerous strings. In a modern grand the total string tension can exceed 20 tons. The single piece cast iron frame was patented in 1825 in Boston by Alpheus Babcock, combining the metal hitch pin plate (1821, claimed by Broadwood on behalf of Samuel Hervé) and resisting bars (Thom and Allen, 1820, but also claimed by Broadwood and Ãrard). Babcock later worked for the Chickering & Mackays firm who patented the first full iron frame for grand pianos in 1843. Composite forged metal frames were preferred by many European makers until the American system was fully adopted by the early 20th century.
Other innovations for the mechanism included the use of felt hammer coverings instead of layered leather hammers. Felt hammers, which were first introduced by Henri Pape in 1826, were a more consistent material, permitting wider dynamic ranges as hammer weights and string tension increased. The sostenuto pedal (see below), invented in 1844 by Jean Louis Boisselot and improved by the Steinway firm in 1874, allowed a wider range of effects.
Other important technical innovations of this era included changes to the way the piano was strung, such as the use of a "choir" of three strings rather than two for all but the lower notes, and the use of different stringing methods. With the over strung scale, also called "cross-stringing", the strings are placed in a vertically overlapping slanted arrangement, with two heights of bridges on the soundboard instead of just one. This permits larger, but not necessarily longer, strings to fit within the case of the piano. Over stringing was invented by Jean-Henri Pape during the 1820s, and first patented for use in grand pianos in the United States by Henry Steinway Jr. in 1859.
Duplex scaling: Treble strings of a 182 cm. grand piano. From lower left to upper right: dampers, main sounding length of strings, treble bridge, duplex string length, duplex bridge (long bar perpendicular to strings), hitchpins. With duplexes or aliquot scales, which was patented in 1872 by Theodore Steinway, the different components of string vibrations are controlled by tuning their secondary parts in octave relationships with the sounding lengths. Similar systems developed by Blüthner (1872), as well as Taskin (1788), and Collard (1821) used more distinctly ringing undamped vibrations to modify tone.
Some early pianos had shapes and designs that are no longer in use. The square piano had horizontal strings arranged diagonally across the rectangular case above the hammers and with the keyboard set in the long side. This design is attributed to Gottfried Silbermann or Christian Ernst Friderici on the continent, and Johannes Zumpe or Harman Vietor in England and it was improved by changes first introduced by Guillaume-Lebrecht Petzold in France and Alpheus Babcock in the United States. Square pianos were built in great numbers through the 1840s in Europe and the 1890s in America, and saw the most visible changes of any type of piano: the celebrated iron framed over strung squares manufactured by Steinway & Sons were more than two and a half times the size of Zumpe's wood framed instruments from a century before. Their overwhelming popularity was due to inexpensive construction and price, although their performance and tone were often limited by simple actions and closely spaced strings.
The mechanism in upright pianos is perpendicular to the keys.
The tall, vertically strung upright grand was arranged like a grand set on end, with the soundboard and bridges above the keys, and tuning pins below them. The term was later revived by many manufacturers for advertising purposes. Giraffe, pyramid and lyre pianos were arranged in a somewhat similar fashion in evocatively shaped cases.
The very tall cabinet piano was introduced about 1805 and was built through the 1840s. It had strings arranged vertically on a continuous frame with bridges extended nearly to the floor, behind the keyboard and very large sticker action. The short cottage upright or pianino with vertical stringing, made popular by Robert Wornum around 1815, was built into the 20th century. They are informally called birdcage pianos because of their prominent damper mechanism. Pianinos were distinguished from the oblique, or diagonally strung upright made popular in France by Roller & Blanchet during the late 1820s. The tiny spinet upright was manufactured from the mid-1930s until recent times. The low position of the hammers required the use of a "drop action" to preserve a reasonable keyboard height.
Modern upright and grand pianos attained their present forms by the end of the 19th century. Improvements have been made in manufacturing processes, and many individual details of the instrument continue to receive attention.
Much of the most widely admired piano repertoire, for example, that of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, was composed for a type of instrument that is rather different from the modern instruments on which this music is normally performed today. Even the music of the Romantics, including Liszt, Chopin, Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn and Johannes Brahms, was written for pianos substantially different from ours.
A schematic depiction of the construction of a pianoforte.
Modern pianos come in two basic configurations (with subcategories): the grand piano and the upright piano.
Grand piano
In grand pianos, the frame and strings are horizontal, with the strings extending away from the keyboard. There are several sizes of grand piano. A rough generalization distinguishes the "concert grand" (between about and long) from the "parlor grand" or "boudoir grand" (about to ) and the smaller "baby grand".
All else being equal, longer pianos with longer strings have better sound and lower inharmonicity of the strings. Inharmonicity is the degree to which the frequencies of overtones (known as partials, partial tones, or harmonics) depart from whole multiples of the fundamental frequency. Pianos with shorter, thicker, and stiffer strings (e.g., baby grands) have more inharmonicity. The longer strings on a concert grand can vibrate more freely than the shorter, thicker strings on a baby grand, which means that a concert grand's strings will have truer overtones. This is partly because the strings will be tuned closer to equal temperament in relation to the standard pitch with less "stretching" in the piano tuning (See: Piano tuning). Full-size grands are usually used for public concerts, whereas smaller grands, introduced by Sohmer & Co. in 1884, are often chosen for domestic use where space and cost are considerations.
Upright piano
Upright pianos, also called vertical pianos, are more compact because the frame and strings are vertical. It is considered harder to produce a sensitive piano action when the hammers move horizontally, as the vertical hammer return is dependent on springs which are prone to wear and tear. However, a well-regulated vertical piano will probably play more smoothly than a poorly regulated grand piano, and the very best upright pianos approach the level of some grand pianos of the same size in tone quality and responsiveness.
One noticeable advantage that the grand piano action has over the vertical action is that all grand pianos have a special repetition lever in the playing action that is absent in all verticals. This repetition lever, a separate one for every key, catches the hammer close to the strings as long as the keys are played repeatedly and fairly quickly. In this position, with the hammer resting on the lever, a pianist can play repeated notes, staccato, and trills with much more speed and control than is possible on a vertical piano.
Upright pianos with unusually tall frames and long strings are sometimes called "upright grand" pianos.
Some authors classify modern pianos according to their height and, to modifications of the action that are necessary to accomodate the height.
* Studio pianos are around 42 to 45 inches tall. This is the shortest cabinet that can accomodate a 'full-sized' action located above the keyboard.
* Console pianos have a compact action (shorter hammers), and are a few inches shorter than studio models.
* The top of a Spinet model barely rises above the keyboard. The action is located below, operated by vertical wires that are attached to the backs of the keys.
* Anything taller than a studio piano is called an upright.
Player piano
Toy pianos began to be manufactured in the 19th century. In 1863, Henri Fourneaux invented the player piano, which "plays itself" from a piano roll without the need for a pianist. The player piano is a piano that records a performance using rolls of paper with perforations, and then replays the performance using pneumatic devices. A modern equivalent for the player piano is the Yamaha Disklavier system, which uses solenoids and midi instead of pneumatics and rolls. Silent pianos, which allow a regular piano to be used converted to a digital instrument, are a recent innovation and are becoming more popular.
Irving Berlin played a special piano called the transposing piano, which was invented in 1801 by Edward Ryley. It had a lever under the keyboard used to alter the music to any key. One of Berlin's pianos is in the Smithsonian Museum. For much of his career, Berlin only knew how to play the black keys. But with his 'trick piano' he was no longer limited to the key of F-sharp.
A relatively recent development is the prepared piano, which is used in contemporary art music. A prepared piano is a standard grand piano which has had objects placed inside it before a performance in order to alter its sound, or which has had its mechanism changed in some way. The scores for music for prepared piano often instruct the pianist to insert pieces of rubber or small pieces of metal (screws or washers) in between the strings. These added items either mute the strings or create unusual vibrating sounds.
Since the 1980s, digital pianos have been available, which use digital sampling technology to reproduce the sound of each piano note. The best digital pianos are sophisticated, with features including working pedals, weighted keys, multiple voices, and MIDI interfaces. However, with such technology, it is difficult to duplicate one particular aspect of acoustic pianos, namely that when the damper pedal (see below) is depressed, the strings not struck vibrate sympathetically when other strings are struck, as well as the unique instrument-specific mathematical non-linearity of partials on any given unison. Since this sympathetic vibration is considered central to piano tone, many digital pianos do not sound the same as the best acoustic pianos. Progress is being made in this area by including physical models of sympathetic vibration in the synthesis software. Some higher end digital pianos, such as the Yamaha Clavinova series, or the KAWAI MP8 series, produced in the last few years incorporate string resonance technology to overcome this limitation.
With the advent of powerful desktop computers, highly realistic sampled digital grand pianos have become available as affordable software modules. Some use multi-gigabyte piano sample sets with as many as 90 recordings, each lasting many seconds, for each of the 88 keys under different conditions, augmented by additional samples to emulate sympathetic resonance, key release, the drop of the dampers, and simulations of piano techniques like re-pedaling.
Keyboard
Almost every modern piano has 36 black keys and 52 white keys for a total of 88 keys (seven octaves plus a minor third, from A0 to C8). Many older pianos only have 85 keys (seven octaves from A0 to A7), while some manufacturers extend the range further in one or both directions.
Some Bösendorfer pianos extend the normal range downwards to F0, with one other model going as far as a bottom C0, making a full eight octave range. These extra keys are sometimes hidden under a small hinged lid that can be flipped down to cover the keys in order to avoid visual disorientation in a pianist unfamiliar with the extended keyboard. On others, the colours of the extra white keys are reversed (black instead of white).
The extra keys are added primarily for increased resonance from the associated strings; that is, they vibrate sympathetically with other strings whenever the damper pedal is depressed and thus give a fuller tone. Only a very small number of works composed for piano actually use these notes. More recently, the Stuart and Sons company has also manufactured extended-range pianos. On their instruments, the range is extended both down the bass to F0 and up the treble to F8 for a full eight octaves. The extra keys are the same as the other keys in appearance.
Small studio upright acoustical pianos with only 65 keys have been manufactured for use by roving pianists. Known as "gig" pianos and still containing a cast iron harp, these are comparatively lightweight and can be easily transported to and from engagements by only two men. As their harp is longer than that of a spinet or console piano, they have a stronger bass sound that to some pianists is well worth the trade-off in range that a reduced key-set offers.
Piano pedals from left to right: una corda, sostenuto, and damper.
Pianos have had pedals, or some close equivalent, since the earliest days. (In the 18th century, some pianos used levers pressed upward by the player's knee instead of pedals.) Most grand pianos have three pedals: soft pedal (una corda), sostenuto, and sustain pedal (from left to right, respectively). Most modern upright pianos have three pedals: soft pedal, practice pedal and sustain pedal, though older or cheaper models may lack the practice pedal.
The sustain pedal (or, damper pedal) is often simply called "the pedal", since it is the most frequently used. It is placed as the rightmost pedal in the group. It lifts the dampers from all keys, sustaining all played notes, and altering the overall tone.
The soft pedal or una corda pedal is placed leftmost in the row of pedals. In grand pianos, it shifts the entire action, including the keyboard, to the right, so that the hammers hit only one of the three strings for each note (hence the name una corda, or 'one string'). The effect is to soften the note as well as to change the tone. In uprights, this action is not possible, and so the pedal moves the hammers closer to the strings, allowing the hammers to hit the strings with less kinetic energy to produce a softer sound.
On grand pianos, the middle pedal is a sostenuto pedal. This pedal keeps raised any damper that was already raised at the moment the pedal is depressed. This makes it possible to sustain some notes (by depressing the sostenuto pedal before notes to be sustained are released) while the player's hands are free to play other notes. This can be useful for musical passages with pedal points and other otherwise tricky or impossible situations.
On many upright pianos, there is a middle pedal called the 'practice' or celeste pedal. This drops a piece of felt between the hammers and strings, greatly muting the sounds.
There are also non-standard variants. On vertical pianos, the middle pedal can be a bass sustain pedal: that is, when it is depressed, the dampers lift off the strings only in the bass section. This pedal would be used only when a pianist needs to sustain a single bass note or chord over many measures, while playing the melody in the treble section. On the largest Fazioli piano, there is a fourth pedal to the left of the principal three. This fourth pedal works in the same way as the soft pedal of an upright piano, moving the hammers closer to the strings.
An upright pedal piano
The rare transposing piano, of which Irving Berlin possessed an example, had a middle pedal that functioned as a clutch which disengages the keyboard from the mechanism, enabling the keyboard to be moved to the left or right with a lever. The entire action of the piano is thus shifted to allow the pianist to play music written in one key so that it sounds in a different key. The pedalier piano, or pedal piano, is a rare type of piano that includes a pedalboard, enabling bass register notes to be played with the feet, as is standard on the organ. There are two types of pedal piano: the pedal board may be an integral part of the instrument, using the same strings and mechanism as the manual keyboard, or, less frequently, it may consist of two independent pianos (each with its separate mechanics and strings) which are placed one above the other, a regular piano played by the hands and a bass-register piano played by the feet.
Many parts of a piano are made of materials selected for sturdiness. In quality pianos, the outer rim of the piano is made of a hardwood, normally maple or beech. According to Harold A. Conklin, the purpose of a sturdy rim is so that "the vibrational energy will stay as much as possible in the soundboard instead of dissipating uselessly in the case parts, which are inefficient radiators of sound."
View from below of a 182-cm grand piano. In order of distance from viewer: softwood braces, tapered soundboard ribs, soundboard. The metal rod at lower right is a humidity control device.
The rim is normally made by laminating flexible strips of hardwood to the desired shape, a system that was developed by Theodore Steinway in 1880. The thick wooden braces at the bottom (grands) or back (uprights) of the piano are not as acoustically important as the rim, and are often made of a softwood, even in top-quality pianos, in order to save weight. The requirement of structural strength, fulfilled with stout hardwood and thick metal, makes a piano heavy; even a small upright can weigh 136 kg (300 lb), and the Steinway concert grand (Model D) weighs 480 kg (990 lb). The largest piano built, the Fazioli F308, weighs 691 kg (1520 lb).
The pinblock, which holds the tuning pins in place, is another area of the piano where toughness is important. It is made of hardwood, (often maple) and generally is laminated (built of multiple layers) for additional strength and gripping power. Piano strings (also called piano wire), which must endure years of extreme tension and hard blows, are made of high quality steel. They are manufactured to vary as little as possible in diameter, since all deviations from uniformity introduce tonal distortion. The bass strings of a piano are made of a steel core wrapped with copper wire, to increase their mass whilst retaining flexibility.
The plate, or metal frame, of a piano is usually made of cast iron. It is advantageous for the plate to be quite massive. Since the strings are attached to the plate at one end, any vibrations transmitted to the plate will result in loss of energy to the desired (efficient) channel of sound transmission, namely the bridge and the soundboard. Some manufacturers now use cast steel in their plates, for greater strength. The casting of the plate is a delicate art, since the dimensions are crucial and the iron shrinks by about one percent during cooling.
The inclusion in a piano of an extremely large piece of metal is potentially an aesthetic handicap, which piano makers overcome by polishing, painting and decorating the plate. Plates often include the manufacturer's ornamental medallion and can be strikingly attractive. In an effort to make pianos lighter, Alcoa worked with Winter and Company piano manufacturers to make pianos using an aluminum plate during the 1940s. The use of aluminum for piano plates, however, did not become widely accepted and was discontinued.
The numerous grand parts and upright parts of a piano action are generally hardwood (e.g. maple, beech. hornbeam). However, since World War II, plastics have become available. Early plastics were incorporated into some pianos in the late 1940s and 1950s, but proved disastrous because they crystallized and lost their strength after only a few decades of use. The Steinway firm once incorporated Teflon, a synthetic material developed by DuPont, for some grand action parts in place of cloth, but ultimately abandoned the experiment due to an inherent "clicking" which invariably developed over time. (Also Teflon is "humidity stable" whereas the wood adjacent to the Teflon will swell and shrink with humidity changes, causing problems.) More recently, the Kawai firm has built pianos with action parts made of more modern and effective plastics such as carbon fiber; these parts have held up better and have generally received the respect of piano technicians .
Ivorite and ebony keys on a modern Steinway & Sons concert grand piano.
The part of the piano where materials probably matter more than anywhere else is the soundboard. In quality pianos, this is made of solid spruce (that is, spruce boards glued together at their edges). Spruce is chosen for its high ratio of strength to weight. The best piano makers use close-grained, quarter-sawn, defect-free spruce, and make sure that it has been carefully dried over a long period of time before making it into soundboards. In cheap pianos, the soundboard is often made of plywood.
Piano keys are generally made of spruce or basswood, for lightness. Spruce is normally used in high-quality pianos. Traditionally, the black keys were made from ebony and the white keys were covered with strips of ivory, but since ivory-yielding species are now endangered and protected by treaty, plastics are now almost exclusively used. Also, ivory tends to chip more easily than plastic. Legal ivory can still be obtained in limited quantities. At one time, the Yamaha firm innovated a plastic called "Ivorine" or "Ivorite", since imitated by other makers, that mimics the look and feel of ivory.
A piano tuner
Pianos need regular tuning to keep them up to pitch, which is usually the internationally recognized standard concert pitch of A4 = 440 Hz. The hammers of pianos are voiced to compensate for gradual hardening, and other parts also need periodic regulation. Aged and worn pianos can be rebuilt or reconditioned. Often, by replacing a great number of their parts, they can be made to perform as well as new pianos. Older pianos are often more settled and produce a warmer tone.
Piano moving should be done by trained piano movers using adequate manpower and the correct equipment for any particular piano's size and weight. Pianos are heavy yet delicate instruments. Over the years, professional piano movers have developed special techniques for transporting both grands and uprights which prevent damage to the case and to the piano's mechanics.
The piano at the social center in the 19th century (Moritz von Schwind, 1868). The man at the piano is Franz Schubert.
The piano is a crucial instrument in Western classical music, jazz, film, television, and most other complex western musical genres. Since a large number of composers are proficient pianists â and because the piano keyboard offers an easy means of complex melodic and harmonic interplay â the piano is often used as a tool for composition.
Pianos were, and still are, popular instruments for private household ownership. Hence, pianos have gained a place in the popular consciousness, and are sometimes referred to by nicknames including: "the ivories", "the joanna", "the eighty-eight", and "the black(s) and white(s)", "the little joe(s)". Playing the piano is sometimes referred to as "tickling the ivories".
;General
* Innovations in the piano
* Jazz piano
* Piano acoustics
* Piano key frequencies (in equal temperament)
* Piano trio
* String piano
;Related lists
* List of films about pianists
* Lists of solo piano pieces
* List of piano makers
* List of piano brand names
* List of classical pianists (recorded)
;Related instruments
* Hammered dulcimer
* Harp
* Clavichord
* Harpsichord
* Organ and Pipe organ
* Electric piano
* Electronic piano
* The authoritative New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (available online by subscription), contains a wealth of information. Main article: "Pianoforte".
* The Encyclopædia Britannica (available online by subscription) also includes much information on the piano. In the 1988 edition, the primary article can be found in "Musical Instruments".
* The Piano Book by Larry Fine (4th ed. Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts: Brookside Press, 2001; ISBN 1-929145-01-2) gives the basics of how pianos work, and a thorough evaluative survey of current pianos and their manufacturers. It also includes advice on buying and owning pianos.
*Giraffes, black dragons, and other pianos: a technological history from Cristofori to the modern concert grand by Edwin M. Good (1982, second ed., 2001, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press) is a standard reference on the history of the piano.
*The Early Pianoforte by Stewart Pollens (1995, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) is an authoritative work covering the ancestry of the piano, its invention by Cristofori, and the early stages of its subsequent evolution.
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;Information
* Yamaha Musician - Yamaha piano reviews and enthusiast site
* Grand Piano information and images
* The Piano Page Lots of information from the Piano Technicians Guild
* WikiRecording's Guide to Recording Pianos
;History
* History of the Piano Forte, Association of Blind Piano Tuners, UK
* The Frederick Historical Piano Collection
;Piano Technique
* Principles of Piano Technique
;Sheet music for Piano
* All Piano Scores Free printable classical sheet music for piano + audio
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Pierre-Auguste_Renoir | What happened in the January 15, 1882? | On January 15, 1882 Renoir met the composer Richard Wagner at his home in Palermo, Sicily. | data/set6/a5 | Pierre-Auguste_Renoir
Pierre-Auguste Renoir (February 25, 1841 December 3, 1919) was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty, and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "Renoir is the final representative of a tradition which runs directly from Rubens to Watteau". Read, Herbert: The Meaning of Art, page 127. Faber, 1931.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir was born in Limoges, Haute-Vienne, France, the child of a working class family. As a boy, he worked in a porcelain factory where his drawing talents led to him being chosen to paint designs on fine china. Renoir, Jean: Renoir, My Father, pages 57â67. Collins, 1962. He also painted hangings for overseas missionaries and decorations on fans before he enrolled in art school. Vollard, Ambroise: Renoir, An Intimate Record, pages 24â29. Knopf, 1925. During those early years, he often visited the Louvre to study the French master painters.
The Theater Box, 1874 by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Courtauld Institute Galleries, London
In 1862 he began studying art under Charles Gleyre in Paris. There he met Alfred Sisley, Frédéric Bazille, and Claude Monet. Vollard, page 30. At times during the 1860s, he did not have enough money to buy paint. Although Renoir first started exhibiting paintings at the Paris Salon in 1864, Wadley, Nicholas: Renoir, A Retrospective, page 15. Park Lane, 1989. recognition did not come for another ten years, due, in part, to the turmoil of the Franco-Prussian War.
During the Paris Commune in 1871, while he painted on the banks of the Seine River, some members of a commune group thought he was a spy, and were about to throw him into the river when a commune leader, Raoul Rigault, recognized Renoir as the man who had protected him on an earlier occasion. Renoir, Jean, pages 118â21. Different and less life-threatening versions are offered by Paul Valéry and Vollard. In all accounts, however, their re-acquaintance led to great celebration.
In 1874, a ten-year friendship with Jules Le Coeur and his family ended, Wadley, page 15. and Renoir lost not only the valuable support gained by the association, but a generous welcome to stay on their property near Fontainebleau and its scenic forest.
This loss of a favorite painting location resulted in a distinct change of subjects.
Renoir experienced his initial acclaim when six of his paintings hung in the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874. In the same year two of his works were shown with Durand-Ruel in London.
The Swing (La Balançoire), 1876, oil on canvas, Musée d'Orsay, Paris
In 1881, he traveled to Algeria, a country he associated with Eugène Delacroix, Poulet, A. L., & Murphy, A. R. (1979). Corot to Braque: French Paintings from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, page 117. Boston: The Museum. ISBN 0-87846-134-5. then to Madrid, to see the work of Diego Velázquez. Following that he traveled to Italy to see Titian's masterpieces in Florence and the paintings of Raphael in Rome. On January 15, 1882 Renoir met the composer Richard Wagner at his home in Palermo, Sicily. Renoir painted Wagner's portrait in just thirty-five minutes. In the same year, Renoir convalesced for six weeks in Algeria after contracting pneumonia, which would cause permanent damage to his respiratory system. Wadley, page 25.
In 1883, he spent the summer in Guernsey, creating fifteen paintings in little over a month. Most of these feature Moulin Huet, a bay in Saint Martin's, Guernsey. Guernsey is one of the Channel Islands in the English Channel, and it has a varied landscape which includes beaches, cliffs, bays, forests, and mountains. These paintings were the subject of a set of commemorative postage stamps issued by the Bailiwick of Guernsey in 1983.
While living and working in Montmartre, Renoir employed as a model Suzanne Valadon, who posed for him (The Bathers, 1885â87; Dance at Bougival, 1883) Wadley, pages 371, 374. and many of his fellow painters while studying their techniques; eventually she became one of the leading painters of the day.
In 1887, a year when Queen Victoria celebrated her Golden Jubilee, and upon the request of the queen's associate, Phillip Richbourg, he donated several paintings to the "French Impressionist Paintings" catalog as a token of his loyalty.
In 1890 he married Aline Victorine Charigot, who, along with a number of the artist's friends, had already served as a model for Les Déjeuner des canotiers (Luncheon of the Boating Party, 1881), and with whom he already had a child, Pierre, in 1885. After his marriage Renoir painted many scenes of his wife and daily family life, including their children and their nurse, Aline's cousin Gabrielle Renard. The Renoirs had three sons, one of whom, Jean, became a filmmaker of note and another, Pierre, became a stage and film actor.
Girls at the Piano, 1892, by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
Around 1892, Renoir developed rheumatoid arthritis. In 1907, he moved to the warmer climate of "Les Collettes," a farm at Cagnes-sur-Mer, close to the Mediterranean coast. Wadley, page 28. Renoir painted during the last twenty years of his life, even when arthritis severely limited his movement, and he was wheelchair-bound. He developed progressive deformities in his hands and ankylosis of his right shoulder, requiring him to adapt his painting technique. It has often been reported that in the advanced stages of his arthritis, he painted by having a brush strapped to his paralyzed fingers, André, Albert: Renoir. Crés, 1928. but this is erroneous; Renoir remained able to grasp a brush, although he required an assistant to place it in his hand. Boonen, A.; van de Rest, J.; Dequeker, J.; van der Linden, S.: "How Renoir Coped with Rheumatoid Arthritis". British Medical Journal, 1997:315:1704 1708. The wrapping of his hands with bandages, apparent in late photographs of the artist, served to prevent skin irritation.
During this period he created sculptures by cooperating with a young artist, Richard Guino, who worked the clay. Renoir also used a moving canvas, or picture roll, to facilitate painting large works with his limited joint mobility.
In 1919, Renoir visited the Louvre to see his paintings hanging with the old masters. He died in the village of Cagnes-sur-Mer, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, on December 3.
250px
Renoir's paintings are notable for their vibrant light and saturated color, most often focusing on people in intimate and candid compositions. The female nude was one of his primary subjects. In characteristic Impressionist style, Renoir suggested the details of a scene through freely brushed touches of color, so that his figures softly fuse with one another and their surroundings.
His initial paintings show the influence of the colorism of Eugène Delacroix and the luminosity of Camille Corot. He also admired the realism of Gustave Courbet and Ãdouard Manet, and his early work resembles theirs in his use of black as a color. As well, Renoir admired Edgar Degas' sense of movement. Another painter Renoir greatly admired was the 18th century master François Boucher. Rey, Robert: La Renaissance du Sentiment Classique, Les Beaux Arts, 1931.
A fine example of Renoir's early work, and evidence of the influence of Courbet's realism, is Diana, 1867. Ostensibly a mythological subject, the painting is a naturalistic studio work, the figure carefully observed, solidly modeled, and superimposed upon a contrived landscape. If the work is still a 'student' piece, already Renoir's heightened personal response to female sensuality is present. The model was Lise Tréhot, then the artist's mistress and inspiration for a number of paintings. "From the Tour: Mary Cassatt", August Renoir. Accessed March 07, 2007.
In the late 1860s, through the practice of painting light and water en plein air (in the open air), he and his friend Claude Monet discovered that the color of shadows is not brown or black, but the reflected color of the objects surrounding them. Several pairs of paintings exist in which Renoir and Monet, working side-by-side, depicted the same scenes (La Grenouillère, 1869). Image:Renoir11.jpg â Wikimedia Commons at commons.wikimedia.org Image:Claude Monet La Grenouillére.jpg â Wikimedia Commons at commons.wikimedia.org
One of the best known Impressionist works is Renoir's 1876 Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette (Bal du moulin de la Galette). The painting depicts an open-air scene, crowded with people, at a popular dance garden on the Butte Montmartre, close to where he lived.On the Terrace, oil on canvas, 1881, Art Institute of Chicago
The works of his early maturity were typically Impressionist snapshots of real life, full of sparkling colour and light. By the mid 1880s, however, he had broken with the movement to apply a more disciplined, formal technique to portraits and figure paintings, particularly of women, such as The Bathers, which was created during 1884â87. It was a trip to Italy in 1881, when he saw works by Raphael and other Renaissance masters, that convinced him that he was on the wrong path, and for the next several years he painted in a more severe style, in an attempt to return to classicism. Clark, Kenneth: The Nude, pages 154â61. Penguin, 1960. This is sometimes called his "Ingres period", as he concentrated on his drawing and emphasized the outlines of figures. Asked late in life if he felt an affinity to Ingres, he responded: "I should very much like to". Rey, quoted in Wadley, page 336.
After 1890, however, he changed direction again, returning to the use of thinly brushed color which dissolved outlines as in his earlier work. From this period onward he concentrated especially on monumental nudes and domestic scenes, fine examples of which are Girls at the Piano, 1892, and Grandes Baigneuses, 1918â19. The latter painting is the most typical and successful of Renoir's late, abundantly fleshed nudes. " For me, Renoir becomes a really great artist in the late nudes, above all in Les Grandes Baigneuses". David Sylvester, quoted by Wadley, page 378.
A prolific artist, he made several thousand paintings. The warm sensuality of Renoir's style made his paintings some of the most well-known and frequently-reproduced works in the history of art. The single largest collection of his worksâ181 paintings in allâis at the Barnes Foundation, near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
In 1919, Ambroise Vollard, a renowned art dealer, published a book on the life and work of Renoir, La Vie et Oeuvre de Pierre Auguste Renoir, in an edition of 1000 copies. In 1986, Vollard's heirs started reprinting the copper plates, generally etchings with hand applied watercolor. These prints are signed by Renoir in the plate and are embossed âVollardâ in the lower margin. They are unnumbered, undated and not signed in pencil.
Two of Renoir's paintings have sold for more than US$70 million. Bal du moulin de la Galette sold for $78.1 million in 1990.
*History of painting
*Western painting
Image:Renoir11.jpg|La Grenouillère, 1868, National Museum, Stockholm, Sweden
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 110.jpg|Portrait of Alfred Sisley, 1868
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 083.jpg|Claude Monet Painting in His Garden at Argenteuil, 1873, Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford, Connecticut
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 112.jpg|Portrait of Claude Monet, 1875, Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 094.jpg|Mme. Charpentier and her children, 1878, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir - By the Water.jpg|By the Water, 1880, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
Image:Dejeuner-canotiers.jpg|Luncheon of the Boating Party, 1880â1881, The Phillips Collection Washington, DC
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 107.jpg|Portrait of Charles and Georges Durand-Ruel, 1882
File:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 019.jpg|Dance in the City, 1882â1883, Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France
Image:Auguste Renoir - La danse à la campagne.jpg|Dance in the Country (Aline Charigot and Paul Lhote), 1883, Musée d'Orsay, Paris
File:Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Study for 'Dance in the Country', pencil, 1883.jpg|Pencil study for Dance in the Country 1883, Honolulu Academy of Arts
File:Renoir16.jpg|Children at the Beach at Guernsey, 1883, Barnes Foundation Merion, Pennsylvania
File:Pierre-Auguste Renoir - In the Garden.jpg|In the Garden, 1885, Hermitage St. Petersburg
Image:Girl with a hoop.jpg|Girl With a Hoop, 1885
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Girl Braiding Her Hair (Suzanne Valadon).jpg|Girl Braiding Her Hair (Suzanne Valadon), 1885
Image:Pierre Auguste Renoir - Portrait Berthe Morisot and daughter Julie.jpg|Portrait of Berthe Morisot and daughter Julie Manet, 1894
Image:Pierre Auguste Renoir La famille d artiste.jpg|The Artist's Family, 1896, The Barnes Foundation, Merion, Pennsylvania
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 106.jpg|Portrait of Ambroise Vollard, 1908
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 113.jpg|Portrait of Paul Durand-Ruel, 1910
Image:Renoir Self-Portrait 1910.jpg|Self-portrait, 1910
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 020.jpg|Diana the Huntress, 1867, The National Gallery of Art Washington, DC
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 002.jpg|Nude In The Sun, 1875, Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France
Image:Renoir15.jpg|Seating Girl, 1883
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 021.jpg|The Large Bathers, 1887, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pa.
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 085.jpg|After The Bath, 1888
Image:Renoir26.jpg|Three Bathers, 1895, Cleveland Museum of Art Cleveland, Ohio
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Femme nue couchée (Gabrielle).jpg|Woman on a Couch (Gabrielle), 1906â1907
Image:Renoir18.jpg|After The Bath, 1910, Barnes Foundation, Merion Pennsylvania
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 030.jpg|Woman At The Well, 1910
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Baigneuse assise s'essuyant une jambe.jpg|Seated Bather Drying Her Leg, 1914, Musee de l'Orangerie, Paris, France
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 009.jpg|Women Bathers, 1916, National Museum, Stockholm, Sweden
Image:Pierre Auguste Renoir Les baigneuses.jpg|Bathers, 1918, Barnes Foundation, Merion Pennsylvania
*Mademoiselle Romaine Lacaux (1864)
*La Promenade (1870)
*Monet Painting in His Garden at Argenteuil (1873)
*La Loge (1874)
*Woman with Fan (1875)
*The Swing (1876)
*Lunch at the Restaurant Fournaise (The Rowers' Lunch) (1875)
*Girl with a Watering Can (1876)
*Bal du moulin de la Galette (1876)
*Nude in the Sunlight (1876)
*Madame Charpentier and Her Children (1878)
*Jeanne Samary (1879)
*Acrobats at the Cirque Fernando (Francisca and Angelina Wartenberg) (1879)
*Two Women with Umbrellas (1879)
*On the Terrace (1881)
*Luncheon of the Boating Party (1881)
*The Piazza San Marco, Venice (1881)
*Blonde Bather (1881)
*Alice and Elisabeth Cahen d'Anvers (Pink and Blue) (1881)
*By the Seashore (1883)
*Umbrellas (1883)
*Dance at Bougival (1883)
*Fog at Guernsey (1883)
*Children on the Sea Shore in Guernsey (1883)
*The Bay of Moulin Huet Seen Through the Trees (1883)
*Girl with a Hoop (1885)
*Bathers (1887)
*The Bather (After the Bath) (1888)
*Young Girl with Daisies (1889)
*In the Meadow (1890)
*The Apple Sellers (1890)
*Two Girls at the Piano (1892)
*Vase of Chrysanthemums (1895)
*Coco (1905)
*Standing Bather (1906)
*Nude (1910)
*The Farm at Les Collettes, Cagnes (1908â1914)
*The Concert (1918)
*
*
*
*
*
*
*Gabrielle Renard â Renoir family's nanny
*Jean Renoir â This legendary director was the second son of Renoir
* Renoir at biography.com
* How Renoir Coped with Rheumatoid Arthritis article in British Medical Journal by Boonen A. et al.
* The Story Behind the Masterpiece... The Luncheon of the Boating Party
* Suburban Pastoral, The Guardian, 24 Feb 2007
*
* Pierre-Auguste Renoir paintings, media & interactive timeline
|
Pierre-Auguste_Renoir | What happened in 1887? | In 1887, a year when Queen Victoria celebrated her Golden Jubilee, and upon the request of the queen's associate, Phillip Richbourg, he donated several paintings to the "French Impressionist Paintings" catalog as a token of his loyalty. | data/set6/a5 | Pierre-Auguste_Renoir
Pierre-Auguste Renoir (February 25, 1841 December 3, 1919) was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty, and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "Renoir is the final representative of a tradition which runs directly from Rubens to Watteau". Read, Herbert: The Meaning of Art, page 127. Faber, 1931.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir was born in Limoges, Haute-Vienne, France, the child of a working class family. As a boy, he worked in a porcelain factory where his drawing talents led to him being chosen to paint designs on fine china. Renoir, Jean: Renoir, My Father, pages 57â67. Collins, 1962. He also painted hangings for overseas missionaries and decorations on fans before he enrolled in art school. Vollard, Ambroise: Renoir, An Intimate Record, pages 24â29. Knopf, 1925. During those early years, he often visited the Louvre to study the French master painters.
The Theater Box, 1874 by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Courtauld Institute Galleries, London
In 1862 he began studying art under Charles Gleyre in Paris. There he met Alfred Sisley, Frédéric Bazille, and Claude Monet. Vollard, page 30. At times during the 1860s, he did not have enough money to buy paint. Although Renoir first started exhibiting paintings at the Paris Salon in 1864, Wadley, Nicholas: Renoir, A Retrospective, page 15. Park Lane, 1989. recognition did not come for another ten years, due, in part, to the turmoil of the Franco-Prussian War.
During the Paris Commune in 1871, while he painted on the banks of the Seine River, some members of a commune group thought he was a spy, and were about to throw him into the river when a commune leader, Raoul Rigault, recognized Renoir as the man who had protected him on an earlier occasion. Renoir, Jean, pages 118â21. Different and less life-threatening versions are offered by Paul Valéry and Vollard. In all accounts, however, their re-acquaintance led to great celebration.
In 1874, a ten-year friendship with Jules Le Coeur and his family ended, Wadley, page 15. and Renoir lost not only the valuable support gained by the association, but a generous welcome to stay on their property near Fontainebleau and its scenic forest.
This loss of a favorite painting location resulted in a distinct change of subjects.
Renoir experienced his initial acclaim when six of his paintings hung in the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874. In the same year two of his works were shown with Durand-Ruel in London.
The Swing (La Balançoire), 1876, oil on canvas, Musée d'Orsay, Paris
In 1881, he traveled to Algeria, a country he associated with Eugène Delacroix, Poulet, A. L., & Murphy, A. R. (1979). Corot to Braque: French Paintings from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, page 117. Boston: The Museum. ISBN 0-87846-134-5. then to Madrid, to see the work of Diego Velázquez. Following that he traveled to Italy to see Titian's masterpieces in Florence and the paintings of Raphael in Rome. On January 15, 1882 Renoir met the composer Richard Wagner at his home in Palermo, Sicily. Renoir painted Wagner's portrait in just thirty-five minutes. In the same year, Renoir convalesced for six weeks in Algeria after contracting pneumonia, which would cause permanent damage to his respiratory system. Wadley, page 25.
In 1883, he spent the summer in Guernsey, creating fifteen paintings in little over a month. Most of these feature Moulin Huet, a bay in Saint Martin's, Guernsey. Guernsey is one of the Channel Islands in the English Channel, and it has a varied landscape which includes beaches, cliffs, bays, forests, and mountains. These paintings were the subject of a set of commemorative postage stamps issued by the Bailiwick of Guernsey in 1983.
While living and working in Montmartre, Renoir employed as a model Suzanne Valadon, who posed for him (The Bathers, 1885â87; Dance at Bougival, 1883) Wadley, pages 371, 374. and many of his fellow painters while studying their techniques; eventually she became one of the leading painters of the day.
In 1887, a year when Queen Victoria celebrated her Golden Jubilee, and upon the request of the queen's associate, Phillip Richbourg, he donated several paintings to the "French Impressionist Paintings" catalog as a token of his loyalty.
In 1890 he married Aline Victorine Charigot, who, along with a number of the artist's friends, had already served as a model for Les Déjeuner des canotiers (Luncheon of the Boating Party, 1881), and with whom he already had a child, Pierre, in 1885. After his marriage Renoir painted many scenes of his wife and daily family life, including their children and their nurse, Aline's cousin Gabrielle Renard. The Renoirs had three sons, one of whom, Jean, became a filmmaker of note and another, Pierre, became a stage and film actor.
Girls at the Piano, 1892, by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
Around 1892, Renoir developed rheumatoid arthritis. In 1907, he moved to the warmer climate of "Les Collettes," a farm at Cagnes-sur-Mer, close to the Mediterranean coast. Wadley, page 28. Renoir painted during the last twenty years of his life, even when arthritis severely limited his movement, and he was wheelchair-bound. He developed progressive deformities in his hands and ankylosis of his right shoulder, requiring him to adapt his painting technique. It has often been reported that in the advanced stages of his arthritis, he painted by having a brush strapped to his paralyzed fingers, André, Albert: Renoir. Crés, 1928. but this is erroneous; Renoir remained able to grasp a brush, although he required an assistant to place it in his hand. Boonen, A.; van de Rest, J.; Dequeker, J.; van der Linden, S.: "How Renoir Coped with Rheumatoid Arthritis". British Medical Journal, 1997:315:1704 1708. The wrapping of his hands with bandages, apparent in late photographs of the artist, served to prevent skin irritation.
During this period he created sculptures by cooperating with a young artist, Richard Guino, who worked the clay. Renoir also used a moving canvas, or picture roll, to facilitate painting large works with his limited joint mobility.
In 1919, Renoir visited the Louvre to see his paintings hanging with the old masters. He died in the village of Cagnes-sur-Mer, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, on December 3.
250px
Renoir's paintings are notable for their vibrant light and saturated color, most often focusing on people in intimate and candid compositions. The female nude was one of his primary subjects. In characteristic Impressionist style, Renoir suggested the details of a scene through freely brushed touches of color, so that his figures softly fuse with one another and their surroundings.
His initial paintings show the influence of the colorism of Eugène Delacroix and the luminosity of Camille Corot. He also admired the realism of Gustave Courbet and Ãdouard Manet, and his early work resembles theirs in his use of black as a color. As well, Renoir admired Edgar Degas' sense of movement. Another painter Renoir greatly admired was the 18th century master François Boucher. Rey, Robert: La Renaissance du Sentiment Classique, Les Beaux Arts, 1931.
A fine example of Renoir's early work, and evidence of the influence of Courbet's realism, is Diana, 1867. Ostensibly a mythological subject, the painting is a naturalistic studio work, the figure carefully observed, solidly modeled, and superimposed upon a contrived landscape. If the work is still a 'student' piece, already Renoir's heightened personal response to female sensuality is present. The model was Lise Tréhot, then the artist's mistress and inspiration for a number of paintings. "From the Tour: Mary Cassatt", August Renoir. Accessed March 07, 2007.
In the late 1860s, through the practice of painting light and water en plein air (in the open air), he and his friend Claude Monet discovered that the color of shadows is not brown or black, but the reflected color of the objects surrounding them. Several pairs of paintings exist in which Renoir and Monet, working side-by-side, depicted the same scenes (La Grenouillère, 1869). Image:Renoir11.jpg â Wikimedia Commons at commons.wikimedia.org Image:Claude Monet La Grenouillére.jpg â Wikimedia Commons at commons.wikimedia.org
One of the best known Impressionist works is Renoir's 1876 Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette (Bal du moulin de la Galette). The painting depicts an open-air scene, crowded with people, at a popular dance garden on the Butte Montmartre, close to where he lived.On the Terrace, oil on canvas, 1881, Art Institute of Chicago
The works of his early maturity were typically Impressionist snapshots of real life, full of sparkling colour and light. By the mid 1880s, however, he had broken with the movement to apply a more disciplined, formal technique to portraits and figure paintings, particularly of women, such as The Bathers, which was created during 1884â87. It was a trip to Italy in 1881, when he saw works by Raphael and other Renaissance masters, that convinced him that he was on the wrong path, and for the next several years he painted in a more severe style, in an attempt to return to classicism. Clark, Kenneth: The Nude, pages 154â61. Penguin, 1960. This is sometimes called his "Ingres period", as he concentrated on his drawing and emphasized the outlines of figures. Asked late in life if he felt an affinity to Ingres, he responded: "I should very much like to". Rey, quoted in Wadley, page 336.
After 1890, however, he changed direction again, returning to the use of thinly brushed color which dissolved outlines as in his earlier work. From this period onward he concentrated especially on monumental nudes and domestic scenes, fine examples of which are Girls at the Piano, 1892, and Grandes Baigneuses, 1918â19. The latter painting is the most typical and successful of Renoir's late, abundantly fleshed nudes. " For me, Renoir becomes a really great artist in the late nudes, above all in Les Grandes Baigneuses". David Sylvester, quoted by Wadley, page 378.
A prolific artist, he made several thousand paintings. The warm sensuality of Renoir's style made his paintings some of the most well-known and frequently-reproduced works in the history of art. The single largest collection of his worksâ181 paintings in allâis at the Barnes Foundation, near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
In 1919, Ambroise Vollard, a renowned art dealer, published a book on the life and work of Renoir, La Vie et Oeuvre de Pierre Auguste Renoir, in an edition of 1000 copies. In 1986, Vollard's heirs started reprinting the copper plates, generally etchings with hand applied watercolor. These prints are signed by Renoir in the plate and are embossed âVollardâ in the lower margin. They are unnumbered, undated and not signed in pencil.
Two of Renoir's paintings have sold for more than US$70 million. Bal du moulin de la Galette sold for $78.1 million in 1990.
*History of painting
*Western painting
Image:Renoir11.jpg|La Grenouillère, 1868, National Museum, Stockholm, Sweden
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 110.jpg|Portrait of Alfred Sisley, 1868
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 083.jpg|Claude Monet Painting in His Garden at Argenteuil, 1873, Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford, Connecticut
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 112.jpg|Portrait of Claude Monet, 1875, Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 094.jpg|Mme. Charpentier and her children, 1878, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir - By the Water.jpg|By the Water, 1880, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
Image:Dejeuner-canotiers.jpg|Luncheon of the Boating Party, 1880â1881, The Phillips Collection Washington, DC
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 107.jpg|Portrait of Charles and Georges Durand-Ruel, 1882
File:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 019.jpg|Dance in the City, 1882â1883, Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France
Image:Auguste Renoir - La danse à la campagne.jpg|Dance in the Country (Aline Charigot and Paul Lhote), 1883, Musée d'Orsay, Paris
File:Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Study for 'Dance in the Country', pencil, 1883.jpg|Pencil study for Dance in the Country 1883, Honolulu Academy of Arts
File:Renoir16.jpg|Children at the Beach at Guernsey, 1883, Barnes Foundation Merion, Pennsylvania
File:Pierre-Auguste Renoir - In the Garden.jpg|In the Garden, 1885, Hermitage St. Petersburg
Image:Girl with a hoop.jpg|Girl With a Hoop, 1885
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Girl Braiding Her Hair (Suzanne Valadon).jpg|Girl Braiding Her Hair (Suzanne Valadon), 1885
Image:Pierre Auguste Renoir - Portrait Berthe Morisot and daughter Julie.jpg|Portrait of Berthe Morisot and daughter Julie Manet, 1894
Image:Pierre Auguste Renoir La famille d artiste.jpg|The Artist's Family, 1896, The Barnes Foundation, Merion, Pennsylvania
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 106.jpg|Portrait of Ambroise Vollard, 1908
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 113.jpg|Portrait of Paul Durand-Ruel, 1910
Image:Renoir Self-Portrait 1910.jpg|Self-portrait, 1910
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 020.jpg|Diana the Huntress, 1867, The National Gallery of Art Washington, DC
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 002.jpg|Nude In The Sun, 1875, Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France
Image:Renoir15.jpg|Seating Girl, 1883
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 021.jpg|The Large Bathers, 1887, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pa.
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 085.jpg|After The Bath, 1888
Image:Renoir26.jpg|Three Bathers, 1895, Cleveland Museum of Art Cleveland, Ohio
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Femme nue couchée (Gabrielle).jpg|Woman on a Couch (Gabrielle), 1906â1907
Image:Renoir18.jpg|After The Bath, 1910, Barnes Foundation, Merion Pennsylvania
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 030.jpg|Woman At The Well, 1910
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Baigneuse assise s'essuyant une jambe.jpg|Seated Bather Drying Her Leg, 1914, Musee de l'Orangerie, Paris, France
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 009.jpg|Women Bathers, 1916, National Museum, Stockholm, Sweden
Image:Pierre Auguste Renoir Les baigneuses.jpg|Bathers, 1918, Barnes Foundation, Merion Pennsylvania
*Mademoiselle Romaine Lacaux (1864)
*La Promenade (1870)
*Monet Painting in His Garden at Argenteuil (1873)
*La Loge (1874)
*Woman with Fan (1875)
*The Swing (1876)
*Lunch at the Restaurant Fournaise (The Rowers' Lunch) (1875)
*Girl with a Watering Can (1876)
*Bal du moulin de la Galette (1876)
*Nude in the Sunlight (1876)
*Madame Charpentier and Her Children (1878)
*Jeanne Samary (1879)
*Acrobats at the Cirque Fernando (Francisca and Angelina Wartenberg) (1879)
*Two Women with Umbrellas (1879)
*On the Terrace (1881)
*Luncheon of the Boating Party (1881)
*The Piazza San Marco, Venice (1881)
*Blonde Bather (1881)
*Alice and Elisabeth Cahen d'Anvers (Pink and Blue) (1881)
*By the Seashore (1883)
*Umbrellas (1883)
*Dance at Bougival (1883)
*Fog at Guernsey (1883)
*Children on the Sea Shore in Guernsey (1883)
*The Bay of Moulin Huet Seen Through the Trees (1883)
*Girl with a Hoop (1885)
*Bathers (1887)
*The Bather (After the Bath) (1888)
*Young Girl with Daisies (1889)
*In the Meadow (1890)
*The Apple Sellers (1890)
*Two Girls at the Piano (1892)
*Vase of Chrysanthemums (1895)
*Coco (1905)
*Standing Bather (1906)
*Nude (1910)
*The Farm at Les Collettes, Cagnes (1908â1914)
*The Concert (1918)
*
*
*
*
*
*
*Gabrielle Renard â Renoir family's nanny
*Jean Renoir â This legendary director was the second son of Renoir
* Renoir at biography.com
* How Renoir Coped with Rheumatoid Arthritis article in British Medical Journal by Boonen A. et al.
* The Story Behind the Masterpiece... The Luncheon of the Boating Party
* Suburban Pastoral, The Guardian, 24 Feb 2007
*
* Pierre-Auguste Renoir paintings, media & interactive timeline
|
Pierre-Auguste_Renoir | Is one of the best known Impressionist works Renoirs 1876 Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette? | Yes. | data/set6/a5 | Pierre-Auguste_Renoir
Pierre-Auguste Renoir (February 25, 1841 December 3, 1919) was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty, and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "Renoir is the final representative of a tradition which runs directly from Rubens to Watteau". Read, Herbert: The Meaning of Art, page 127. Faber, 1931.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir was born in Limoges, Haute-Vienne, France, the child of a working class family. As a boy, he worked in a porcelain factory where his drawing talents led to him being chosen to paint designs on fine china. Renoir, Jean: Renoir, My Father, pages 57â67. Collins, 1962. He also painted hangings for overseas missionaries and decorations on fans before he enrolled in art school. Vollard, Ambroise: Renoir, An Intimate Record, pages 24â29. Knopf, 1925. During those early years, he often visited the Louvre to study the French master painters.
The Theater Box, 1874 by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Courtauld Institute Galleries, London
In 1862 he began studying art under Charles Gleyre in Paris. There he met Alfred Sisley, Frédéric Bazille, and Claude Monet. Vollard, page 30. At times during the 1860s, he did not have enough money to buy paint. Although Renoir first started exhibiting paintings at the Paris Salon in 1864, Wadley, Nicholas: Renoir, A Retrospective, page 15. Park Lane, 1989. recognition did not come for another ten years, due, in part, to the turmoil of the Franco-Prussian War.
During the Paris Commune in 1871, while he painted on the banks of the Seine River, some members of a commune group thought he was a spy, and were about to throw him into the river when a commune leader, Raoul Rigault, recognized Renoir as the man who had protected him on an earlier occasion. Renoir, Jean, pages 118â21. Different and less life-threatening versions are offered by Paul Valéry and Vollard. In all accounts, however, their re-acquaintance led to great celebration.
In 1874, a ten-year friendship with Jules Le Coeur and his family ended, Wadley, page 15. and Renoir lost not only the valuable support gained by the association, but a generous welcome to stay on their property near Fontainebleau and its scenic forest.
This loss of a favorite painting location resulted in a distinct change of subjects.
Renoir experienced his initial acclaim when six of his paintings hung in the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874. In the same year two of his works were shown with Durand-Ruel in London.
The Swing (La Balançoire), 1876, oil on canvas, Musée d'Orsay, Paris
In 1881, he traveled to Algeria, a country he associated with Eugène Delacroix, Poulet, A. L., & Murphy, A. R. (1979). Corot to Braque: French Paintings from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, page 117. Boston: The Museum. ISBN 0-87846-134-5. then to Madrid, to see the work of Diego Velázquez. Following that he traveled to Italy to see Titian's masterpieces in Florence and the paintings of Raphael in Rome. On January 15, 1882 Renoir met the composer Richard Wagner at his home in Palermo, Sicily. Renoir painted Wagner's portrait in just thirty-five minutes. In the same year, Renoir convalesced for six weeks in Algeria after contracting pneumonia, which would cause permanent damage to his respiratory system. Wadley, page 25.
In 1883, he spent the summer in Guernsey, creating fifteen paintings in little over a month. Most of these feature Moulin Huet, a bay in Saint Martin's, Guernsey. Guernsey is one of the Channel Islands in the English Channel, and it has a varied landscape which includes beaches, cliffs, bays, forests, and mountains. These paintings were the subject of a set of commemorative postage stamps issued by the Bailiwick of Guernsey in 1983.
While living and working in Montmartre, Renoir employed as a model Suzanne Valadon, who posed for him (The Bathers, 1885â87; Dance at Bougival, 1883) Wadley, pages 371, 374. and many of his fellow painters while studying their techniques; eventually she became one of the leading painters of the day.
In 1887, a year when Queen Victoria celebrated her Golden Jubilee, and upon the request of the queen's associate, Phillip Richbourg, he donated several paintings to the "French Impressionist Paintings" catalog as a token of his loyalty.
In 1890 he married Aline Victorine Charigot, who, along with a number of the artist's friends, had already served as a model for Les Déjeuner des canotiers (Luncheon of the Boating Party, 1881), and with whom he already had a child, Pierre, in 1885. After his marriage Renoir painted many scenes of his wife and daily family life, including their children and their nurse, Aline's cousin Gabrielle Renard. The Renoirs had three sons, one of whom, Jean, became a filmmaker of note and another, Pierre, became a stage and film actor.
Girls at the Piano, 1892, by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
Around 1892, Renoir developed rheumatoid arthritis. In 1907, he moved to the warmer climate of "Les Collettes," a farm at Cagnes-sur-Mer, close to the Mediterranean coast. Wadley, page 28. Renoir painted during the last twenty years of his life, even when arthritis severely limited his movement, and he was wheelchair-bound. He developed progressive deformities in his hands and ankylosis of his right shoulder, requiring him to adapt his painting technique. It has often been reported that in the advanced stages of his arthritis, he painted by having a brush strapped to his paralyzed fingers, André, Albert: Renoir. Crés, 1928. but this is erroneous; Renoir remained able to grasp a brush, although he required an assistant to place it in his hand. Boonen, A.; van de Rest, J.; Dequeker, J.; van der Linden, S.: "How Renoir Coped with Rheumatoid Arthritis". British Medical Journal, 1997:315:1704 1708. The wrapping of his hands with bandages, apparent in late photographs of the artist, served to prevent skin irritation.
During this period he created sculptures by cooperating with a young artist, Richard Guino, who worked the clay. Renoir also used a moving canvas, or picture roll, to facilitate painting large works with his limited joint mobility.
In 1919, Renoir visited the Louvre to see his paintings hanging with the old masters. He died in the village of Cagnes-sur-Mer, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, on December 3.
250px
Renoir's paintings are notable for their vibrant light and saturated color, most often focusing on people in intimate and candid compositions. The female nude was one of his primary subjects. In characteristic Impressionist style, Renoir suggested the details of a scene through freely brushed touches of color, so that his figures softly fuse with one another and their surroundings.
His initial paintings show the influence of the colorism of Eugène Delacroix and the luminosity of Camille Corot. He also admired the realism of Gustave Courbet and Ãdouard Manet, and his early work resembles theirs in his use of black as a color. As well, Renoir admired Edgar Degas' sense of movement. Another painter Renoir greatly admired was the 18th century master François Boucher. Rey, Robert: La Renaissance du Sentiment Classique, Les Beaux Arts, 1931.
A fine example of Renoir's early work, and evidence of the influence of Courbet's realism, is Diana, 1867. Ostensibly a mythological subject, the painting is a naturalistic studio work, the figure carefully observed, solidly modeled, and superimposed upon a contrived landscape. If the work is still a 'student' piece, already Renoir's heightened personal response to female sensuality is present. The model was Lise Tréhot, then the artist's mistress and inspiration for a number of paintings. "From the Tour: Mary Cassatt", August Renoir. Accessed March 07, 2007.
In the late 1860s, through the practice of painting light and water en plein air (in the open air), he and his friend Claude Monet discovered that the color of shadows is not brown or black, but the reflected color of the objects surrounding them. Several pairs of paintings exist in which Renoir and Monet, working side-by-side, depicted the same scenes (La Grenouillère, 1869). Image:Renoir11.jpg â Wikimedia Commons at commons.wikimedia.org Image:Claude Monet La Grenouillére.jpg â Wikimedia Commons at commons.wikimedia.org
One of the best known Impressionist works is Renoir's 1876 Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette (Bal du moulin de la Galette). The painting depicts an open-air scene, crowded with people, at a popular dance garden on the Butte Montmartre, close to where he lived.On the Terrace, oil on canvas, 1881, Art Institute of Chicago
The works of his early maturity were typically Impressionist snapshots of real life, full of sparkling colour and light. By the mid 1880s, however, he had broken with the movement to apply a more disciplined, formal technique to portraits and figure paintings, particularly of women, such as The Bathers, which was created during 1884â87. It was a trip to Italy in 1881, when he saw works by Raphael and other Renaissance masters, that convinced him that he was on the wrong path, and for the next several years he painted in a more severe style, in an attempt to return to classicism. Clark, Kenneth: The Nude, pages 154â61. Penguin, 1960. This is sometimes called his "Ingres period", as he concentrated on his drawing and emphasized the outlines of figures. Asked late in life if he felt an affinity to Ingres, he responded: "I should very much like to". Rey, quoted in Wadley, page 336.
After 1890, however, he changed direction again, returning to the use of thinly brushed color which dissolved outlines as in his earlier work. From this period onward he concentrated especially on monumental nudes and domestic scenes, fine examples of which are Girls at the Piano, 1892, and Grandes Baigneuses, 1918â19. The latter painting is the most typical and successful of Renoir's late, abundantly fleshed nudes. " For me, Renoir becomes a really great artist in the late nudes, above all in Les Grandes Baigneuses". David Sylvester, quoted by Wadley, page 378.
A prolific artist, he made several thousand paintings. The warm sensuality of Renoir's style made his paintings some of the most well-known and frequently-reproduced works in the history of art. The single largest collection of his worksâ181 paintings in allâis at the Barnes Foundation, near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
In 1919, Ambroise Vollard, a renowned art dealer, published a book on the life and work of Renoir, La Vie et Oeuvre de Pierre Auguste Renoir, in an edition of 1000 copies. In 1986, Vollard's heirs started reprinting the copper plates, generally etchings with hand applied watercolor. These prints are signed by Renoir in the plate and are embossed âVollardâ in the lower margin. They are unnumbered, undated and not signed in pencil.
Two of Renoir's paintings have sold for more than US$70 million. Bal du moulin de la Galette sold for $78.1 million in 1990.
*History of painting
*Western painting
Image:Renoir11.jpg|La Grenouillère, 1868, National Museum, Stockholm, Sweden
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 110.jpg|Portrait of Alfred Sisley, 1868
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 083.jpg|Claude Monet Painting in His Garden at Argenteuil, 1873, Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford, Connecticut
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 112.jpg|Portrait of Claude Monet, 1875, Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 094.jpg|Mme. Charpentier and her children, 1878, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir - By the Water.jpg|By the Water, 1880, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
Image:Dejeuner-canotiers.jpg|Luncheon of the Boating Party, 1880â1881, The Phillips Collection Washington, DC
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 107.jpg|Portrait of Charles and Georges Durand-Ruel, 1882
File:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 019.jpg|Dance in the City, 1882â1883, Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France
Image:Auguste Renoir - La danse à la campagne.jpg|Dance in the Country (Aline Charigot and Paul Lhote), 1883, Musée d'Orsay, Paris
File:Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Study for 'Dance in the Country', pencil, 1883.jpg|Pencil study for Dance in the Country 1883, Honolulu Academy of Arts
File:Renoir16.jpg|Children at the Beach at Guernsey, 1883, Barnes Foundation Merion, Pennsylvania
File:Pierre-Auguste Renoir - In the Garden.jpg|In the Garden, 1885, Hermitage St. Petersburg
Image:Girl with a hoop.jpg|Girl With a Hoop, 1885
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Girl Braiding Her Hair (Suzanne Valadon).jpg|Girl Braiding Her Hair (Suzanne Valadon), 1885
Image:Pierre Auguste Renoir - Portrait Berthe Morisot and daughter Julie.jpg|Portrait of Berthe Morisot and daughter Julie Manet, 1894
Image:Pierre Auguste Renoir La famille d artiste.jpg|The Artist's Family, 1896, The Barnes Foundation, Merion, Pennsylvania
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 106.jpg|Portrait of Ambroise Vollard, 1908
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 113.jpg|Portrait of Paul Durand-Ruel, 1910
Image:Renoir Self-Portrait 1910.jpg|Self-portrait, 1910
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 020.jpg|Diana the Huntress, 1867, The National Gallery of Art Washington, DC
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 002.jpg|Nude In The Sun, 1875, Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France
Image:Renoir15.jpg|Seating Girl, 1883
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 021.jpg|The Large Bathers, 1887, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pa.
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 085.jpg|After The Bath, 1888
Image:Renoir26.jpg|Three Bathers, 1895, Cleveland Museum of Art Cleveland, Ohio
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Femme nue couchée (Gabrielle).jpg|Woman on a Couch (Gabrielle), 1906â1907
Image:Renoir18.jpg|After The Bath, 1910, Barnes Foundation, Merion Pennsylvania
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 030.jpg|Woman At The Well, 1910
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Baigneuse assise s'essuyant une jambe.jpg|Seated Bather Drying Her Leg, 1914, Musee de l'Orangerie, Paris, France
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 009.jpg|Women Bathers, 1916, National Museum, Stockholm, Sweden
Image:Pierre Auguste Renoir Les baigneuses.jpg|Bathers, 1918, Barnes Foundation, Merion Pennsylvania
*Mademoiselle Romaine Lacaux (1864)
*La Promenade (1870)
*Monet Painting in His Garden at Argenteuil (1873)
*La Loge (1874)
*Woman with Fan (1875)
*The Swing (1876)
*Lunch at the Restaurant Fournaise (The Rowers' Lunch) (1875)
*Girl with a Watering Can (1876)
*Bal du moulin de la Galette (1876)
*Nude in the Sunlight (1876)
*Madame Charpentier and Her Children (1878)
*Jeanne Samary (1879)
*Acrobats at the Cirque Fernando (Francisca and Angelina Wartenberg) (1879)
*Two Women with Umbrellas (1879)
*On the Terrace (1881)
*Luncheon of the Boating Party (1881)
*The Piazza San Marco, Venice (1881)
*Blonde Bather (1881)
*Alice and Elisabeth Cahen d'Anvers (Pink and Blue) (1881)
*By the Seashore (1883)
*Umbrellas (1883)
*Dance at Bougival (1883)
*Fog at Guernsey (1883)
*Children on the Sea Shore in Guernsey (1883)
*The Bay of Moulin Huet Seen Through the Trees (1883)
*Girl with a Hoop (1885)
*Bathers (1887)
*The Bather (After the Bath) (1888)
*Young Girl with Daisies (1889)
*In the Meadow (1890)
*The Apple Sellers (1890)
*Two Girls at the Piano (1892)
*Vase of Chrysanthemums (1895)
*Coco (1905)
*Standing Bather (1906)
*Nude (1910)
*The Farm at Les Collettes, Cagnes (1908â1914)
*The Concert (1918)
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*Gabrielle Renard â Renoir family's nanny
*Jean Renoir â This legendary director was the second son of Renoir
* Renoir at biography.com
* How Renoir Coped with Rheumatoid Arthritis article in British Medical Journal by Boonen A. et al.
* The Story Behind the Masterpiece... The Luncheon of the Boating Party
* Suburban Pastoral, The Guardian, 24 Feb 2007
*
* Pierre-Auguste Renoir paintings, media & interactive timeline
|
Pierre-Auguste_Renoir | Was Pierre-Auguste Renoir born in Limoges Haute-Vienne France the child of a working class family? | yes | data/set6/a5 | Pierre-Auguste_Renoir
Pierre-Auguste Renoir (February 25, 1841 December 3, 1919) was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty, and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "Renoir is the final representative of a tradition which runs directly from Rubens to Watteau". Read, Herbert: The Meaning of Art, page 127. Faber, 1931.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir was born in Limoges, Haute-Vienne, France, the child of a working class family. As a boy, he worked in a porcelain factory where his drawing talents led to him being chosen to paint designs on fine china. Renoir, Jean: Renoir, My Father, pages 57â67. Collins, 1962. He also painted hangings for overseas missionaries and decorations on fans before he enrolled in art school. Vollard, Ambroise: Renoir, An Intimate Record, pages 24â29. Knopf, 1925. During those early years, he often visited the Louvre to study the French master painters.
The Theater Box, 1874 by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Courtauld Institute Galleries, London
In 1862 he began studying art under Charles Gleyre in Paris. There he met Alfred Sisley, Frédéric Bazille, and Claude Monet. Vollard, page 30. At times during the 1860s, he did not have enough money to buy paint. Although Renoir first started exhibiting paintings at the Paris Salon in 1864, Wadley, Nicholas: Renoir, A Retrospective, page 15. Park Lane, 1989. recognition did not come for another ten years, due, in part, to the turmoil of the Franco-Prussian War.
During the Paris Commune in 1871, while he painted on the banks of the Seine River, some members of a commune group thought he was a spy, and were about to throw him into the river when a commune leader, Raoul Rigault, recognized Renoir as the man who had protected him on an earlier occasion. Renoir, Jean, pages 118â21. Different and less life-threatening versions are offered by Paul Valéry and Vollard. In all accounts, however, their re-acquaintance led to great celebration.
In 1874, a ten-year friendship with Jules Le Coeur and his family ended, Wadley, page 15. and Renoir lost not only the valuable support gained by the association, but a generous welcome to stay on their property near Fontainebleau and its scenic forest.
This loss of a favorite painting location resulted in a distinct change of subjects.
Renoir experienced his initial acclaim when six of his paintings hung in the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874. In the same year two of his works were shown with Durand-Ruel in London.
The Swing (La Balançoire), 1876, oil on canvas, Musée d'Orsay, Paris
In 1881, he traveled to Algeria, a country he associated with Eugène Delacroix, Poulet, A. L., & Murphy, A. R. (1979). Corot to Braque: French Paintings from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, page 117. Boston: The Museum. ISBN 0-87846-134-5. then to Madrid, to see the work of Diego Velázquez. Following that he traveled to Italy to see Titian's masterpieces in Florence and the paintings of Raphael in Rome. On January 15, 1882 Renoir met the composer Richard Wagner at his home in Palermo, Sicily. Renoir painted Wagner's portrait in just thirty-five minutes. In the same year, Renoir convalesced for six weeks in Algeria after contracting pneumonia, which would cause permanent damage to his respiratory system. Wadley, page 25.
In 1883, he spent the summer in Guernsey, creating fifteen paintings in little over a month. Most of these feature Moulin Huet, a bay in Saint Martin's, Guernsey. Guernsey is one of the Channel Islands in the English Channel, and it has a varied landscape which includes beaches, cliffs, bays, forests, and mountains. These paintings were the subject of a set of commemorative postage stamps issued by the Bailiwick of Guernsey in 1983.
While living and working in Montmartre, Renoir employed as a model Suzanne Valadon, who posed for him (The Bathers, 1885â87; Dance at Bougival, 1883) Wadley, pages 371, 374. and many of his fellow painters while studying their techniques; eventually she became one of the leading painters of the day.
In 1887, a year when Queen Victoria celebrated her Golden Jubilee, and upon the request of the queen's associate, Phillip Richbourg, he donated several paintings to the "French Impressionist Paintings" catalog as a token of his loyalty.
In 1890 he married Aline Victorine Charigot, who, along with a number of the artist's friends, had already served as a model for Les Déjeuner des canotiers (Luncheon of the Boating Party, 1881), and with whom he already had a child, Pierre, in 1885. After his marriage Renoir painted many scenes of his wife and daily family life, including their children and their nurse, Aline's cousin Gabrielle Renard. The Renoirs had three sons, one of whom, Jean, became a filmmaker of note and another, Pierre, became a stage and film actor.
Girls at the Piano, 1892, by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
Around 1892, Renoir developed rheumatoid arthritis. In 1907, he moved to the warmer climate of "Les Collettes," a farm at Cagnes-sur-Mer, close to the Mediterranean coast. Wadley, page 28. Renoir painted during the last twenty years of his life, even when arthritis severely limited his movement, and he was wheelchair-bound. He developed progressive deformities in his hands and ankylosis of his right shoulder, requiring him to adapt his painting technique. It has often been reported that in the advanced stages of his arthritis, he painted by having a brush strapped to his paralyzed fingers, André, Albert: Renoir. Crés, 1928. but this is erroneous; Renoir remained able to grasp a brush, although he required an assistant to place it in his hand. Boonen, A.; van de Rest, J.; Dequeker, J.; van der Linden, S.: "How Renoir Coped with Rheumatoid Arthritis". British Medical Journal, 1997:315:1704 1708. The wrapping of his hands with bandages, apparent in late photographs of the artist, served to prevent skin irritation.
During this period he created sculptures by cooperating with a young artist, Richard Guino, who worked the clay. Renoir also used a moving canvas, or picture roll, to facilitate painting large works with his limited joint mobility.
In 1919, Renoir visited the Louvre to see his paintings hanging with the old masters. He died in the village of Cagnes-sur-Mer, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, on December 3.
250px
Renoir's paintings are notable for their vibrant light and saturated color, most often focusing on people in intimate and candid compositions. The female nude was one of his primary subjects. In characteristic Impressionist style, Renoir suggested the details of a scene through freely brushed touches of color, so that his figures softly fuse with one another and their surroundings.
His initial paintings show the influence of the colorism of Eugène Delacroix and the luminosity of Camille Corot. He also admired the realism of Gustave Courbet and Ãdouard Manet, and his early work resembles theirs in his use of black as a color. As well, Renoir admired Edgar Degas' sense of movement. Another painter Renoir greatly admired was the 18th century master François Boucher. Rey, Robert: La Renaissance du Sentiment Classique, Les Beaux Arts, 1931.
A fine example of Renoir's early work, and evidence of the influence of Courbet's realism, is Diana, 1867. Ostensibly a mythological subject, the painting is a naturalistic studio work, the figure carefully observed, solidly modeled, and superimposed upon a contrived landscape. If the work is still a 'student' piece, already Renoir's heightened personal response to female sensuality is present. The model was Lise Tréhot, then the artist's mistress and inspiration for a number of paintings. "From the Tour: Mary Cassatt", August Renoir. Accessed March 07, 2007.
In the late 1860s, through the practice of painting light and water en plein air (in the open air), he and his friend Claude Monet discovered that the color of shadows is not brown or black, but the reflected color of the objects surrounding them. Several pairs of paintings exist in which Renoir and Monet, working side-by-side, depicted the same scenes (La Grenouillère, 1869). Image:Renoir11.jpg â Wikimedia Commons at commons.wikimedia.org Image:Claude Monet La Grenouillére.jpg â Wikimedia Commons at commons.wikimedia.org
One of the best known Impressionist works is Renoir's 1876 Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette (Bal du moulin de la Galette). The painting depicts an open-air scene, crowded with people, at a popular dance garden on the Butte Montmartre, close to where he lived.On the Terrace, oil on canvas, 1881, Art Institute of Chicago
The works of his early maturity were typically Impressionist snapshots of real life, full of sparkling colour and light. By the mid 1880s, however, he had broken with the movement to apply a more disciplined, formal technique to portraits and figure paintings, particularly of women, such as The Bathers, which was created during 1884â87. It was a trip to Italy in 1881, when he saw works by Raphael and other Renaissance masters, that convinced him that he was on the wrong path, and for the next several years he painted in a more severe style, in an attempt to return to classicism. Clark, Kenneth: The Nude, pages 154â61. Penguin, 1960. This is sometimes called his "Ingres period", as he concentrated on his drawing and emphasized the outlines of figures. Asked late in life if he felt an affinity to Ingres, he responded: "I should very much like to". Rey, quoted in Wadley, page 336.
After 1890, however, he changed direction again, returning to the use of thinly brushed color which dissolved outlines as in his earlier work. From this period onward he concentrated especially on monumental nudes and domestic scenes, fine examples of which are Girls at the Piano, 1892, and Grandes Baigneuses, 1918â19. The latter painting is the most typical and successful of Renoir's late, abundantly fleshed nudes. " For me, Renoir becomes a really great artist in the late nudes, above all in Les Grandes Baigneuses". David Sylvester, quoted by Wadley, page 378.
A prolific artist, he made several thousand paintings. The warm sensuality of Renoir's style made his paintings some of the most well-known and frequently-reproduced works in the history of art. The single largest collection of his worksâ181 paintings in allâis at the Barnes Foundation, near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
In 1919, Ambroise Vollard, a renowned art dealer, published a book on the life and work of Renoir, La Vie et Oeuvre de Pierre Auguste Renoir, in an edition of 1000 copies. In 1986, Vollard's heirs started reprinting the copper plates, generally etchings with hand applied watercolor. These prints are signed by Renoir in the plate and are embossed âVollardâ in the lower margin. They are unnumbered, undated and not signed in pencil.
Two of Renoir's paintings have sold for more than US$70 million. Bal du moulin de la Galette sold for $78.1 million in 1990.
*History of painting
*Western painting
Image:Renoir11.jpg|La Grenouillère, 1868, National Museum, Stockholm, Sweden
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 110.jpg|Portrait of Alfred Sisley, 1868
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 083.jpg|Claude Monet Painting in His Garden at Argenteuil, 1873, Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford, Connecticut
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 112.jpg|Portrait of Claude Monet, 1875, Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 094.jpg|Mme. Charpentier and her children, 1878, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir - By the Water.jpg|By the Water, 1880, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
Image:Dejeuner-canotiers.jpg|Luncheon of the Boating Party, 1880â1881, The Phillips Collection Washington, DC
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 107.jpg|Portrait of Charles and Georges Durand-Ruel, 1882
File:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 019.jpg|Dance in the City, 1882â1883, Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France
Image:Auguste Renoir - La danse à la campagne.jpg|Dance in the Country (Aline Charigot and Paul Lhote), 1883, Musée d'Orsay, Paris
File:Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Study for 'Dance in the Country', pencil, 1883.jpg|Pencil study for Dance in the Country 1883, Honolulu Academy of Arts
File:Renoir16.jpg|Children at the Beach at Guernsey, 1883, Barnes Foundation Merion, Pennsylvania
File:Pierre-Auguste Renoir - In the Garden.jpg|In the Garden, 1885, Hermitage St. Petersburg
Image:Girl with a hoop.jpg|Girl With a Hoop, 1885
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Girl Braiding Her Hair (Suzanne Valadon).jpg|Girl Braiding Her Hair (Suzanne Valadon), 1885
Image:Pierre Auguste Renoir - Portrait Berthe Morisot and daughter Julie.jpg|Portrait of Berthe Morisot and daughter Julie Manet, 1894
Image:Pierre Auguste Renoir La famille d artiste.jpg|The Artist's Family, 1896, The Barnes Foundation, Merion, Pennsylvania
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 106.jpg|Portrait of Ambroise Vollard, 1908
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 113.jpg|Portrait of Paul Durand-Ruel, 1910
Image:Renoir Self-Portrait 1910.jpg|Self-portrait, 1910
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 020.jpg|Diana the Huntress, 1867, The National Gallery of Art Washington, DC
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 002.jpg|Nude In The Sun, 1875, Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France
Image:Renoir15.jpg|Seating Girl, 1883
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 021.jpg|The Large Bathers, 1887, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pa.
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 085.jpg|After The Bath, 1888
Image:Renoir26.jpg|Three Bathers, 1895, Cleveland Museum of Art Cleveland, Ohio
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Femme nue couchée (Gabrielle).jpg|Woman on a Couch (Gabrielle), 1906â1907
Image:Renoir18.jpg|After The Bath, 1910, Barnes Foundation, Merion Pennsylvania
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 030.jpg|Woman At The Well, 1910
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Baigneuse assise s'essuyant une jambe.jpg|Seated Bather Drying Her Leg, 1914, Musee de l'Orangerie, Paris, France
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 009.jpg|Women Bathers, 1916, National Museum, Stockholm, Sweden
Image:Pierre Auguste Renoir Les baigneuses.jpg|Bathers, 1918, Barnes Foundation, Merion Pennsylvania
*Mademoiselle Romaine Lacaux (1864)
*La Promenade (1870)
*Monet Painting in His Garden at Argenteuil (1873)
*La Loge (1874)
*Woman with Fan (1875)
*The Swing (1876)
*Lunch at the Restaurant Fournaise (The Rowers' Lunch) (1875)
*Girl with a Watering Can (1876)
*Bal du moulin de la Galette (1876)
*Nude in the Sunlight (1876)
*Madame Charpentier and Her Children (1878)
*Jeanne Samary (1879)
*Acrobats at the Cirque Fernando (Francisca and Angelina Wartenberg) (1879)
*Two Women with Umbrellas (1879)
*On the Terrace (1881)
*Luncheon of the Boating Party (1881)
*The Piazza San Marco, Venice (1881)
*Blonde Bather (1881)
*Alice and Elisabeth Cahen d'Anvers (Pink and Blue) (1881)
*By the Seashore (1883)
*Umbrellas (1883)
*Dance at Bougival (1883)
*Fog at Guernsey (1883)
*Children on the Sea Shore in Guernsey (1883)
*The Bay of Moulin Huet Seen Through the Trees (1883)
*Girl with a Hoop (1885)
*Bathers (1887)
*The Bather (After the Bath) (1888)
*Young Girl with Daisies (1889)
*In the Meadow (1890)
*The Apple Sellers (1890)
*Two Girls at the Piano (1892)
*Vase of Chrysanthemums (1895)
*Coco (1905)
*Standing Bather (1906)
*Nude (1910)
*The Farm at Les Collettes, Cagnes (1908â1914)
*The Concert (1918)
*
*
*
*
*
*
*Gabrielle Renard â Renoir family's nanny
*Jean Renoir â This legendary director was the second son of Renoir
* Renoir at biography.com
* How Renoir Coped with Rheumatoid Arthritis article in British Medical Journal by Boonen A. et al.
* The Story Behind the Masterpiece... The Luncheon of the Boating Party
* Suburban Pastoral, The Guardian, 24 Feb 2007
*
* Pierre-Auguste Renoir paintings, media & interactive timeline
|
Pierre-Auguste_Renoir | Have two of Renoirs paintings sold for more than US0 million? | Yes (any painting sells for more than $0 million though...) | data/set6/a5 | Pierre-Auguste_Renoir
Pierre-Auguste Renoir (February 25, 1841 December 3, 1919) was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty, and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "Renoir is the final representative of a tradition which runs directly from Rubens to Watteau". Read, Herbert: The Meaning of Art, page 127. Faber, 1931.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir was born in Limoges, Haute-Vienne, France, the child of a working class family. As a boy, he worked in a porcelain factory where his drawing talents led to him being chosen to paint designs on fine china. Renoir, Jean: Renoir, My Father, pages 57â67. Collins, 1962. He also painted hangings for overseas missionaries and decorations on fans before he enrolled in art school. Vollard, Ambroise: Renoir, An Intimate Record, pages 24â29. Knopf, 1925. During those early years, he often visited the Louvre to study the French master painters.
The Theater Box, 1874 by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Courtauld Institute Galleries, London
In 1862 he began studying art under Charles Gleyre in Paris. There he met Alfred Sisley, Frédéric Bazille, and Claude Monet. Vollard, page 30. At times during the 1860s, he did not have enough money to buy paint. Although Renoir first started exhibiting paintings at the Paris Salon in 1864, Wadley, Nicholas: Renoir, A Retrospective, page 15. Park Lane, 1989. recognition did not come for another ten years, due, in part, to the turmoil of the Franco-Prussian War.
During the Paris Commune in 1871, while he painted on the banks of the Seine River, some members of a commune group thought he was a spy, and were about to throw him into the river when a commune leader, Raoul Rigault, recognized Renoir as the man who had protected him on an earlier occasion. Renoir, Jean, pages 118â21. Different and less life-threatening versions are offered by Paul Valéry and Vollard. In all accounts, however, their re-acquaintance led to great celebration.
In 1874, a ten-year friendship with Jules Le Coeur and his family ended, Wadley, page 15. and Renoir lost not only the valuable support gained by the association, but a generous welcome to stay on their property near Fontainebleau and its scenic forest.
This loss of a favorite painting location resulted in a distinct change of subjects.
Renoir experienced his initial acclaim when six of his paintings hung in the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874. In the same year two of his works were shown with Durand-Ruel in London.
The Swing (La Balançoire), 1876, oil on canvas, Musée d'Orsay, Paris
In 1881, he traveled to Algeria, a country he associated with Eugène Delacroix, Poulet, A. L., & Murphy, A. R. (1979). Corot to Braque: French Paintings from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, page 117. Boston: The Museum. ISBN 0-87846-134-5. then to Madrid, to see the work of Diego Velázquez. Following that he traveled to Italy to see Titian's masterpieces in Florence and the paintings of Raphael in Rome. On January 15, 1882 Renoir met the composer Richard Wagner at his home in Palermo, Sicily. Renoir painted Wagner's portrait in just thirty-five minutes. In the same year, Renoir convalesced for six weeks in Algeria after contracting pneumonia, which would cause permanent damage to his respiratory system. Wadley, page 25.
In 1883, he spent the summer in Guernsey, creating fifteen paintings in little over a month. Most of these feature Moulin Huet, a bay in Saint Martin's, Guernsey. Guernsey is one of the Channel Islands in the English Channel, and it has a varied landscape which includes beaches, cliffs, bays, forests, and mountains. These paintings were the subject of a set of commemorative postage stamps issued by the Bailiwick of Guernsey in 1983.
While living and working in Montmartre, Renoir employed as a model Suzanne Valadon, who posed for him (The Bathers, 1885â87; Dance at Bougival, 1883) Wadley, pages 371, 374. and many of his fellow painters while studying their techniques; eventually she became one of the leading painters of the day.
In 1887, a year when Queen Victoria celebrated her Golden Jubilee, and upon the request of the queen's associate, Phillip Richbourg, he donated several paintings to the "French Impressionist Paintings" catalog as a token of his loyalty.
In 1890 he married Aline Victorine Charigot, who, along with a number of the artist's friends, had already served as a model for Les Déjeuner des canotiers (Luncheon of the Boating Party, 1881), and with whom he already had a child, Pierre, in 1885. After his marriage Renoir painted many scenes of his wife and daily family life, including their children and their nurse, Aline's cousin Gabrielle Renard. The Renoirs had three sons, one of whom, Jean, became a filmmaker of note and another, Pierre, became a stage and film actor.
Girls at the Piano, 1892, by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
Around 1892, Renoir developed rheumatoid arthritis. In 1907, he moved to the warmer climate of "Les Collettes," a farm at Cagnes-sur-Mer, close to the Mediterranean coast. Wadley, page 28. Renoir painted during the last twenty years of his life, even when arthritis severely limited his movement, and he was wheelchair-bound. He developed progressive deformities in his hands and ankylosis of his right shoulder, requiring him to adapt his painting technique. It has often been reported that in the advanced stages of his arthritis, he painted by having a brush strapped to his paralyzed fingers, André, Albert: Renoir. Crés, 1928. but this is erroneous; Renoir remained able to grasp a brush, although he required an assistant to place it in his hand. Boonen, A.; van de Rest, J.; Dequeker, J.; van der Linden, S.: "How Renoir Coped with Rheumatoid Arthritis". British Medical Journal, 1997:315:1704 1708. The wrapping of his hands with bandages, apparent in late photographs of the artist, served to prevent skin irritation.
During this period he created sculptures by cooperating with a young artist, Richard Guino, who worked the clay. Renoir also used a moving canvas, or picture roll, to facilitate painting large works with his limited joint mobility.
In 1919, Renoir visited the Louvre to see his paintings hanging with the old masters. He died in the village of Cagnes-sur-Mer, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, on December 3.
250px
Renoir's paintings are notable for their vibrant light and saturated color, most often focusing on people in intimate and candid compositions. The female nude was one of his primary subjects. In characteristic Impressionist style, Renoir suggested the details of a scene through freely brushed touches of color, so that his figures softly fuse with one another and their surroundings.
His initial paintings show the influence of the colorism of Eugène Delacroix and the luminosity of Camille Corot. He also admired the realism of Gustave Courbet and Ãdouard Manet, and his early work resembles theirs in his use of black as a color. As well, Renoir admired Edgar Degas' sense of movement. Another painter Renoir greatly admired was the 18th century master François Boucher. Rey, Robert: La Renaissance du Sentiment Classique, Les Beaux Arts, 1931.
A fine example of Renoir's early work, and evidence of the influence of Courbet's realism, is Diana, 1867. Ostensibly a mythological subject, the painting is a naturalistic studio work, the figure carefully observed, solidly modeled, and superimposed upon a contrived landscape. If the work is still a 'student' piece, already Renoir's heightened personal response to female sensuality is present. The model was Lise Tréhot, then the artist's mistress and inspiration for a number of paintings. "From the Tour: Mary Cassatt", August Renoir. Accessed March 07, 2007.
In the late 1860s, through the practice of painting light and water en plein air (in the open air), he and his friend Claude Monet discovered that the color of shadows is not brown or black, but the reflected color of the objects surrounding them. Several pairs of paintings exist in which Renoir and Monet, working side-by-side, depicted the same scenes (La Grenouillère, 1869). Image:Renoir11.jpg â Wikimedia Commons at commons.wikimedia.org Image:Claude Monet La Grenouillére.jpg â Wikimedia Commons at commons.wikimedia.org
One of the best known Impressionist works is Renoir's 1876 Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette (Bal du moulin de la Galette). The painting depicts an open-air scene, crowded with people, at a popular dance garden on the Butte Montmartre, close to where he lived.On the Terrace, oil on canvas, 1881, Art Institute of Chicago
The works of his early maturity were typically Impressionist snapshots of real life, full of sparkling colour and light. By the mid 1880s, however, he had broken with the movement to apply a more disciplined, formal technique to portraits and figure paintings, particularly of women, such as The Bathers, which was created during 1884â87. It was a trip to Italy in 1881, when he saw works by Raphael and other Renaissance masters, that convinced him that he was on the wrong path, and for the next several years he painted in a more severe style, in an attempt to return to classicism. Clark, Kenneth: The Nude, pages 154â61. Penguin, 1960. This is sometimes called his "Ingres period", as he concentrated on his drawing and emphasized the outlines of figures. Asked late in life if he felt an affinity to Ingres, he responded: "I should very much like to". Rey, quoted in Wadley, page 336.
After 1890, however, he changed direction again, returning to the use of thinly brushed color which dissolved outlines as in his earlier work. From this period onward he concentrated especially on monumental nudes and domestic scenes, fine examples of which are Girls at the Piano, 1892, and Grandes Baigneuses, 1918â19. The latter painting is the most typical and successful of Renoir's late, abundantly fleshed nudes. " For me, Renoir becomes a really great artist in the late nudes, above all in Les Grandes Baigneuses". David Sylvester, quoted by Wadley, page 378.
A prolific artist, he made several thousand paintings. The warm sensuality of Renoir's style made his paintings some of the most well-known and frequently-reproduced works in the history of art. The single largest collection of his worksâ181 paintings in allâis at the Barnes Foundation, near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
In 1919, Ambroise Vollard, a renowned art dealer, published a book on the life and work of Renoir, La Vie et Oeuvre de Pierre Auguste Renoir, in an edition of 1000 copies. In 1986, Vollard's heirs started reprinting the copper plates, generally etchings with hand applied watercolor. These prints are signed by Renoir in the plate and are embossed âVollardâ in the lower margin. They are unnumbered, undated and not signed in pencil.
Two of Renoir's paintings have sold for more than US$70 million. Bal du moulin de la Galette sold for $78.1 million in 1990.
*History of painting
*Western painting
Image:Renoir11.jpg|La Grenouillère, 1868, National Museum, Stockholm, Sweden
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 110.jpg|Portrait of Alfred Sisley, 1868
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 083.jpg|Claude Monet Painting in His Garden at Argenteuil, 1873, Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford, Connecticut
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 112.jpg|Portrait of Claude Monet, 1875, Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 094.jpg|Mme. Charpentier and her children, 1878, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir - By the Water.jpg|By the Water, 1880, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
Image:Dejeuner-canotiers.jpg|Luncheon of the Boating Party, 1880â1881, The Phillips Collection Washington, DC
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 107.jpg|Portrait of Charles and Georges Durand-Ruel, 1882
File:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 019.jpg|Dance in the City, 1882â1883, Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France
Image:Auguste Renoir - La danse à la campagne.jpg|Dance in the Country (Aline Charigot and Paul Lhote), 1883, Musée d'Orsay, Paris
File:Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Study for 'Dance in the Country', pencil, 1883.jpg|Pencil study for Dance in the Country 1883, Honolulu Academy of Arts
File:Renoir16.jpg|Children at the Beach at Guernsey, 1883, Barnes Foundation Merion, Pennsylvania
File:Pierre-Auguste Renoir - In the Garden.jpg|In the Garden, 1885, Hermitage St. Petersburg
Image:Girl with a hoop.jpg|Girl With a Hoop, 1885
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Girl Braiding Her Hair (Suzanne Valadon).jpg|Girl Braiding Her Hair (Suzanne Valadon), 1885
Image:Pierre Auguste Renoir - Portrait Berthe Morisot and daughter Julie.jpg|Portrait of Berthe Morisot and daughter Julie Manet, 1894
Image:Pierre Auguste Renoir La famille d artiste.jpg|The Artist's Family, 1896, The Barnes Foundation, Merion, Pennsylvania
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 106.jpg|Portrait of Ambroise Vollard, 1908
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 113.jpg|Portrait of Paul Durand-Ruel, 1910
Image:Renoir Self-Portrait 1910.jpg|Self-portrait, 1910
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 020.jpg|Diana the Huntress, 1867, The National Gallery of Art Washington, DC
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 002.jpg|Nude In The Sun, 1875, Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France
Image:Renoir15.jpg|Seating Girl, 1883
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 021.jpg|The Large Bathers, 1887, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pa.
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 085.jpg|After The Bath, 1888
Image:Renoir26.jpg|Three Bathers, 1895, Cleveland Museum of Art Cleveland, Ohio
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Femme nue couchée (Gabrielle).jpg|Woman on a Couch (Gabrielle), 1906â1907
Image:Renoir18.jpg|After The Bath, 1910, Barnes Foundation, Merion Pennsylvania
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 030.jpg|Woman At The Well, 1910
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Baigneuse assise s'essuyant une jambe.jpg|Seated Bather Drying Her Leg, 1914, Musee de l'Orangerie, Paris, France
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 009.jpg|Women Bathers, 1916, National Museum, Stockholm, Sweden
Image:Pierre Auguste Renoir Les baigneuses.jpg|Bathers, 1918, Barnes Foundation, Merion Pennsylvania
*Mademoiselle Romaine Lacaux (1864)
*La Promenade (1870)
*Monet Painting in His Garden at Argenteuil (1873)
*La Loge (1874)
*Woman with Fan (1875)
*The Swing (1876)
*Lunch at the Restaurant Fournaise (The Rowers' Lunch) (1875)
*Girl with a Watering Can (1876)
*Bal du moulin de la Galette (1876)
*Nude in the Sunlight (1876)
*Madame Charpentier and Her Children (1878)
*Jeanne Samary (1879)
*Acrobats at the Cirque Fernando (Francisca and Angelina Wartenberg) (1879)
*Two Women with Umbrellas (1879)
*On the Terrace (1881)
*Luncheon of the Boating Party (1881)
*The Piazza San Marco, Venice (1881)
*Blonde Bather (1881)
*Alice and Elisabeth Cahen d'Anvers (Pink and Blue) (1881)
*By the Seashore (1883)
*Umbrellas (1883)
*Dance at Bougival (1883)
*Fog at Guernsey (1883)
*Children on the Sea Shore in Guernsey (1883)
*The Bay of Moulin Huet Seen Through the Trees (1883)
*Girl with a Hoop (1885)
*Bathers (1887)
*The Bather (After the Bath) (1888)
*Young Girl with Daisies (1889)
*In the Meadow (1890)
*The Apple Sellers (1890)
*Two Girls at the Piano (1892)
*Vase of Chrysanthemums (1895)
*Coco (1905)
*Standing Bather (1906)
*Nude (1910)
*The Farm at Les Collettes, Cagnes (1908â1914)
*The Concert (1918)
*
*
*
*
*
*
*Gabrielle Renard â Renoir family's nanny
*Jean Renoir â This legendary director was the second son of Renoir
* Renoir at biography.com
* How Renoir Coped with Rheumatoid Arthritis article in British Medical Journal by Boonen A. et al.
* The Story Behind the Masterpiece... The Luncheon of the Boating Party
* Suburban Pastoral, The Guardian, 24 Feb 2007
*
* Pierre-Auguste Renoir paintings, media & interactive timeline
|
Pierre-Auguste_Renoir | As a celebrator of beauty, and especially feminine sensuality, has it been said that ``Renoir is the final representative of a tradition which runs directly from Rubens to Watteau''? | Yes. | data/set6/a5 | Pierre-Auguste_Renoir
Pierre-Auguste Renoir (February 25, 1841 December 3, 1919) was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty, and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "Renoir is the final representative of a tradition which runs directly from Rubens to Watteau". Read, Herbert: The Meaning of Art, page 127. Faber, 1931.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir was born in Limoges, Haute-Vienne, France, the child of a working class family. As a boy, he worked in a porcelain factory where his drawing talents led to him being chosen to paint designs on fine china. Renoir, Jean: Renoir, My Father, pages 57â67. Collins, 1962. He also painted hangings for overseas missionaries and decorations on fans before he enrolled in art school. Vollard, Ambroise: Renoir, An Intimate Record, pages 24â29. Knopf, 1925. During those early years, he often visited the Louvre to study the French master painters.
The Theater Box, 1874 by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Courtauld Institute Galleries, London
In 1862 he began studying art under Charles Gleyre in Paris. There he met Alfred Sisley, Frédéric Bazille, and Claude Monet. Vollard, page 30. At times during the 1860s, he did not have enough money to buy paint. Although Renoir first started exhibiting paintings at the Paris Salon in 1864, Wadley, Nicholas: Renoir, A Retrospective, page 15. Park Lane, 1989. recognition did not come for another ten years, due, in part, to the turmoil of the Franco-Prussian War.
During the Paris Commune in 1871, while he painted on the banks of the Seine River, some members of a commune group thought he was a spy, and were about to throw him into the river when a commune leader, Raoul Rigault, recognized Renoir as the man who had protected him on an earlier occasion. Renoir, Jean, pages 118â21. Different and less life-threatening versions are offered by Paul Valéry and Vollard. In all accounts, however, their re-acquaintance led to great celebration.
In 1874, a ten-year friendship with Jules Le Coeur and his family ended, Wadley, page 15. and Renoir lost not only the valuable support gained by the association, but a generous welcome to stay on their property near Fontainebleau and its scenic forest.
This loss of a favorite painting location resulted in a distinct change of subjects.
Renoir experienced his initial acclaim when six of his paintings hung in the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874. In the same year two of his works were shown with Durand-Ruel in London.
The Swing (La Balançoire), 1876, oil on canvas, Musée d'Orsay, Paris
In 1881, he traveled to Algeria, a country he associated with Eugène Delacroix, Poulet, A. L., & Murphy, A. R. (1979). Corot to Braque: French Paintings from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, page 117. Boston: The Museum. ISBN 0-87846-134-5. then to Madrid, to see the work of Diego Velázquez. Following that he traveled to Italy to see Titian's masterpieces in Florence and the paintings of Raphael in Rome. On January 15, 1882 Renoir met the composer Richard Wagner at his home in Palermo, Sicily. Renoir painted Wagner's portrait in just thirty-five minutes. In the same year, Renoir convalesced for six weeks in Algeria after contracting pneumonia, which would cause permanent damage to his respiratory system. Wadley, page 25.
In 1883, he spent the summer in Guernsey, creating fifteen paintings in little over a month. Most of these feature Moulin Huet, a bay in Saint Martin's, Guernsey. Guernsey is one of the Channel Islands in the English Channel, and it has a varied landscape which includes beaches, cliffs, bays, forests, and mountains. These paintings were the subject of a set of commemorative postage stamps issued by the Bailiwick of Guernsey in 1983.
While living and working in Montmartre, Renoir employed as a model Suzanne Valadon, who posed for him (The Bathers, 1885â87; Dance at Bougival, 1883) Wadley, pages 371, 374. and many of his fellow painters while studying their techniques; eventually she became one of the leading painters of the day.
In 1887, a year when Queen Victoria celebrated her Golden Jubilee, and upon the request of the queen's associate, Phillip Richbourg, he donated several paintings to the "French Impressionist Paintings" catalog as a token of his loyalty.
In 1890 he married Aline Victorine Charigot, who, along with a number of the artist's friends, had already served as a model for Les Déjeuner des canotiers (Luncheon of the Boating Party, 1881), and with whom he already had a child, Pierre, in 1885. After his marriage Renoir painted many scenes of his wife and daily family life, including their children and their nurse, Aline's cousin Gabrielle Renard. The Renoirs had three sons, one of whom, Jean, became a filmmaker of note and another, Pierre, became a stage and film actor.
Girls at the Piano, 1892, by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
Around 1892, Renoir developed rheumatoid arthritis. In 1907, he moved to the warmer climate of "Les Collettes," a farm at Cagnes-sur-Mer, close to the Mediterranean coast. Wadley, page 28. Renoir painted during the last twenty years of his life, even when arthritis severely limited his movement, and he was wheelchair-bound. He developed progressive deformities in his hands and ankylosis of his right shoulder, requiring him to adapt his painting technique. It has often been reported that in the advanced stages of his arthritis, he painted by having a brush strapped to his paralyzed fingers, André, Albert: Renoir. Crés, 1928. but this is erroneous; Renoir remained able to grasp a brush, although he required an assistant to place it in his hand. Boonen, A.; van de Rest, J.; Dequeker, J.; van der Linden, S.: "How Renoir Coped with Rheumatoid Arthritis". British Medical Journal, 1997:315:1704 1708. The wrapping of his hands with bandages, apparent in late photographs of the artist, served to prevent skin irritation.
During this period he created sculptures by cooperating with a young artist, Richard Guino, who worked the clay. Renoir also used a moving canvas, or picture roll, to facilitate painting large works with his limited joint mobility.
In 1919, Renoir visited the Louvre to see his paintings hanging with the old masters. He died in the village of Cagnes-sur-Mer, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, on December 3.
250px
Renoir's paintings are notable for their vibrant light and saturated color, most often focusing on people in intimate and candid compositions. The female nude was one of his primary subjects. In characteristic Impressionist style, Renoir suggested the details of a scene through freely brushed touches of color, so that his figures softly fuse with one another and their surroundings.
His initial paintings show the influence of the colorism of Eugène Delacroix and the luminosity of Camille Corot. He also admired the realism of Gustave Courbet and Ãdouard Manet, and his early work resembles theirs in his use of black as a color. As well, Renoir admired Edgar Degas' sense of movement. Another painter Renoir greatly admired was the 18th century master François Boucher. Rey, Robert: La Renaissance du Sentiment Classique, Les Beaux Arts, 1931.
A fine example of Renoir's early work, and evidence of the influence of Courbet's realism, is Diana, 1867. Ostensibly a mythological subject, the painting is a naturalistic studio work, the figure carefully observed, solidly modeled, and superimposed upon a contrived landscape. If the work is still a 'student' piece, already Renoir's heightened personal response to female sensuality is present. The model was Lise Tréhot, then the artist's mistress and inspiration for a number of paintings. "From the Tour: Mary Cassatt", August Renoir. Accessed March 07, 2007.
In the late 1860s, through the practice of painting light and water en plein air (in the open air), he and his friend Claude Monet discovered that the color of shadows is not brown or black, but the reflected color of the objects surrounding them. Several pairs of paintings exist in which Renoir and Monet, working side-by-side, depicted the same scenes (La Grenouillère, 1869). Image:Renoir11.jpg â Wikimedia Commons at commons.wikimedia.org Image:Claude Monet La Grenouillére.jpg â Wikimedia Commons at commons.wikimedia.org
One of the best known Impressionist works is Renoir's 1876 Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette (Bal du moulin de la Galette). The painting depicts an open-air scene, crowded with people, at a popular dance garden on the Butte Montmartre, close to where he lived.On the Terrace, oil on canvas, 1881, Art Institute of Chicago
The works of his early maturity were typically Impressionist snapshots of real life, full of sparkling colour and light. By the mid 1880s, however, he had broken with the movement to apply a more disciplined, formal technique to portraits and figure paintings, particularly of women, such as The Bathers, which was created during 1884â87. It was a trip to Italy in 1881, when he saw works by Raphael and other Renaissance masters, that convinced him that he was on the wrong path, and for the next several years he painted in a more severe style, in an attempt to return to classicism. Clark, Kenneth: The Nude, pages 154â61. Penguin, 1960. This is sometimes called his "Ingres period", as he concentrated on his drawing and emphasized the outlines of figures. Asked late in life if he felt an affinity to Ingres, he responded: "I should very much like to". Rey, quoted in Wadley, page 336.
After 1890, however, he changed direction again, returning to the use of thinly brushed color which dissolved outlines as in his earlier work. From this period onward he concentrated especially on monumental nudes and domestic scenes, fine examples of which are Girls at the Piano, 1892, and Grandes Baigneuses, 1918â19. The latter painting is the most typical and successful of Renoir's late, abundantly fleshed nudes. " For me, Renoir becomes a really great artist in the late nudes, above all in Les Grandes Baigneuses". David Sylvester, quoted by Wadley, page 378.
A prolific artist, he made several thousand paintings. The warm sensuality of Renoir's style made his paintings some of the most well-known and frequently-reproduced works in the history of art. The single largest collection of his worksâ181 paintings in allâis at the Barnes Foundation, near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
In 1919, Ambroise Vollard, a renowned art dealer, published a book on the life and work of Renoir, La Vie et Oeuvre de Pierre Auguste Renoir, in an edition of 1000 copies. In 1986, Vollard's heirs started reprinting the copper plates, generally etchings with hand applied watercolor. These prints are signed by Renoir in the plate and are embossed âVollardâ in the lower margin. They are unnumbered, undated and not signed in pencil.
Two of Renoir's paintings have sold for more than US$70 million. Bal du moulin de la Galette sold for $78.1 million in 1990.
*History of painting
*Western painting
Image:Renoir11.jpg|La Grenouillère, 1868, National Museum, Stockholm, Sweden
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 110.jpg|Portrait of Alfred Sisley, 1868
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 083.jpg|Claude Monet Painting in His Garden at Argenteuil, 1873, Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford, Connecticut
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 112.jpg|Portrait of Claude Monet, 1875, Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 094.jpg|Mme. Charpentier and her children, 1878, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir - By the Water.jpg|By the Water, 1880, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
Image:Dejeuner-canotiers.jpg|Luncheon of the Boating Party, 1880â1881, The Phillips Collection Washington, DC
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 107.jpg|Portrait of Charles and Georges Durand-Ruel, 1882
File:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 019.jpg|Dance in the City, 1882â1883, Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France
Image:Auguste Renoir - La danse à la campagne.jpg|Dance in the Country (Aline Charigot and Paul Lhote), 1883, Musée d'Orsay, Paris
File:Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Study for 'Dance in the Country', pencil, 1883.jpg|Pencil study for Dance in the Country 1883, Honolulu Academy of Arts
File:Renoir16.jpg|Children at the Beach at Guernsey, 1883, Barnes Foundation Merion, Pennsylvania
File:Pierre-Auguste Renoir - In the Garden.jpg|In the Garden, 1885, Hermitage St. Petersburg
Image:Girl with a hoop.jpg|Girl With a Hoop, 1885
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Girl Braiding Her Hair (Suzanne Valadon).jpg|Girl Braiding Her Hair (Suzanne Valadon), 1885
Image:Pierre Auguste Renoir - Portrait Berthe Morisot and daughter Julie.jpg|Portrait of Berthe Morisot and daughter Julie Manet, 1894
Image:Pierre Auguste Renoir La famille d artiste.jpg|The Artist's Family, 1896, The Barnes Foundation, Merion, Pennsylvania
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 106.jpg|Portrait of Ambroise Vollard, 1908
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 113.jpg|Portrait of Paul Durand-Ruel, 1910
Image:Renoir Self-Portrait 1910.jpg|Self-portrait, 1910
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 020.jpg|Diana the Huntress, 1867, The National Gallery of Art Washington, DC
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 002.jpg|Nude In The Sun, 1875, Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France
Image:Renoir15.jpg|Seating Girl, 1883
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 021.jpg|The Large Bathers, 1887, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pa.
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 085.jpg|After The Bath, 1888
Image:Renoir26.jpg|Three Bathers, 1895, Cleveland Museum of Art Cleveland, Ohio
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Femme nue couchée (Gabrielle).jpg|Woman on a Couch (Gabrielle), 1906â1907
Image:Renoir18.jpg|After The Bath, 1910, Barnes Foundation, Merion Pennsylvania
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 030.jpg|Woman At The Well, 1910
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Baigneuse assise s'essuyant une jambe.jpg|Seated Bather Drying Her Leg, 1914, Musee de l'Orangerie, Paris, France
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 009.jpg|Women Bathers, 1916, National Museum, Stockholm, Sweden
Image:Pierre Auguste Renoir Les baigneuses.jpg|Bathers, 1918, Barnes Foundation, Merion Pennsylvania
*Mademoiselle Romaine Lacaux (1864)
*La Promenade (1870)
*Monet Painting in His Garden at Argenteuil (1873)
*La Loge (1874)
*Woman with Fan (1875)
*The Swing (1876)
*Lunch at the Restaurant Fournaise (The Rowers' Lunch) (1875)
*Girl with a Watering Can (1876)
*Bal du moulin de la Galette (1876)
*Nude in the Sunlight (1876)
*Madame Charpentier and Her Children (1878)
*Jeanne Samary (1879)
*Acrobats at the Cirque Fernando (Francisca and Angelina Wartenberg) (1879)
*Two Women with Umbrellas (1879)
*On the Terrace (1881)
*Luncheon of the Boating Party (1881)
*The Piazza San Marco, Venice (1881)
*Blonde Bather (1881)
*Alice and Elisabeth Cahen d'Anvers (Pink and Blue) (1881)
*By the Seashore (1883)
*Umbrellas (1883)
*Dance at Bougival (1883)
*Fog at Guernsey (1883)
*Children on the Sea Shore in Guernsey (1883)
*The Bay of Moulin Huet Seen Through the Trees (1883)
*Girl with a Hoop (1885)
*Bathers (1887)
*The Bather (After the Bath) (1888)
*Young Girl with Daisies (1889)
*In the Meadow (1890)
*The Apple Sellers (1890)
*Two Girls at the Piano (1892)
*Vase of Chrysanthemums (1895)
*Coco (1905)
*Standing Bather (1906)
*Nude (1910)
*The Farm at Les Collettes, Cagnes (1908â1914)
*The Concert (1918)
*
*
*
*
*
*
*Gabrielle Renard â Renoir family's nanny
*Jean Renoir â This legendary director was the second son of Renoir
* Renoir at biography.com
* How Renoir Coped with Rheumatoid Arthritis article in British Medical Journal by Boonen A. et al.
* The Story Behind the Masterpiece... The Luncheon of the Boating Party
* Suburban Pastoral, The Guardian, 24 Feb 2007
*
* Pierre-Auguste Renoir paintings, media & interactive timeline
|
Pierre-Auguste_Renoir | Did Pierre-Auguste Renoir die in Limoges, Haute-Vienne, France, the child of a working class family? | no | data/set6/a5 | Pierre-Auguste_Renoir
Pierre-Auguste Renoir (February 25, 1841 December 3, 1919) was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty, and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "Renoir is the final representative of a tradition which runs directly from Rubens to Watteau". Read, Herbert: The Meaning of Art, page 127. Faber, 1931.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir was born in Limoges, Haute-Vienne, France, the child of a working class family. As a boy, he worked in a porcelain factory where his drawing talents led to him being chosen to paint designs on fine china. Renoir, Jean: Renoir, My Father, pages 57â67. Collins, 1962. He also painted hangings for overseas missionaries and decorations on fans before he enrolled in art school. Vollard, Ambroise: Renoir, An Intimate Record, pages 24â29. Knopf, 1925. During those early years, he often visited the Louvre to study the French master painters.
The Theater Box, 1874 by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Courtauld Institute Galleries, London
In 1862 he began studying art under Charles Gleyre in Paris. There he met Alfred Sisley, Frédéric Bazille, and Claude Monet. Vollard, page 30. At times during the 1860s, he did not have enough money to buy paint. Although Renoir first started exhibiting paintings at the Paris Salon in 1864, Wadley, Nicholas: Renoir, A Retrospective, page 15. Park Lane, 1989. recognition did not come for another ten years, due, in part, to the turmoil of the Franco-Prussian War.
During the Paris Commune in 1871, while he painted on the banks of the Seine River, some members of a commune group thought he was a spy, and were about to throw him into the river when a commune leader, Raoul Rigault, recognized Renoir as the man who had protected him on an earlier occasion. Renoir, Jean, pages 118â21. Different and less life-threatening versions are offered by Paul Valéry and Vollard. In all accounts, however, their re-acquaintance led to great celebration.
In 1874, a ten-year friendship with Jules Le Coeur and his family ended, Wadley, page 15. and Renoir lost not only the valuable support gained by the association, but a generous welcome to stay on their property near Fontainebleau and its scenic forest.
This loss of a favorite painting location resulted in a distinct change of subjects.
Renoir experienced his initial acclaim when six of his paintings hung in the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874. In the same year two of his works were shown with Durand-Ruel in London.
The Swing (La Balançoire), 1876, oil on canvas, Musée d'Orsay, Paris
In 1881, he traveled to Algeria, a country he associated with Eugène Delacroix, Poulet, A. L., & Murphy, A. R. (1979). Corot to Braque: French Paintings from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, page 117. Boston: The Museum. ISBN 0-87846-134-5. then to Madrid, to see the work of Diego Velázquez. Following that he traveled to Italy to see Titian's masterpieces in Florence and the paintings of Raphael in Rome. On January 15, 1882 Renoir met the composer Richard Wagner at his home in Palermo, Sicily. Renoir painted Wagner's portrait in just thirty-five minutes. In the same year, Renoir convalesced for six weeks in Algeria after contracting pneumonia, which would cause permanent damage to his respiratory system. Wadley, page 25.
In 1883, he spent the summer in Guernsey, creating fifteen paintings in little over a month. Most of these feature Moulin Huet, a bay in Saint Martin's, Guernsey. Guernsey is one of the Channel Islands in the English Channel, and it has a varied landscape which includes beaches, cliffs, bays, forests, and mountains. These paintings were the subject of a set of commemorative postage stamps issued by the Bailiwick of Guernsey in 1983.
While living and working in Montmartre, Renoir employed as a model Suzanne Valadon, who posed for him (The Bathers, 1885â87; Dance at Bougival, 1883) Wadley, pages 371, 374. and many of his fellow painters while studying their techniques; eventually she became one of the leading painters of the day.
In 1887, a year when Queen Victoria celebrated her Golden Jubilee, and upon the request of the queen's associate, Phillip Richbourg, he donated several paintings to the "French Impressionist Paintings" catalog as a token of his loyalty.
In 1890 he married Aline Victorine Charigot, who, along with a number of the artist's friends, had already served as a model for Les Déjeuner des canotiers (Luncheon of the Boating Party, 1881), and with whom he already had a child, Pierre, in 1885. After his marriage Renoir painted many scenes of his wife and daily family life, including their children and their nurse, Aline's cousin Gabrielle Renard. The Renoirs had three sons, one of whom, Jean, became a filmmaker of note and another, Pierre, became a stage and film actor.
Girls at the Piano, 1892, by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
Around 1892, Renoir developed rheumatoid arthritis. In 1907, he moved to the warmer climate of "Les Collettes," a farm at Cagnes-sur-Mer, close to the Mediterranean coast. Wadley, page 28. Renoir painted during the last twenty years of his life, even when arthritis severely limited his movement, and he was wheelchair-bound. He developed progressive deformities in his hands and ankylosis of his right shoulder, requiring him to adapt his painting technique. It has often been reported that in the advanced stages of his arthritis, he painted by having a brush strapped to his paralyzed fingers, André, Albert: Renoir. Crés, 1928. but this is erroneous; Renoir remained able to grasp a brush, although he required an assistant to place it in his hand. Boonen, A.; van de Rest, J.; Dequeker, J.; van der Linden, S.: "How Renoir Coped with Rheumatoid Arthritis". British Medical Journal, 1997:315:1704 1708. The wrapping of his hands with bandages, apparent in late photographs of the artist, served to prevent skin irritation.
During this period he created sculptures by cooperating with a young artist, Richard Guino, who worked the clay. Renoir also used a moving canvas, or picture roll, to facilitate painting large works with his limited joint mobility.
In 1919, Renoir visited the Louvre to see his paintings hanging with the old masters. He died in the village of Cagnes-sur-Mer, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, on December 3.
250px
Renoir's paintings are notable for their vibrant light and saturated color, most often focusing on people in intimate and candid compositions. The female nude was one of his primary subjects. In characteristic Impressionist style, Renoir suggested the details of a scene through freely brushed touches of color, so that his figures softly fuse with one another and their surroundings.
His initial paintings show the influence of the colorism of Eugène Delacroix and the luminosity of Camille Corot. He also admired the realism of Gustave Courbet and Ãdouard Manet, and his early work resembles theirs in his use of black as a color. As well, Renoir admired Edgar Degas' sense of movement. Another painter Renoir greatly admired was the 18th century master François Boucher. Rey, Robert: La Renaissance du Sentiment Classique, Les Beaux Arts, 1931.
A fine example of Renoir's early work, and evidence of the influence of Courbet's realism, is Diana, 1867. Ostensibly a mythological subject, the painting is a naturalistic studio work, the figure carefully observed, solidly modeled, and superimposed upon a contrived landscape. If the work is still a 'student' piece, already Renoir's heightened personal response to female sensuality is present. The model was Lise Tréhot, then the artist's mistress and inspiration for a number of paintings. "From the Tour: Mary Cassatt", August Renoir. Accessed March 07, 2007.
In the late 1860s, through the practice of painting light and water en plein air (in the open air), he and his friend Claude Monet discovered that the color of shadows is not brown or black, but the reflected color of the objects surrounding them. Several pairs of paintings exist in which Renoir and Monet, working side-by-side, depicted the same scenes (La Grenouillère, 1869). Image:Renoir11.jpg â Wikimedia Commons at commons.wikimedia.org Image:Claude Monet La Grenouillére.jpg â Wikimedia Commons at commons.wikimedia.org
One of the best known Impressionist works is Renoir's 1876 Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette (Bal du moulin de la Galette). The painting depicts an open-air scene, crowded with people, at a popular dance garden on the Butte Montmartre, close to where he lived.On the Terrace, oil on canvas, 1881, Art Institute of Chicago
The works of his early maturity were typically Impressionist snapshots of real life, full of sparkling colour and light. By the mid 1880s, however, he had broken with the movement to apply a more disciplined, formal technique to portraits and figure paintings, particularly of women, such as The Bathers, which was created during 1884â87. It was a trip to Italy in 1881, when he saw works by Raphael and other Renaissance masters, that convinced him that he was on the wrong path, and for the next several years he painted in a more severe style, in an attempt to return to classicism. Clark, Kenneth: The Nude, pages 154â61. Penguin, 1960. This is sometimes called his "Ingres period", as he concentrated on his drawing and emphasized the outlines of figures. Asked late in life if he felt an affinity to Ingres, he responded: "I should very much like to". Rey, quoted in Wadley, page 336.
After 1890, however, he changed direction again, returning to the use of thinly brushed color which dissolved outlines as in his earlier work. From this period onward he concentrated especially on monumental nudes and domestic scenes, fine examples of which are Girls at the Piano, 1892, and Grandes Baigneuses, 1918â19. The latter painting is the most typical and successful of Renoir's late, abundantly fleshed nudes. " For me, Renoir becomes a really great artist in the late nudes, above all in Les Grandes Baigneuses". David Sylvester, quoted by Wadley, page 378.
A prolific artist, he made several thousand paintings. The warm sensuality of Renoir's style made his paintings some of the most well-known and frequently-reproduced works in the history of art. The single largest collection of his worksâ181 paintings in allâis at the Barnes Foundation, near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
In 1919, Ambroise Vollard, a renowned art dealer, published a book on the life and work of Renoir, La Vie et Oeuvre de Pierre Auguste Renoir, in an edition of 1000 copies. In 1986, Vollard's heirs started reprinting the copper plates, generally etchings with hand applied watercolor. These prints are signed by Renoir in the plate and are embossed âVollardâ in the lower margin. They are unnumbered, undated and not signed in pencil.
Two of Renoir's paintings have sold for more than US$70 million. Bal du moulin de la Galette sold for $78.1 million in 1990.
*History of painting
*Western painting
Image:Renoir11.jpg|La Grenouillère, 1868, National Museum, Stockholm, Sweden
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 110.jpg|Portrait of Alfred Sisley, 1868
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 083.jpg|Claude Monet Painting in His Garden at Argenteuil, 1873, Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford, Connecticut
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 112.jpg|Portrait of Claude Monet, 1875, Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 094.jpg|Mme. Charpentier and her children, 1878, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir - By the Water.jpg|By the Water, 1880, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
Image:Dejeuner-canotiers.jpg|Luncheon of the Boating Party, 1880â1881, The Phillips Collection Washington, DC
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 107.jpg|Portrait of Charles and Georges Durand-Ruel, 1882
File:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 019.jpg|Dance in the City, 1882â1883, Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France
Image:Auguste Renoir - La danse à la campagne.jpg|Dance in the Country (Aline Charigot and Paul Lhote), 1883, Musée d'Orsay, Paris
File:Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Study for 'Dance in the Country', pencil, 1883.jpg|Pencil study for Dance in the Country 1883, Honolulu Academy of Arts
File:Renoir16.jpg|Children at the Beach at Guernsey, 1883, Barnes Foundation Merion, Pennsylvania
File:Pierre-Auguste Renoir - In the Garden.jpg|In the Garden, 1885, Hermitage St. Petersburg
Image:Girl with a hoop.jpg|Girl With a Hoop, 1885
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Girl Braiding Her Hair (Suzanne Valadon).jpg|Girl Braiding Her Hair (Suzanne Valadon), 1885
Image:Pierre Auguste Renoir - Portrait Berthe Morisot and daughter Julie.jpg|Portrait of Berthe Morisot and daughter Julie Manet, 1894
Image:Pierre Auguste Renoir La famille d artiste.jpg|The Artist's Family, 1896, The Barnes Foundation, Merion, Pennsylvania
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 106.jpg|Portrait of Ambroise Vollard, 1908
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 113.jpg|Portrait of Paul Durand-Ruel, 1910
Image:Renoir Self-Portrait 1910.jpg|Self-portrait, 1910
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 020.jpg|Diana the Huntress, 1867, The National Gallery of Art Washington, DC
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 002.jpg|Nude In The Sun, 1875, Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France
Image:Renoir15.jpg|Seating Girl, 1883
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 021.jpg|The Large Bathers, 1887, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pa.
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 085.jpg|After The Bath, 1888
Image:Renoir26.jpg|Three Bathers, 1895, Cleveland Museum of Art Cleveland, Ohio
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Femme nue couchée (Gabrielle).jpg|Woman on a Couch (Gabrielle), 1906â1907
Image:Renoir18.jpg|After The Bath, 1910, Barnes Foundation, Merion Pennsylvania
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 030.jpg|Woman At The Well, 1910
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Baigneuse assise s'essuyant une jambe.jpg|Seated Bather Drying Her Leg, 1914, Musee de l'Orangerie, Paris, France
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 009.jpg|Women Bathers, 1916, National Museum, Stockholm, Sweden
Image:Pierre Auguste Renoir Les baigneuses.jpg|Bathers, 1918, Barnes Foundation, Merion Pennsylvania
*Mademoiselle Romaine Lacaux (1864)
*La Promenade (1870)
*Monet Painting in His Garden at Argenteuil (1873)
*La Loge (1874)
*Woman with Fan (1875)
*The Swing (1876)
*Lunch at the Restaurant Fournaise (The Rowers' Lunch) (1875)
*Girl with a Watering Can (1876)
*Bal du moulin de la Galette (1876)
*Nude in the Sunlight (1876)
*Madame Charpentier and Her Children (1878)
*Jeanne Samary (1879)
*Acrobats at the Cirque Fernando (Francisca and Angelina Wartenberg) (1879)
*Two Women with Umbrellas (1879)
*On the Terrace (1881)
*Luncheon of the Boating Party (1881)
*The Piazza San Marco, Venice (1881)
*Blonde Bather (1881)
*Alice and Elisabeth Cahen d'Anvers (Pink and Blue) (1881)
*By the Seashore (1883)
*Umbrellas (1883)
*Dance at Bougival (1883)
*Fog at Guernsey (1883)
*Children on the Sea Shore in Guernsey (1883)
*The Bay of Moulin Huet Seen Through the Trees (1883)
*Girl with a Hoop (1885)
*Bathers (1887)
*The Bather (After the Bath) (1888)
*Young Girl with Daisies (1889)
*In the Meadow (1890)
*The Apple Sellers (1890)
*Two Girls at the Piano (1892)
*Vase of Chrysanthemums (1895)
*Coco (1905)
*Standing Bather (1906)
*Nude (1910)
*The Farm at Les Collettes, Cagnes (1908â1914)
*The Concert (1918)
*
*
*
*
*
*
*Gabrielle Renard â Renoir family's nanny
*Jean Renoir â This legendary director was the second son of Renoir
* Renoir at biography.com
* How Renoir Coped with Rheumatoid Arthritis article in British Medical Journal by Boonen A. et al.
* The Story Behind the Masterpiece... The Luncheon of the Boating Party
* Suburban Pastoral, The Guardian, 24 Feb 2007
*
* Pierre-Auguste Renoir paintings, media & interactive timeline
|
Pierre-Auguste_Renoir | As a boy, did he work in a porcelain factory where his drawing talents led to him being chosen to paint designs on fine china? | yes | data/set6/a5 | Pierre-Auguste_Renoir
Pierre-Auguste Renoir (February 25, 1841 December 3, 1919) was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty, and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "Renoir is the final representative of a tradition which runs directly from Rubens to Watteau". Read, Herbert: The Meaning of Art, page 127. Faber, 1931.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir was born in Limoges, Haute-Vienne, France, the child of a working class family. As a boy, he worked in a porcelain factory where his drawing talents led to him being chosen to paint designs on fine china. Renoir, Jean: Renoir, My Father, pages 57â67. Collins, 1962. He also painted hangings for overseas missionaries and decorations on fans before he enrolled in art school. Vollard, Ambroise: Renoir, An Intimate Record, pages 24â29. Knopf, 1925. During those early years, he often visited the Louvre to study the French master painters.
The Theater Box, 1874 by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Courtauld Institute Galleries, London
In 1862 he began studying art under Charles Gleyre in Paris. There he met Alfred Sisley, Frédéric Bazille, and Claude Monet. Vollard, page 30. At times during the 1860s, he did not have enough money to buy paint. Although Renoir first started exhibiting paintings at the Paris Salon in 1864, Wadley, Nicholas: Renoir, A Retrospective, page 15. Park Lane, 1989. recognition did not come for another ten years, due, in part, to the turmoil of the Franco-Prussian War.
During the Paris Commune in 1871, while he painted on the banks of the Seine River, some members of a commune group thought he was a spy, and were about to throw him into the river when a commune leader, Raoul Rigault, recognized Renoir as the man who had protected him on an earlier occasion. Renoir, Jean, pages 118â21. Different and less life-threatening versions are offered by Paul Valéry and Vollard. In all accounts, however, their re-acquaintance led to great celebration.
In 1874, a ten-year friendship with Jules Le Coeur and his family ended, Wadley, page 15. and Renoir lost not only the valuable support gained by the association, but a generous welcome to stay on their property near Fontainebleau and its scenic forest.
This loss of a favorite painting location resulted in a distinct change of subjects.
Renoir experienced his initial acclaim when six of his paintings hung in the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874. In the same year two of his works were shown with Durand-Ruel in London.
The Swing (La Balançoire), 1876, oil on canvas, Musée d'Orsay, Paris
In 1881, he traveled to Algeria, a country he associated with Eugène Delacroix, Poulet, A. L., & Murphy, A. R. (1979). Corot to Braque: French Paintings from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, page 117. Boston: The Museum. ISBN 0-87846-134-5. then to Madrid, to see the work of Diego Velázquez. Following that he traveled to Italy to see Titian's masterpieces in Florence and the paintings of Raphael in Rome. On January 15, 1882 Renoir met the composer Richard Wagner at his home in Palermo, Sicily. Renoir painted Wagner's portrait in just thirty-five minutes. In the same year, Renoir convalesced for six weeks in Algeria after contracting pneumonia, which would cause permanent damage to his respiratory system. Wadley, page 25.
In 1883, he spent the summer in Guernsey, creating fifteen paintings in little over a month. Most of these feature Moulin Huet, a bay in Saint Martin's, Guernsey. Guernsey is one of the Channel Islands in the English Channel, and it has a varied landscape which includes beaches, cliffs, bays, forests, and mountains. These paintings were the subject of a set of commemorative postage stamps issued by the Bailiwick of Guernsey in 1983.
While living and working in Montmartre, Renoir employed as a model Suzanne Valadon, who posed for him (The Bathers, 1885â87; Dance at Bougival, 1883) Wadley, pages 371, 374. and many of his fellow painters while studying their techniques; eventually she became one of the leading painters of the day.
In 1887, a year when Queen Victoria celebrated her Golden Jubilee, and upon the request of the queen's associate, Phillip Richbourg, he donated several paintings to the "French Impressionist Paintings" catalog as a token of his loyalty.
In 1890 he married Aline Victorine Charigot, who, along with a number of the artist's friends, had already served as a model for Les Déjeuner des canotiers (Luncheon of the Boating Party, 1881), and with whom he already had a child, Pierre, in 1885. After his marriage Renoir painted many scenes of his wife and daily family life, including their children and their nurse, Aline's cousin Gabrielle Renard. The Renoirs had three sons, one of whom, Jean, became a filmmaker of note and another, Pierre, became a stage and film actor.
Girls at the Piano, 1892, by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
Around 1892, Renoir developed rheumatoid arthritis. In 1907, he moved to the warmer climate of "Les Collettes," a farm at Cagnes-sur-Mer, close to the Mediterranean coast. Wadley, page 28. Renoir painted during the last twenty years of his life, even when arthritis severely limited his movement, and he was wheelchair-bound. He developed progressive deformities in his hands and ankylosis of his right shoulder, requiring him to adapt his painting technique. It has often been reported that in the advanced stages of his arthritis, he painted by having a brush strapped to his paralyzed fingers, André, Albert: Renoir. Crés, 1928. but this is erroneous; Renoir remained able to grasp a brush, although he required an assistant to place it in his hand. Boonen, A.; van de Rest, J.; Dequeker, J.; van der Linden, S.: "How Renoir Coped with Rheumatoid Arthritis". British Medical Journal, 1997:315:1704 1708. The wrapping of his hands with bandages, apparent in late photographs of the artist, served to prevent skin irritation.
During this period he created sculptures by cooperating with a young artist, Richard Guino, who worked the clay. Renoir also used a moving canvas, or picture roll, to facilitate painting large works with his limited joint mobility.
In 1919, Renoir visited the Louvre to see his paintings hanging with the old masters. He died in the village of Cagnes-sur-Mer, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, on December 3.
250px
Renoir's paintings are notable for their vibrant light and saturated color, most often focusing on people in intimate and candid compositions. The female nude was one of his primary subjects. In characteristic Impressionist style, Renoir suggested the details of a scene through freely brushed touches of color, so that his figures softly fuse with one another and their surroundings.
His initial paintings show the influence of the colorism of Eugène Delacroix and the luminosity of Camille Corot. He also admired the realism of Gustave Courbet and Ãdouard Manet, and his early work resembles theirs in his use of black as a color. As well, Renoir admired Edgar Degas' sense of movement. Another painter Renoir greatly admired was the 18th century master François Boucher. Rey, Robert: La Renaissance du Sentiment Classique, Les Beaux Arts, 1931.
A fine example of Renoir's early work, and evidence of the influence of Courbet's realism, is Diana, 1867. Ostensibly a mythological subject, the painting is a naturalistic studio work, the figure carefully observed, solidly modeled, and superimposed upon a contrived landscape. If the work is still a 'student' piece, already Renoir's heightened personal response to female sensuality is present. The model was Lise Tréhot, then the artist's mistress and inspiration for a number of paintings. "From the Tour: Mary Cassatt", August Renoir. Accessed March 07, 2007.
In the late 1860s, through the practice of painting light and water en plein air (in the open air), he and his friend Claude Monet discovered that the color of shadows is not brown or black, but the reflected color of the objects surrounding them. Several pairs of paintings exist in which Renoir and Monet, working side-by-side, depicted the same scenes (La Grenouillère, 1869). Image:Renoir11.jpg â Wikimedia Commons at commons.wikimedia.org Image:Claude Monet La Grenouillére.jpg â Wikimedia Commons at commons.wikimedia.org
One of the best known Impressionist works is Renoir's 1876 Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette (Bal du moulin de la Galette). The painting depicts an open-air scene, crowded with people, at a popular dance garden on the Butte Montmartre, close to where he lived.On the Terrace, oil on canvas, 1881, Art Institute of Chicago
The works of his early maturity were typically Impressionist snapshots of real life, full of sparkling colour and light. By the mid 1880s, however, he had broken with the movement to apply a more disciplined, formal technique to portraits and figure paintings, particularly of women, such as The Bathers, which was created during 1884â87. It was a trip to Italy in 1881, when he saw works by Raphael and other Renaissance masters, that convinced him that he was on the wrong path, and for the next several years he painted in a more severe style, in an attempt to return to classicism. Clark, Kenneth: The Nude, pages 154â61. Penguin, 1960. This is sometimes called his "Ingres period", as he concentrated on his drawing and emphasized the outlines of figures. Asked late in life if he felt an affinity to Ingres, he responded: "I should very much like to". Rey, quoted in Wadley, page 336.
After 1890, however, he changed direction again, returning to the use of thinly brushed color which dissolved outlines as in his earlier work. From this period onward he concentrated especially on monumental nudes and domestic scenes, fine examples of which are Girls at the Piano, 1892, and Grandes Baigneuses, 1918â19. The latter painting is the most typical and successful of Renoir's late, abundantly fleshed nudes. " For me, Renoir becomes a really great artist in the late nudes, above all in Les Grandes Baigneuses". David Sylvester, quoted by Wadley, page 378.
A prolific artist, he made several thousand paintings. The warm sensuality of Renoir's style made his paintings some of the most well-known and frequently-reproduced works in the history of art. The single largest collection of his worksâ181 paintings in allâis at the Barnes Foundation, near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
In 1919, Ambroise Vollard, a renowned art dealer, published a book on the life and work of Renoir, La Vie et Oeuvre de Pierre Auguste Renoir, in an edition of 1000 copies. In 1986, Vollard's heirs started reprinting the copper plates, generally etchings with hand applied watercolor. These prints are signed by Renoir in the plate and are embossed âVollardâ in the lower margin. They are unnumbered, undated and not signed in pencil.
Two of Renoir's paintings have sold for more than US$70 million. Bal du moulin de la Galette sold for $78.1 million in 1990.
*History of painting
*Western painting
Image:Renoir11.jpg|La Grenouillère, 1868, National Museum, Stockholm, Sweden
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 110.jpg|Portrait of Alfred Sisley, 1868
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 083.jpg|Claude Monet Painting in His Garden at Argenteuil, 1873, Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford, Connecticut
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 112.jpg|Portrait of Claude Monet, 1875, Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 094.jpg|Mme. Charpentier and her children, 1878, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir - By the Water.jpg|By the Water, 1880, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
Image:Dejeuner-canotiers.jpg|Luncheon of the Boating Party, 1880â1881, The Phillips Collection Washington, DC
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 107.jpg|Portrait of Charles and Georges Durand-Ruel, 1882
File:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 019.jpg|Dance in the City, 1882â1883, Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France
Image:Auguste Renoir - La danse à la campagne.jpg|Dance in the Country (Aline Charigot and Paul Lhote), 1883, Musée d'Orsay, Paris
File:Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Study for 'Dance in the Country', pencil, 1883.jpg|Pencil study for Dance in the Country 1883, Honolulu Academy of Arts
File:Renoir16.jpg|Children at the Beach at Guernsey, 1883, Barnes Foundation Merion, Pennsylvania
File:Pierre-Auguste Renoir - In the Garden.jpg|In the Garden, 1885, Hermitage St. Petersburg
Image:Girl with a hoop.jpg|Girl With a Hoop, 1885
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Girl Braiding Her Hair (Suzanne Valadon).jpg|Girl Braiding Her Hair (Suzanne Valadon), 1885
Image:Pierre Auguste Renoir - Portrait Berthe Morisot and daughter Julie.jpg|Portrait of Berthe Morisot and daughter Julie Manet, 1894
Image:Pierre Auguste Renoir La famille d artiste.jpg|The Artist's Family, 1896, The Barnes Foundation, Merion, Pennsylvania
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 106.jpg|Portrait of Ambroise Vollard, 1908
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 113.jpg|Portrait of Paul Durand-Ruel, 1910
Image:Renoir Self-Portrait 1910.jpg|Self-portrait, 1910
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 020.jpg|Diana the Huntress, 1867, The National Gallery of Art Washington, DC
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 002.jpg|Nude In The Sun, 1875, Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France
Image:Renoir15.jpg|Seating Girl, 1883
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 021.jpg|The Large Bathers, 1887, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pa.
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 085.jpg|After The Bath, 1888
Image:Renoir26.jpg|Three Bathers, 1895, Cleveland Museum of Art Cleveland, Ohio
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Femme nue couchée (Gabrielle).jpg|Woman on a Couch (Gabrielle), 1906â1907
Image:Renoir18.jpg|After The Bath, 1910, Barnes Foundation, Merion Pennsylvania
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 030.jpg|Woman At The Well, 1910
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Baigneuse assise s'essuyant une jambe.jpg|Seated Bather Drying Her Leg, 1914, Musee de l'Orangerie, Paris, France
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 009.jpg|Women Bathers, 1916, National Museum, Stockholm, Sweden
Image:Pierre Auguste Renoir Les baigneuses.jpg|Bathers, 1918, Barnes Foundation, Merion Pennsylvania
*Mademoiselle Romaine Lacaux (1864)
*La Promenade (1870)
*Monet Painting in His Garden at Argenteuil (1873)
*La Loge (1874)
*Woman with Fan (1875)
*The Swing (1876)
*Lunch at the Restaurant Fournaise (The Rowers' Lunch) (1875)
*Girl with a Watering Can (1876)
*Bal du moulin de la Galette (1876)
*Nude in the Sunlight (1876)
*Madame Charpentier and Her Children (1878)
*Jeanne Samary (1879)
*Acrobats at the Cirque Fernando (Francisca and Angelina Wartenberg) (1879)
*Two Women with Umbrellas (1879)
*On the Terrace (1881)
*Luncheon of the Boating Party (1881)
*The Piazza San Marco, Venice (1881)
*Blonde Bather (1881)
*Alice and Elisabeth Cahen d'Anvers (Pink and Blue) (1881)
*By the Seashore (1883)
*Umbrellas (1883)
*Dance at Bougival (1883)
*Fog at Guernsey (1883)
*Children on the Sea Shore in Guernsey (1883)
*The Bay of Moulin Huet Seen Through the Trees (1883)
*Girl with a Hoop (1885)
*Bathers (1887)
*The Bather (After the Bath) (1888)
*Young Girl with Daisies (1889)
*In the Meadow (1890)
*The Apple Sellers (1890)
*Two Girls at the Piano (1892)
*Vase of Chrysanthemums (1895)
*Coco (1905)
*Standing Bather (1906)
*Nude (1910)
*The Farm at Les Collettes, Cagnes (1908â1914)
*The Concert (1918)
*
*
*
*
*
*
*Gabrielle Renard â Renoir family's nanny
*Jean Renoir â This legendary director was the second son of Renoir
* Renoir at biography.com
* How Renoir Coped with Rheumatoid Arthritis article in British Medical Journal by Boonen A. et al.
* The Story Behind the Masterpiece... The Luncheon of the Boating Party
* Suburban Pastoral, The Guardian, 24 Feb 2007
*
* Pierre-Auguste Renoir paintings, media & interactive timeline
|
Portuguese_language | Is Portuguese an official language of Andorra? | No | data/set5/a1 | Portuguese_language
Portuguese ( or lÃngua portuguesa) is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia and northern Portugal. It is derived from the Latin spoken by the romanized pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula (namely the Gallaeci, the Lusitanians, the Celtici and the Conii) around 2000 years ago. It spread worldwide in the 15th and 16th centuries as Portugal established a colonial and commercial empire (1415â1999) which spanned from Brazil in the Americas to Goa and other parts of India, Macau in China and Timor (north of Australia). It was used as the exclusive lingua franca on the island of Sri Lanka for almost 350 years. During that time, many creole languages based on Portuguese also appeared around the world, especially in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean.
Today it is one of the world's major languages, ranked seventh according to number of native speakers (between 205 and 230 million). It is the language of about half of South America's population, even though Brazil is the only Portuguese-speaking nation in the Americas. It is also a major lingua franca in Portugal's former colonial possessions in Africa. It is an official language in nine countries (see the table on the right), also being co-official with Cantonese Chinese in Macau and Tetum in East Timor. There are sizeable communities of Portuguese speakers in various regions of North America, notably in the United States (New Jersey, New England, California and south Florida) and in Ontario, Canada.
In various aspects, the system of sounds in Portuguese is more similar to the phonologies of Catalan or French than, say, those of Spanish or Italian. Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes once called Portuguese "the sweet language", /ref> Lope de Vega referred to it as "suave" 'Encyclopedia of Literature' Joseph T. Shipley; Philosophical Library, 1946. 1188 pgs. while Brazilian writer Olavo Bilac poetically described it as a última flor do Lácio, inculta e bela: "the last flower of Latium, wild and beautiful". Portuguese is also termed "the language of Camões", after one of Portugal's best known literary figures, LuÃs Vaz de Camões.
Countries and regions where Portuguese has official status.
Members of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries.
Today, Portuguese is the official language of Angola, Brazil (190.6 million), IBGE Official website Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Portugal (10.6 million), INE Official website São Tomé and PrÃncipe and Mozambique. CPLP Official website It is also one of the official languages of the special administrative region of Macau (with Chinese) and East Timor, (with Tetum). It is the language of most of the population in Portugal (100%) , Brazil (100%) , São Tomé and PrÃncipe (99.8%) and Angola (80%), and is the most widely spoken language in Mozambique (40%), though only 6.5% are native speakers. No data are available for Cape Verde, but almost all the population is bilingual, and the monolingual population speaks Cape Verdean Creole. See the main article Geographic distribution of Portuguese, for references.
Small Portuguese-speaking communities subsist in former overseas colonies of Portugal such as Macau, where it is spoken by 7% of the population, and East Timor (13.6%).
Uruguay gave Portuguese an equal status to Spanish in its educational system at the north border with Brazil. In the rest of the country, it is taught as an obligatory subject beginning in the 6th grade. Uruguay recently adopted Portuguese language in its education system as an obligatory subject /ref>
It is also spoken by substantial immigrant communities, though not official, in Andorra, Australia, The Portuguese-Speaking Community in Australia France, Luxembourg, Jersey (with a statistically significant Portuguese-speaking community of approximately 10,000 people), Paraguay, Namibia, South Africa, Switzerland, Venezuela, Japan JAPÃO: IMIGRANTES BRASILEIROS POPULARIZAM LÃNGUA PORTUGUESA and the U.S. states of California, Connecticut, Where America's Other Languages Are Spoken Florida, Widely spoken but 'minor'? Portuguese seeks respect Massachusetts, New Jersey, Hispanic Reading Room of the U.S. Library of Congress website, Twentieth-Century Arrivals from Portugal Settle in Newark, New Jersey, New York Brazucas (Brazilians living in New York) and Rhode Island. Hispanic Reading Room of the U.S. Library of Congress website, Whaling, Fishing, and Industrial Employment in Southeastern New England
In some parts of India, such as Goa Portuguese Language in Goa and Daman and Diu, The Portuguese Experience: The Case of Goa, Daman and Diu Portuguese is still spoken. There are also significant populations of Portuguese speakers in Canada (mainly concentrated in and around Toronto), Multicultural Canada Bermuda World InfoZone: Bermuda and the Netherlands Antilles.
Portuguese is an official language of several international organizations. The Community of Portuguese Language Countries (with the Portuguese acronym CPLP) consists of the eight independent countries that have Portuguese as an official language. It is also an official language of the European Union, accounting for 3% of its population, EUROPA website Languages in the EU Mercosul, the Organization of American States, the Organization of Ibero-American States, the Union of South American Nations, and the African Union (one of the working languages) and one of the official languages of other organizations. The Portuguese language is gaining popularity in Africa, Asia, and South America as a second language for study.
Estação da Luz, home of the Museum of the Portuguese Language, in São Paulo, Brazil.
Portuguese and Spanish are the fastest-growing European languages (with the exception of English, being the world lingua franca) , and, according to estimates by UNESCO, the Portuguese language has the highest potential for growth as an international language in southern Africa and South America. The Portuguese-speaking African countries are expected to have a combined population of 83 million by 2050. In total, the Portuguese-speaking countries will have 335 million people by the same year. Since 1991, when Brazil signed into the economic market of Mercosul with other South American nations, such as Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay, there has been an increase in interest in the study of Portuguese in those South American countries. The demographic weight of Brazil in the continent will continue to strengthen the presence of the language in the region. Although in the early 21st century, after Macau was ceded to China in 1999, the use of Portuguese was in decline in Asia, it is becoming a language of opportunity there; mostly because of East Timor's boost in the number of speakers in the last five years but also because of increased Chinese diplomatic and financial ties with Portuguese-speaking countries.
In July 2007, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema announced his government's decision to establish Portuguese as Equatorial Guinea's third official language, to meet the requirements to apply for full membership of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries. This upgrading from its current Associate Observer condition would result in Equatorial Guinea being able to access several professional and academic exchange programs and the facilitation of cross-border circulation of citizens. Its application is currently being assessed by other CPLP members. "Obiang convierte al portugués en tercer idioma oficial para entrar en la Comunidad lusófona de Naciones", Terra. 13-07-2007
In March 1994 the Bosque de Portugal (Portugal's Woods) was founded in the Brazilian city of Curitiba. The park houses the Portuguese Language Memorial, which honors the Portuguese immigrants and the countries that adopted the Portuguese language. Originally there were seven nations represented with pillars, but the independence of East Timor brought yet another pillar for that nation in 2007.
In March 2006, the Museum of the Portuguese Language, an interactive museum about the Portuguese language, was founded in São Paulo, Brazil, the city with the greatest number of Portuguese speakers in the world.
Portuguese is a pluricentric language with two main groups of dialects, those of Brazil and those of the Old World. For historical reasons, the dialects of Africa and Asia are generally closer to those of Portugal than the Brazilian dialects, although in some aspects of their phonetics, especially the pronunciation of unstressed vowels, they resemble Brazilian Portuguese more than European Portuguese. They have not been studied as widely as European and Brazilian Portuguese.
Audio samples of some dialects of Portuguese are available below. From Audio samples of the dialects of Portuguese at the Instituto Camões website. There are some differences between the areas but these are the best approximations possible. For example, the caipira dialect has some differences from the one of Minas Gerais, but in general it is very close. A good example of Brazilian Portuguese may be found in the capital city, BrasÃlia, because of the generalized population from all parts of the country.
Portuguese dialects of Angola
# Benguelense â Benguela province.
# 11px Luandense â Luanda province.
# Sulista â South of Angola.
Dialects of Portuguese in Brazil
# Caipira â States of São Paulo (countryside; the city of São Paulo and the eastern areas of the state have their own accent, called paulistano); southern Minas Gerais, northern Paraná, Goiás and Mato Grosso do Sul.
# Cearense â Ceará.
# Baiano â Bahia.
# 11px Fluminense â Variants spoken in the states of Rio de Janeiro (excluding the city of Rio de Janeiro and its adjacent metropolitan areas, which have their own dialect, called carioca).
# Gaúcho â Rio Grande do Sul. (There are many distinct accents in Rio Grande do Sul, mainly due to the heavy influx of European immigrants of diverse origins, those which have settled several colonies throughout the state.)
# Mineiro â Minas Gerais (not prevalent in the Triângulo Mineiro, southern and southeastern Minas Gerais and also excluding the city of Belo Horizonte, which has its own accent.).
# 11px Nordestino â northeastern states of Brazil (Pernambuco, ParaÃba and Rio Grande do Norte have a particular way of speaking). Note: the speaker of this sound file is from Rio, and he is talking about his experience with Nordestino and Nortista accents.
# Nortista â Amazon Basin states.
# Paulistano â Variants spoken around São Paulo city and the eastern areas of São Paulo state.
# Sertanejo â States of Goiás and Mato Grosso (the city of Cuiabá has a particular way of speaking).
# Sulista â Variants spoken in the areas between the northern regions of Rio Grande do Sul and southern regions of São Paulo state. (The cities of Curitiba, Florianópolis, and Itapetininga have fairly distinct accents as well.)
# Carioca â Variants spoken in Rio de Janeiro City and Niteroi
Dialects of Portuguese in Portugal
# 11px Açoriano (Azorean) â Azores.
# 11px Alentejano â Alentejo
# 11px Algarvio â Algarve (there is a particular dialect in a small part of western Algarve).
# 11px Alto-Minhoto â North of Braga (hinterland).
# 11px Baixo-Beirão; Alto-Alentejano â Central Portugal (hinterland).
# 11px Beirão â Central Portugal.
# 11px Estremenho â Regions of Coimbra and Lisbon (the Lisbon dialect has some peculiar features not shared with the one of Coimbra).
# 11px Madeirense (Madeiran) â Madeira.
# 11px Nortenho â Regions of Braga and Porto.
# 11px Transmontano â Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro.
* Cape Verde â 11px Português cabo-verdiano (Cape Verdean Portuguese)
* Daman and Diu, India â Damaense.
* East Timor â 11px Timorense (East Timorese)
* Goa, India â Goês.
* Guinea-Bissau â 11px Guineense (Guinean Portuguese).
* Macau, China â 11px Macaense (Macanese)
* Mozambique â 11px Moçambicano (Mozambican)
* São Tomé and PrÃncipe â 11px Santomense
* Uruguay â Dialectos Portugueses del Uruguay (DPU).
Differences between dialects are mostly of accent and vocabulary, but between the Brazilian dialects and other dialects, especially in their most colloquial forms, there can also be some grammatical differences. The Portuguese-based creoles spoken in various parts of Africa, Asia, and the Americas are independent languages which should not be confused with Portuguese itself.
Baroque Library of the Coimbra University, Portugal.
Arriving in the Iberian Peninsula in 216 BC, the Romans brought with them the Latin language, from which all Romance languages descend. The language was spread by arriving Roman soldiers, settlers, and merchants, who built Roman cities mostly near the settlements of previous civilizations.
Between 409 and 711 AD, as the Roman Empire collapsed in Western Europe, the Iberian Peninsula was conquered by Germanic peoples (Migration Period). The occupiers, mainly Suebi and Visigoths, quickly adopted late Roman culture and the Vulgar Latin dialects of the peninsula. After the Moorish invasion of 711, Arabic became the administrative language in the conquered regions, but most of the population continued to speak a form of Romance commonly known as Mozarabic. The influence exerted by Arabic on the Romance dialects spoken in the Christian kingdoms of the north was small, affecting mainly their lexicon.
The earliest surviving records of a distinctively Portuguese language are administrative documents of the 9th century, still interspersed with many Latin phrases. Today this phase is known as Proto-Portuguese (between the 9th and the 12th centuries). In the first period of Old Portuguese â Galician-Portuguese Period (from the 12th to the 14th century) â the language gradually came into general use. For some time, it was the language of preference for lyric poetry in Christian Hispania, much as Occitan was the language of the poetry of the troubadours. Portugal became an independent kingdom from the Kingdom of Leon in 1139, under king Afonso I of Portugal. In 1290, king Denis of Portugal created the first Portuguese university in Lisbon (the Estudos Gerais, later moved to Coimbra) and decreed that Portuguese, then simply called the "common language" should be known as the Portuguese language and used officially.
In the second period of Old Portuguese, from the 14th to the 16th centuries, with the Portuguese discoveries, the language was taken to many regions of Asia, Africa and the Americas (nowadays, the great majority of Portuguese speakers live in Brazil, in South America). By the 16th century, it had become a lingua franca in Asia and Africa, used not only for colonial administration and trade but also for communication between local officials and Europeans of all nationalities. Its spread was helped by mixed marriages between Portuguese and local people, and by its association with Roman Catholic missionary efforts, which led to the formation of a creole language called Kristang in many parts of Asia (from the word cristão, "Christian"). The language continued to be popular in parts of Asia until the 19th century. Some Portuguese-speaking Christian communities in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Indonesia preserved their language even after they were isolated from Portugal.
The end of the Old Portuguese period was marked by the publication of the Cancioneiro Geral by Garcia de Resende, in 1516. The early times of Modern Portuguese, which spans a period from the 16th century to the present day, were characterized by an increase in the number of learned words borrowed from Classical Latin and Classical Greek since the Renaissance, which greatly enriched the lexicon.
A distinctive feature of Portuguese is that it preserved the stressed vowels of Vulgar Latin, which became diphthongs in other Romance languages; cf. Fr. pierre, Sp. piedra, It. pietra, Ro. piatrÄ, Port. pedra ("stone"), from Lat. petram; or Sp. fuego, It. fuoco, Fr. feu, Ro. foc, Port. fogo, from Lat. focus ("fire"). Another characteristic of early Portuguese was the loss of intervocalic l and n, sometimes followed by the merger of the two surrounding vowels, or by the insertion of an epenthetic vowel between them: cf. Lat. salire ("to leave"), tenere ("to have"), catenam ("chain"), Sp. salir, tener, cadena, Port. sair, ter, cadeia.
When the elided consonant was n, it often nasalized the preceding vowel: cf. Lat. manum ("hand"), ranam ("frog"), bonum ("good"), Port. mão, rãa, bõo (now mão, rã, bom). This process was the source of most of the nasal diphthongs which are typical of Portuguese. In particular, the Latin endings -anem, -anum and -onem became -ão in most cases, cf. Lat. canem ("dog"), germanum ("brother"), rationem ("reason") with Modern Port. cão, irmão, razão, and their plurals -anes, -anos, -ones normally became -ães, -ãos, -ões, cf. cães, irmãos, razões.
Library of the Mafra National Palace, Portugal.
Most of the lexicon of Portuguese is derived from Latin. Nevertheless, because of the Moorish occupation of the Iberian Peninsula during the Middle Ages, and the participation of Portugal in the Age of Discovery, it has adopted loanwords from all over the world.
Very few Portuguese words can be traced to the pre-Roman inhabitants of Portugal, which included the Gallaeci, Lusitanians, Celtici and Cynetes. The Phoenicians and Carthaginians, briefly present, also left some scarce traces. Some notable examples are abóbora "pumpkin" and bezerro "year-old calf", from the nearby Celtiberian language (probably through the Celtici); cerveja "beer", from Celtic; and cachorro "dog", from Basque.
In the 5th century, the Iberian Peninsula (the Roman Hispania) was conquered by the Germanic Suebi and Visigoths. As they adopted the Roman civilization and language, however, these people contributed only a few words to the lexicon, mostly related to warfare â such as espora "spur", estaca "stake", and guerra "war", from Gothic *spaúra, *stakka, and *wirro, respectively. The influence also exists in toponymic and patronymic surnames borne by Visigoth sovereigns and their descendants, and it dwells on placenames such has Ermesinde, Esposende and Resende where sinde and sende are derived from the Germanic "sinths" (military expedition) and in the case of Resende, the prefix re comes from Germanic "reths" (council).
Between the 9th and 13th centuries, Portuguese acquired about 800 words from Arabic by influence of Moorish Iberia. They are often recognizable by the initial Arabic article a(l)-, and include many common words such as aldeia "village" from اÙضÙعة aldaya, alface "lettuce" from اÙخس alkhass, armazém "warehouse" from اÙÙ
خز٠almahazan, and azeite "olive oil" from اÙزÙت azzait. From Arabic came also the grammatically peculiar word oxalá إ٠شاء اÙÙÙ "hopefully". The Mozambican currency name metical was derived from the word Ù
تÙا٠mitqÄl, a unit of weight. The word Mozambique itself is from the Arabic name of sultan Muça Alebique (Musa Alibiki).
Starting in the 15th century, the Portuguese maritime explorations led to the introduction of many loanwords from Asian languages. For instance, catana "cutlass" from Japanese katana and chá "tea" from Chinese 'chá'.
From South America came batata "potato", from Taino; ananás and abacaxi, from Tupi-Guarani naná and Tupi ibá cati, respectively (two species of pineapple), and tucano "toucan" from Guarani tucan. See List of Brazil state name etymologies, for some more examples.
From the 16th to the 19th centuries, because of the role of Portugal as intermediary in the Atlantic slave trade, and the establishment of large Portuguese colonies in Angola, Mozambique, and Brazil, Portuguese got several words of African and Amerind origin, especially names for most of the animals and plants found in those territories. While those terms are mostly used in the former colonies, many became current in European Portuguese as well. From Kimbundu, for example, came kifumate â cafuné "head caress", kusula â caçula "youngest child", marimbondo "tropical wasp", and kubungula â bungular "to dance like a wizard".
Finally, it has received a steady influx of loanwords from other European languages. For example, melena "hair lock", fiambre "wet-cured ham" (in contrast with presunto "dry-cured ham" from Latin prae-exsuctus "dehydrated"), and castelhano "Castilian", from Spanish; colchete/crochê "bracket"/"crochet", paletó "jacket", batom "lipstick", and filé/filete "steak"/"slice" respectively, from French crochet, paletot, bâton, filet; macarrão "pasta", piloto "pilot", carroça "carriage", and barraca "barrack", from Italian maccherone, pilota, carrozza, baracca; and bife "steak", futebol, revólver, estoque, folclore, time from English beef,
football, revolver, stock, folklore, and team.
Portuguese belongs to the West Iberian branch of the Romance languages, and it has special ties with the following members of this group:
* Galician and Fala, its closest relatives. See below.
* Spanish, the major language closest to Portuguese. (See also Differences between Spanish and Portuguese.)
* Mirandese and Leonese, two other West Iberian languages spoken in Portugal.
* Judeo-Portuguese and Judeo-Spanish, languages spoken by Sephardic Jews, and which remained close to Portuguese and Spanish.
Despite the obvious lexical and grammatical similarities between Portuguese and other Romance languages, it is not mutually intelligible with them. Apart from Galician, Portuguese speakers will usually need some formal study of basic grammar and vocabulary, before attaining a reasonable level of comprehension of those languages, and vice versa. Native speakers of Portuguese do tend to understand standard Spanish which is spoken clearly, but the reverse is generally not true unless formal education is involved.
The closest language to Portuguese is Galician, spoken in the autonomous community of Galicia (northwestern Spain). The two were at one time a single language, known today as Galician-Portuguese, but since the political separation of Portugal from Galicia they have diverged somewhat, especially in pronunciation and vocabulary. Nevertheless, the core vocabulary and grammar of Galician are still noticeably closer to Portuguese than to those of Spanish. In particular, like Portuguese, it uses the future subjunctive, the personal infinitive, and the synthetic pluperfect (see the section on the grammar of Portuguese, below). Mutual intelligibility (estimated at 85% by R. A. Hall, Jr., 1989) Ethnologue is good between Galicians and northern Portuguese, but poorer between Galicians and speakers from central Portugal.
The Fala language is another descendant of Galician-Portuguese, spoken by a small number of people in the Spanish towns of Valverde del Fresno, Eljas and San MartÃn de Trevejo (autonomous community of Extremadura, near the border with Portugal).
Portuguese has provided loanwords to many languages, such as Indonesian, Manado Malay, Sri Lankan Tamil and Sinhalese (see Sri Lanka Indo-Portuguese), Malay, Bengali, English, Hindi, Konkani, Marathi, Tetum, Xitsonga, Papiamentu, Japanese, Lanc-Patuá (spoken in northern Brazil) and Sranan Tongo (spoken in Suriname). It left a strong influence on the lÃngua brasÃlica, a Tupi-Guarani language which was the most widely spoken in Brazil until the 18th century, and on the language spoken around Sikka in Flores Island, Indonesia. In nearby Larantuka, Portuguese is used for prayers in Holy Week rituals.
The Japanese-Portuguese dictionary Nippo Jisho (1603) was the first dictionary of Japanese in a European language, a product of Jesuit missionary activity in Japan. Building on the work of earlier Portuguese missionaries, the Dictionarium Anamiticum, Lusitanum et Latinum (Annamite-Portuguese-Latin dictionary) of Alexandre de Rhodes (1651) introduced the modern orthography of Vietnamese, which is based on the orthography of 17th-century Portuguese. The Romanization of Chinese was also influenced by the Portuguese language (among others), particularly regarding Chinese surnames; one example is Mei. During 1583-88 Italian Jesuits Michele Ruggieri and Matteo Ricci created a Portuguese-Chinese dictionary - the first ever European-Chinese dictionary. Yves Camus, "Jesuits' Journeys in Chinese Studies" "Dicionário Português-Chinês : Pu Han ci dian : Portuguese-Chinese dictionary", by Michele Ruggieri, Matteo Ricci; edited by John W. Witek. Published 2001, Biblioteca Nacional. ISBN 9725652983. Partial preview available on Google Books
See also List of English words of Portuguese origin, Loan words in Indonesian, Japanese words of Portuguese origin, Borrowed words in Malay, Sinhala words of Portuguese origin, Loan words from Portuguese in Sri Lankan Tamil.
Beginning in the 16th century, the extensive contacts between Portuguese travelers and settlers, African slaves, and local populations led to the appearance of many pidgins with varying amounts of Portuguese influence. As each of these pidgins became the mother tongue of succeeding generations, they evolved into fully fledged creole languages, which remained in use in many parts of Asia and Africa until the 18th century. Some Portuguese-based or Portuguese-influenced creoles are still spoken today, by over 3 million people worldwide, especially people of partial Portuguese ancestry.
There is a growing number of people in the Portuguese-speaking media and the internet who are presenting the case to the CPLP and other organizations to run a debate in the Lusophone community with the purpose of bringing forward a petition to make Portuguese an official language of the United Nations.
In October 2005, during the international Convention of the Elos Club International that took place in Tavira, Portugal, ONU: Petição para tornar português lÃngua oficial a petition was written and unanimously approved whose text can be found on the internet with the title Petição Para Tornar Oficial o Idioma Português na ONU. Romulo Alexandre Soares, president of the Brazil-Portugal Chamber highlights that the positioning of Brazil in the international arena as one of the emergent powers of the 21st century, the size of its population, and the presence of the language around the world provides legitimacy and justifies a petition to the UN to make the Portuguese language an official language of the UN. Português pode ser lÃngua oficial na ONU
Several factors detract from this campaign. The current official languages of the UN are either 1) official/dominant in many countries (English, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, and French) or 2) have several hundreds of millions of speakers (Chinese). English, Spanish, Russian and Arabic fulfill both criteria. Portuguese is a global language in that it is the official tongue of several sovereign countries on four continents. It also has over 200 million speakers. However, it exhibits some noticeable differences when compared to the current 6 UN official languages. For example, English, French, Arabic and Spanish are each official languages of multiple states and of over half of the world's countries. In contrast, four out of every five speakers of the Portuguese-speaking world live in just one country: Brazil. In addition to Brazil, Portuguese is the official language in only 7 other sovereign states; however, English is official in 53 states, French in 29 states, Arabic in 25 states, and Spanish in 20 states.
More significantly, in each part of the world with a Portuguese-speaking country, this language is overshadowed by other powerful languages that are already official languages of the UN. For example, in the Americas, the 190 million Portuguese-speaking Brazilians are overshadowed by the most spoken languages in the Western Hemisphere: Spanish (~360 million speakers) and English (~340 million speakers). Portuguese is overshadowed to an even greater extent in Europe, the continent in which four of the six UN languages originated (English, French, Spanish, and Russian). In the European context, Portuguese is not even among the ten most spoken languages on the continent, with a number of speakers comparable to those of Czech and Bulgarian. In Africa, Portuguese is eclipsed as a continental lingua franca by English and French in countries that surround Cape Verde, São Tomé and PrÃncipe, Guinea-Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique. Finally in Asia, a continent with several languages that have hundreds of millions of speakers, the only sovereign state with Portuguese as an official language is East Timor, which has only a million people. While Brazilian migration has brought 300,000 fluent Portuguese speakers to Japan, Portuguese does not enjoy any official status whatsoever in that country. Therefore, while Portuguese will gain increasing importance as Brazil continues its development as a major economy, it will likely face the same hurdles that prevented Japanese and German (both languages of major global economies with millions of speakers) from becoming both international languages and official ones of the UN.
There is a maximum of 9 oral vowels and 19 consonants, though some varieties of the language have fewer phonemes (Brazilian Portuguese has 8 oral vowels). There are also five nasal vowels, which some linguists regard as allophones of the oral vowels, ten oral diphthongs, and five nasal diphthongs. In total, Brazilian Portuguese has 13 vowel phonemes. /ref> Handbook of the International Phonetic Association'' pg. 126-130; the reference applies to the entire section
Chart of monophthongs of the Portuguese of Lisbon
To the seven vowels of Vulgar Latin, European Portuguese has added two near central vowels, one of which tends to be elided in rapid speech, like the e caduc of French (represented as either , or , or ). The high vowels and the low vowels are four distinct phonemes, and they alternate in various forms of apophony. Like Catalan, Portuguese uses vowel quality to contrast stressed syllables with unstressed syllables: isolated vowels tend to be raised, and in some cases centralized, when unstressed. Nasal diphthongs occur mostly at the ends of words.
The consonant inventory of Portuguese is fairly conservative. The medieval affricates , , , merged with the fricatives , , , , respectively, but not with each other, and there were no other significant changes to the consonant phonemes since then. However, some notable dialectal variants and allophones have appeared, among which:
* In many regions of Brazil, and have the affricate allophones and , respectively, before and . (Quebec French has a similar phenomenon, with alveolar affricates instead of postalveolars. Japanese is another example).
* At the end of a syllable, the phoneme has the allophone in Brazilian Portuguese (L-vocalization).
* In many parts of Brazil and Angola, intervocalic is pronounced as a nasalized palatal approximant which nasalizes the preceding vowel, so that, for instance, is pronounced .
* In most of Brazil, the alveolar sibilants and occur in complementary distribution at the ends of syllables, depending on whether the consonant that follows is voiceless or voiced, as in English. But in most of Portugal and parts of Brazil, sibilants are postalveolar at the ends of syllables, before voiceless consonants, and before voiced consonants (in Judeo-Spanish, is often replaced with at the ends of syllables, too).
* There is considerable dialectal variation in the value of the rhotic phoneme . See Guttural R in Portuguese, for details.
;Excerpt from the Portuguese national epic Os LusÃadas, by author LuÃs de Camões (I, 33)
A notable aspect of the grammar of Portuguese is the verb. Morphologically, more verbal inflections from classical Latin have been preserved by Portuguese than by any other major Romance language. See Romance copula, for a detailed comparison. It has also some innovations not found in other Romance languages (except Galician and the Fala):
* The present perfect tense has an iterative sense unique to Galician-Portuguese language group. It denotes an action or a series of actions which began in the past and are expected to keep repeating in the future. For instance, the sentence Tenho tentado falar com ela would be translated to "I have been trying to talk to her", not "I have tried to talk to her". On the other hand, the correct translation of the question "Have you heard the latest news?" is not *Tem ouvido a última notÃcia?, but Ouviu a última notÃcia?, since no repetition is implied. Squartini, Mario (1998) Verbal Periphrases in Romance â Aspect, Actionality, and Grammaticalization ISBN 3-11-016160-5
* The future subjunctive tense, which was developed by medieval West Iberian Romance, but has now fallen into disuse in Spanish and Galician, is still used in vernacular Portuguese. It appears in dependent clauses that denote a condition which must be fulfilled in the future, so that the independent clause will occur. English normally employs the present tense under the same circumstances:
:Se eu for eleito presidente, mudarei a lei.
:If I am elected president, I will change the law.
:Quando fores mais velho, vais entender.
:When you are older, you will understand.
* The personal infinitive: infinitives can inflect according to their subject in person and number, often showing who is expected to perform a certain action; cf. Ã melhor voltares "It is better [for you] to go back," Ã melhor voltarmos "It is better [for us] to go back." Perhaps for this reason, infinitive clauses replace subjunctive clauses more often in Portuguese than in other Romance languages.
Portuguese is written with 23 or 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, making use of five diacritics to denote stress, vowel height, contraction, nasalization, and other sound changes (acute accent, grave accent, circumflex accent, tilde, and cedilla). Accented characters and digraphs are not counted as separate letters for collation purposes.
* Portuguese literature
* Portuguese poetry
* List of Portuguese language poets
* Brazilian literature
* List of Brazilian poets
* Lusophone
* Geographic distribution of Portuguese
* List of countries where Portuguese is an official language
* Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP)
* Instituto Camões
* International Portuguese Language Institute
* Museum of the Portuguese Language
* Portuguese-based creole languages
* Portuñol
* Portuguese in the United States
* List of English words of Portuguese origin
* Spelling reforms of Portuguese
* História da Lingua Portuguesa Instituto Camões
* A LÃngua Portuguesa in Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil (...)
* Poesia e Prosa Medievais, by Maria Ema Tarracha Ferreira, Ulisseia 1998, 3rd ed., ISBN 978-972-568-124-4.
* Bases Temáticas â LÃngua Portuguesa in Instituto Camões
* Portuguese Literature in The Catholic Encyclopedia
* International Phonetic Association (1999) Handbook of the International Phonetic Association ISBN 0-521-63751-1
* Mateus, Maria Helena & d'Andrade, Ernesto (2000) The Phonology of Portuguese ISBN 0-19-823581-X (Excerpt available at Google Books)
* Bergström, Magnus & Reis, Neves Prontuário Ortográfico Editorial NotÃcias, 2004.
* A pronúncia do português europeu - European Portuguese Pronunciation
* Dialects of Portuguese at the Instituto Camões
* Audio samples of the dialects of Portugal
* Audio samples of the dialects from outside Europe
* Antônio Houaiss (2000), Dicionário Houaiss da LÃngua Portuguesa (228,500 entries).
* Aurélio Buarque de Holanda Ferreira, Novo Dicionário da LÃngua Portuguesa (1809pp)
* English-Portuguese-Chinese Dictionary (Freeware, for Windows/Linux/Mac)
* Lindley Cintra, LuÃs F. Nova Proposta de Classificação dos Dialectos Galego-Portugueses (PDF) Boletim de Filologia, Lisboa, Centro de Estudos Filológicos, 1971.
*Swadesh list in English and Portuguese
* English Portuguese Translation Dictionary for English Portuguese translations
* Learn Portuguese BBC
* Portuguese Language Notes BBC
* AULP - Associação das Universidades de LÃngua Portuguesa Portuguese Language Universities Association.
* Portuguese in East Timor an interview with Dr. Geoffrey Hull.
* Portuguese Dictionary with gender and type of words.
* ABL - Academia Brasileira de letras (em português) - (Brazilian Academy of Letters) (Portuguese)
* Brazilian Portuguese Free resources for Portuguese learners.
* EasyPortuguese Free Portuguese learning site with audio.
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Portuguese_language | Is Portuguese an official language of Andorra? | No, Portuguese is not an official language of Andorra. | data/set5/a1 | Portuguese_language
Portuguese ( or lÃngua portuguesa) is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia and northern Portugal. It is derived from the Latin spoken by the romanized pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula (namely the Gallaeci, the Lusitanians, the Celtici and the Conii) around 2000 years ago. It spread worldwide in the 15th and 16th centuries as Portugal established a colonial and commercial empire (1415â1999) which spanned from Brazil in the Americas to Goa and other parts of India, Macau in China and Timor (north of Australia). It was used as the exclusive lingua franca on the island of Sri Lanka for almost 350 years. During that time, many creole languages based on Portuguese also appeared around the world, especially in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean.
Today it is one of the world's major languages, ranked seventh according to number of native speakers (between 205 and 230 million). It is the language of about half of South America's population, even though Brazil is the only Portuguese-speaking nation in the Americas. It is also a major lingua franca in Portugal's former colonial possessions in Africa. It is an official language in nine countries (see the table on the right), also being co-official with Cantonese Chinese in Macau and Tetum in East Timor. There are sizeable communities of Portuguese speakers in various regions of North America, notably in the United States (New Jersey, New England, California and south Florida) and in Ontario, Canada.
In various aspects, the system of sounds in Portuguese is more similar to the phonologies of Catalan or French than, say, those of Spanish or Italian. Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes once called Portuguese "the sweet language", /ref> Lope de Vega referred to it as "suave" 'Encyclopedia of Literature' Joseph T. Shipley; Philosophical Library, 1946. 1188 pgs. while Brazilian writer Olavo Bilac poetically described it as a última flor do Lácio, inculta e bela: "the last flower of Latium, wild and beautiful". Portuguese is also termed "the language of Camões", after one of Portugal's best known literary figures, LuÃs Vaz de Camões.
Countries and regions where Portuguese has official status.
Members of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries.
Today, Portuguese is the official language of Angola, Brazil (190.6 million), IBGE Official website Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Portugal (10.6 million), INE Official website São Tomé and PrÃncipe and Mozambique. CPLP Official website It is also one of the official languages of the special administrative region of Macau (with Chinese) and East Timor, (with Tetum). It is the language of most of the population in Portugal (100%) , Brazil (100%) , São Tomé and PrÃncipe (99.8%) and Angola (80%), and is the most widely spoken language in Mozambique (40%), though only 6.5% are native speakers. No data are available for Cape Verde, but almost all the population is bilingual, and the monolingual population speaks Cape Verdean Creole. See the main article Geographic distribution of Portuguese, for references.
Small Portuguese-speaking communities subsist in former overseas colonies of Portugal such as Macau, where it is spoken by 7% of the population, and East Timor (13.6%).
Uruguay gave Portuguese an equal status to Spanish in its educational system at the north border with Brazil. In the rest of the country, it is taught as an obligatory subject beginning in the 6th grade. Uruguay recently adopted Portuguese language in its education system as an obligatory subject /ref>
It is also spoken by substantial immigrant communities, though not official, in Andorra, Australia, The Portuguese-Speaking Community in Australia France, Luxembourg, Jersey (with a statistically significant Portuguese-speaking community of approximately 10,000 people), Paraguay, Namibia, South Africa, Switzerland, Venezuela, Japan JAPÃO: IMIGRANTES BRASILEIROS POPULARIZAM LÃNGUA PORTUGUESA and the U.S. states of California, Connecticut, Where America's Other Languages Are Spoken Florida, Widely spoken but 'minor'? Portuguese seeks respect Massachusetts, New Jersey, Hispanic Reading Room of the U.S. Library of Congress website, Twentieth-Century Arrivals from Portugal Settle in Newark, New Jersey, New York Brazucas (Brazilians living in New York) and Rhode Island. Hispanic Reading Room of the U.S. Library of Congress website, Whaling, Fishing, and Industrial Employment in Southeastern New England
In some parts of India, such as Goa Portuguese Language in Goa and Daman and Diu, The Portuguese Experience: The Case of Goa, Daman and Diu Portuguese is still spoken. There are also significant populations of Portuguese speakers in Canada (mainly concentrated in and around Toronto), Multicultural Canada Bermuda World InfoZone: Bermuda and the Netherlands Antilles.
Portuguese is an official language of several international organizations. The Community of Portuguese Language Countries (with the Portuguese acronym CPLP) consists of the eight independent countries that have Portuguese as an official language. It is also an official language of the European Union, accounting for 3% of its population, EUROPA website Languages in the EU Mercosul, the Organization of American States, the Organization of Ibero-American States, the Union of South American Nations, and the African Union (one of the working languages) and one of the official languages of other organizations. The Portuguese language is gaining popularity in Africa, Asia, and South America as a second language for study.
Estação da Luz, home of the Museum of the Portuguese Language, in São Paulo, Brazil.
Portuguese and Spanish are the fastest-growing European languages (with the exception of English, being the world lingua franca) , and, according to estimates by UNESCO, the Portuguese language has the highest potential for growth as an international language in southern Africa and South America. The Portuguese-speaking African countries are expected to have a combined population of 83 million by 2050. In total, the Portuguese-speaking countries will have 335 million people by the same year. Since 1991, when Brazil signed into the economic market of Mercosul with other South American nations, such as Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay, there has been an increase in interest in the study of Portuguese in those South American countries. The demographic weight of Brazil in the continent will continue to strengthen the presence of the language in the region. Although in the early 21st century, after Macau was ceded to China in 1999, the use of Portuguese was in decline in Asia, it is becoming a language of opportunity there; mostly because of East Timor's boost in the number of speakers in the last five years but also because of increased Chinese diplomatic and financial ties with Portuguese-speaking countries.
In July 2007, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema announced his government's decision to establish Portuguese as Equatorial Guinea's third official language, to meet the requirements to apply for full membership of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries. This upgrading from its current Associate Observer condition would result in Equatorial Guinea being able to access several professional and academic exchange programs and the facilitation of cross-border circulation of citizens. Its application is currently being assessed by other CPLP members. "Obiang convierte al portugués en tercer idioma oficial para entrar en la Comunidad lusófona de Naciones", Terra. 13-07-2007
In March 1994 the Bosque de Portugal (Portugal's Woods) was founded in the Brazilian city of Curitiba. The park houses the Portuguese Language Memorial, which honors the Portuguese immigrants and the countries that adopted the Portuguese language. Originally there were seven nations represented with pillars, but the independence of East Timor brought yet another pillar for that nation in 2007.
In March 2006, the Museum of the Portuguese Language, an interactive museum about the Portuguese language, was founded in São Paulo, Brazil, the city with the greatest number of Portuguese speakers in the world.
Portuguese is a pluricentric language with two main groups of dialects, those of Brazil and those of the Old World. For historical reasons, the dialects of Africa and Asia are generally closer to those of Portugal than the Brazilian dialects, although in some aspects of their phonetics, especially the pronunciation of unstressed vowels, they resemble Brazilian Portuguese more than European Portuguese. They have not been studied as widely as European and Brazilian Portuguese.
Audio samples of some dialects of Portuguese are available below. From Audio samples of the dialects of Portuguese at the Instituto Camões website. There are some differences between the areas but these are the best approximations possible. For example, the caipira dialect has some differences from the one of Minas Gerais, but in general it is very close. A good example of Brazilian Portuguese may be found in the capital city, BrasÃlia, because of the generalized population from all parts of the country.
Portuguese dialects of Angola
# Benguelense â Benguela province.
# 11px Luandense â Luanda province.
# Sulista â South of Angola.
Dialects of Portuguese in Brazil
# Caipira â States of São Paulo (countryside; the city of São Paulo and the eastern areas of the state have their own accent, called paulistano); southern Minas Gerais, northern Paraná, Goiás and Mato Grosso do Sul.
# Cearense â Ceará.
# Baiano â Bahia.
# 11px Fluminense â Variants spoken in the states of Rio de Janeiro (excluding the city of Rio de Janeiro and its adjacent metropolitan areas, which have their own dialect, called carioca).
# Gaúcho â Rio Grande do Sul. (There are many distinct accents in Rio Grande do Sul, mainly due to the heavy influx of European immigrants of diverse origins, those which have settled several colonies throughout the state.)
# Mineiro â Minas Gerais (not prevalent in the Triângulo Mineiro, southern and southeastern Minas Gerais and also excluding the city of Belo Horizonte, which has its own accent.).
# 11px Nordestino â northeastern states of Brazil (Pernambuco, ParaÃba and Rio Grande do Norte have a particular way of speaking). Note: the speaker of this sound file is from Rio, and he is talking about his experience with Nordestino and Nortista accents.
# Nortista â Amazon Basin states.
# Paulistano â Variants spoken around São Paulo city and the eastern areas of São Paulo state.
# Sertanejo â States of Goiás and Mato Grosso (the city of Cuiabá has a particular way of speaking).
# Sulista â Variants spoken in the areas between the northern regions of Rio Grande do Sul and southern regions of São Paulo state. (The cities of Curitiba, Florianópolis, and Itapetininga have fairly distinct accents as well.)
# Carioca â Variants spoken in Rio de Janeiro City and Niteroi
Dialects of Portuguese in Portugal
# 11px Açoriano (Azorean) â Azores.
# 11px Alentejano â Alentejo
# 11px Algarvio â Algarve (there is a particular dialect in a small part of western Algarve).
# 11px Alto-Minhoto â North of Braga (hinterland).
# 11px Baixo-Beirão; Alto-Alentejano â Central Portugal (hinterland).
# 11px Beirão â Central Portugal.
# 11px Estremenho â Regions of Coimbra and Lisbon (the Lisbon dialect has some peculiar features not shared with the one of Coimbra).
# 11px Madeirense (Madeiran) â Madeira.
# 11px Nortenho â Regions of Braga and Porto.
# 11px Transmontano â Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro.
* Cape Verde â 11px Português cabo-verdiano (Cape Verdean Portuguese)
* Daman and Diu, India â Damaense.
* East Timor â 11px Timorense (East Timorese)
* Goa, India â Goês.
* Guinea-Bissau â 11px Guineense (Guinean Portuguese).
* Macau, China â 11px Macaense (Macanese)
* Mozambique â 11px Moçambicano (Mozambican)
* São Tomé and PrÃncipe â 11px Santomense
* Uruguay â Dialectos Portugueses del Uruguay (DPU).
Differences between dialects are mostly of accent and vocabulary, but between the Brazilian dialects and other dialects, especially in their most colloquial forms, there can also be some grammatical differences. The Portuguese-based creoles spoken in various parts of Africa, Asia, and the Americas are independent languages which should not be confused with Portuguese itself.
Baroque Library of the Coimbra University, Portugal.
Arriving in the Iberian Peninsula in 216 BC, the Romans brought with them the Latin language, from which all Romance languages descend. The language was spread by arriving Roman soldiers, settlers, and merchants, who built Roman cities mostly near the settlements of previous civilizations.
Between 409 and 711 AD, as the Roman Empire collapsed in Western Europe, the Iberian Peninsula was conquered by Germanic peoples (Migration Period). The occupiers, mainly Suebi and Visigoths, quickly adopted late Roman culture and the Vulgar Latin dialects of the peninsula. After the Moorish invasion of 711, Arabic became the administrative language in the conquered regions, but most of the population continued to speak a form of Romance commonly known as Mozarabic. The influence exerted by Arabic on the Romance dialects spoken in the Christian kingdoms of the north was small, affecting mainly their lexicon.
The earliest surviving records of a distinctively Portuguese language are administrative documents of the 9th century, still interspersed with many Latin phrases. Today this phase is known as Proto-Portuguese (between the 9th and the 12th centuries). In the first period of Old Portuguese â Galician-Portuguese Period (from the 12th to the 14th century) â the language gradually came into general use. For some time, it was the language of preference for lyric poetry in Christian Hispania, much as Occitan was the language of the poetry of the troubadours. Portugal became an independent kingdom from the Kingdom of Leon in 1139, under king Afonso I of Portugal. In 1290, king Denis of Portugal created the first Portuguese university in Lisbon (the Estudos Gerais, later moved to Coimbra) and decreed that Portuguese, then simply called the "common language" should be known as the Portuguese language and used officially.
In the second period of Old Portuguese, from the 14th to the 16th centuries, with the Portuguese discoveries, the language was taken to many regions of Asia, Africa and the Americas (nowadays, the great majority of Portuguese speakers live in Brazil, in South America). By the 16th century, it had become a lingua franca in Asia and Africa, used not only for colonial administration and trade but also for communication between local officials and Europeans of all nationalities. Its spread was helped by mixed marriages between Portuguese and local people, and by its association with Roman Catholic missionary efforts, which led to the formation of a creole language called Kristang in many parts of Asia (from the word cristão, "Christian"). The language continued to be popular in parts of Asia until the 19th century. Some Portuguese-speaking Christian communities in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Indonesia preserved their language even after they were isolated from Portugal.
The end of the Old Portuguese period was marked by the publication of the Cancioneiro Geral by Garcia de Resende, in 1516. The early times of Modern Portuguese, which spans a period from the 16th century to the present day, were characterized by an increase in the number of learned words borrowed from Classical Latin and Classical Greek since the Renaissance, which greatly enriched the lexicon.
A distinctive feature of Portuguese is that it preserved the stressed vowels of Vulgar Latin, which became diphthongs in other Romance languages; cf. Fr. pierre, Sp. piedra, It. pietra, Ro. piatrÄ, Port. pedra ("stone"), from Lat. petram; or Sp. fuego, It. fuoco, Fr. feu, Ro. foc, Port. fogo, from Lat. focus ("fire"). Another characteristic of early Portuguese was the loss of intervocalic l and n, sometimes followed by the merger of the two surrounding vowels, or by the insertion of an epenthetic vowel between them: cf. Lat. salire ("to leave"), tenere ("to have"), catenam ("chain"), Sp. salir, tener, cadena, Port. sair, ter, cadeia.
When the elided consonant was n, it often nasalized the preceding vowel: cf. Lat. manum ("hand"), ranam ("frog"), bonum ("good"), Port. mão, rãa, bõo (now mão, rã, bom). This process was the source of most of the nasal diphthongs which are typical of Portuguese. In particular, the Latin endings -anem, -anum and -onem became -ão in most cases, cf. Lat. canem ("dog"), germanum ("brother"), rationem ("reason") with Modern Port. cão, irmão, razão, and their plurals -anes, -anos, -ones normally became -ães, -ãos, -ões, cf. cães, irmãos, razões.
Library of the Mafra National Palace, Portugal.
Most of the lexicon of Portuguese is derived from Latin. Nevertheless, because of the Moorish occupation of the Iberian Peninsula during the Middle Ages, and the participation of Portugal in the Age of Discovery, it has adopted loanwords from all over the world.
Very few Portuguese words can be traced to the pre-Roman inhabitants of Portugal, which included the Gallaeci, Lusitanians, Celtici and Cynetes. The Phoenicians and Carthaginians, briefly present, also left some scarce traces. Some notable examples are abóbora "pumpkin" and bezerro "year-old calf", from the nearby Celtiberian language (probably through the Celtici); cerveja "beer", from Celtic; and cachorro "dog", from Basque.
In the 5th century, the Iberian Peninsula (the Roman Hispania) was conquered by the Germanic Suebi and Visigoths. As they adopted the Roman civilization and language, however, these people contributed only a few words to the lexicon, mostly related to warfare â such as espora "spur", estaca "stake", and guerra "war", from Gothic *spaúra, *stakka, and *wirro, respectively. The influence also exists in toponymic and patronymic surnames borne by Visigoth sovereigns and their descendants, and it dwells on placenames such has Ermesinde, Esposende and Resende where sinde and sende are derived from the Germanic "sinths" (military expedition) and in the case of Resende, the prefix re comes from Germanic "reths" (council).
Between the 9th and 13th centuries, Portuguese acquired about 800 words from Arabic by influence of Moorish Iberia. They are often recognizable by the initial Arabic article a(l)-, and include many common words such as aldeia "village" from اÙضÙعة aldaya, alface "lettuce" from اÙخس alkhass, armazém "warehouse" from اÙÙ
خز٠almahazan, and azeite "olive oil" from اÙزÙت azzait. From Arabic came also the grammatically peculiar word oxalá إ٠شاء اÙÙÙ "hopefully". The Mozambican currency name metical was derived from the word Ù
تÙا٠mitqÄl, a unit of weight. The word Mozambique itself is from the Arabic name of sultan Muça Alebique (Musa Alibiki).
Starting in the 15th century, the Portuguese maritime explorations led to the introduction of many loanwords from Asian languages. For instance, catana "cutlass" from Japanese katana and chá "tea" from Chinese 'chá'.
From South America came batata "potato", from Taino; ananás and abacaxi, from Tupi-Guarani naná and Tupi ibá cati, respectively (two species of pineapple), and tucano "toucan" from Guarani tucan. See List of Brazil state name etymologies, for some more examples.
From the 16th to the 19th centuries, because of the role of Portugal as intermediary in the Atlantic slave trade, and the establishment of large Portuguese colonies in Angola, Mozambique, and Brazil, Portuguese got several words of African and Amerind origin, especially names for most of the animals and plants found in those territories. While those terms are mostly used in the former colonies, many became current in European Portuguese as well. From Kimbundu, for example, came kifumate â cafuné "head caress", kusula â caçula "youngest child", marimbondo "tropical wasp", and kubungula â bungular "to dance like a wizard".
Finally, it has received a steady influx of loanwords from other European languages. For example, melena "hair lock", fiambre "wet-cured ham" (in contrast with presunto "dry-cured ham" from Latin prae-exsuctus "dehydrated"), and castelhano "Castilian", from Spanish; colchete/crochê "bracket"/"crochet", paletó "jacket", batom "lipstick", and filé/filete "steak"/"slice" respectively, from French crochet, paletot, bâton, filet; macarrão "pasta", piloto "pilot", carroça "carriage", and barraca "barrack", from Italian maccherone, pilota, carrozza, baracca; and bife "steak", futebol, revólver, estoque, folclore, time from English beef,
football, revolver, stock, folklore, and team.
Portuguese belongs to the West Iberian branch of the Romance languages, and it has special ties with the following members of this group:
* Galician and Fala, its closest relatives. See below.
* Spanish, the major language closest to Portuguese. (See also Differences between Spanish and Portuguese.)
* Mirandese and Leonese, two other West Iberian languages spoken in Portugal.
* Judeo-Portuguese and Judeo-Spanish, languages spoken by Sephardic Jews, and which remained close to Portuguese and Spanish.
Despite the obvious lexical and grammatical similarities between Portuguese and other Romance languages, it is not mutually intelligible with them. Apart from Galician, Portuguese speakers will usually need some formal study of basic grammar and vocabulary, before attaining a reasonable level of comprehension of those languages, and vice versa. Native speakers of Portuguese do tend to understand standard Spanish which is spoken clearly, but the reverse is generally not true unless formal education is involved.
The closest language to Portuguese is Galician, spoken in the autonomous community of Galicia (northwestern Spain). The two were at one time a single language, known today as Galician-Portuguese, but since the political separation of Portugal from Galicia they have diverged somewhat, especially in pronunciation and vocabulary. Nevertheless, the core vocabulary and grammar of Galician are still noticeably closer to Portuguese than to those of Spanish. In particular, like Portuguese, it uses the future subjunctive, the personal infinitive, and the synthetic pluperfect (see the section on the grammar of Portuguese, below). Mutual intelligibility (estimated at 85% by R. A. Hall, Jr., 1989) Ethnologue is good between Galicians and northern Portuguese, but poorer between Galicians and speakers from central Portugal.
The Fala language is another descendant of Galician-Portuguese, spoken by a small number of people in the Spanish towns of Valverde del Fresno, Eljas and San MartÃn de Trevejo (autonomous community of Extremadura, near the border with Portugal).
Portuguese has provided loanwords to many languages, such as Indonesian, Manado Malay, Sri Lankan Tamil and Sinhalese (see Sri Lanka Indo-Portuguese), Malay, Bengali, English, Hindi, Konkani, Marathi, Tetum, Xitsonga, Papiamentu, Japanese, Lanc-Patuá (spoken in northern Brazil) and Sranan Tongo (spoken in Suriname). It left a strong influence on the lÃngua brasÃlica, a Tupi-Guarani language which was the most widely spoken in Brazil until the 18th century, and on the language spoken around Sikka in Flores Island, Indonesia. In nearby Larantuka, Portuguese is used for prayers in Holy Week rituals.
The Japanese-Portuguese dictionary Nippo Jisho (1603) was the first dictionary of Japanese in a European language, a product of Jesuit missionary activity in Japan. Building on the work of earlier Portuguese missionaries, the Dictionarium Anamiticum, Lusitanum et Latinum (Annamite-Portuguese-Latin dictionary) of Alexandre de Rhodes (1651) introduced the modern orthography of Vietnamese, which is based on the orthography of 17th-century Portuguese. The Romanization of Chinese was also influenced by the Portuguese language (among others), particularly regarding Chinese surnames; one example is Mei. During 1583-88 Italian Jesuits Michele Ruggieri and Matteo Ricci created a Portuguese-Chinese dictionary - the first ever European-Chinese dictionary. Yves Camus, "Jesuits' Journeys in Chinese Studies" "Dicionário Português-Chinês : Pu Han ci dian : Portuguese-Chinese dictionary", by Michele Ruggieri, Matteo Ricci; edited by John W. Witek. Published 2001, Biblioteca Nacional. ISBN 9725652983. Partial preview available on Google Books
See also List of English words of Portuguese origin, Loan words in Indonesian, Japanese words of Portuguese origin, Borrowed words in Malay, Sinhala words of Portuguese origin, Loan words from Portuguese in Sri Lankan Tamil.
Beginning in the 16th century, the extensive contacts between Portuguese travelers and settlers, African slaves, and local populations led to the appearance of many pidgins with varying amounts of Portuguese influence. As each of these pidgins became the mother tongue of succeeding generations, they evolved into fully fledged creole languages, which remained in use in many parts of Asia and Africa until the 18th century. Some Portuguese-based or Portuguese-influenced creoles are still spoken today, by over 3 million people worldwide, especially people of partial Portuguese ancestry.
There is a growing number of people in the Portuguese-speaking media and the internet who are presenting the case to the CPLP and other organizations to run a debate in the Lusophone community with the purpose of bringing forward a petition to make Portuguese an official language of the United Nations.
In October 2005, during the international Convention of the Elos Club International that took place in Tavira, Portugal, ONU: Petição para tornar português lÃngua oficial a petition was written and unanimously approved whose text can be found on the internet with the title Petição Para Tornar Oficial o Idioma Português na ONU. Romulo Alexandre Soares, president of the Brazil-Portugal Chamber highlights that the positioning of Brazil in the international arena as one of the emergent powers of the 21st century, the size of its population, and the presence of the language around the world provides legitimacy and justifies a petition to the UN to make the Portuguese language an official language of the UN. Português pode ser lÃngua oficial na ONU
Several factors detract from this campaign. The current official languages of the UN are either 1) official/dominant in many countries (English, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, and French) or 2) have several hundreds of millions of speakers (Chinese). English, Spanish, Russian and Arabic fulfill both criteria. Portuguese is a global language in that it is the official tongue of several sovereign countries on four continents. It also has over 200 million speakers. However, it exhibits some noticeable differences when compared to the current 6 UN official languages. For example, English, French, Arabic and Spanish are each official languages of multiple states and of over half of the world's countries. In contrast, four out of every five speakers of the Portuguese-speaking world live in just one country: Brazil. In addition to Brazil, Portuguese is the official language in only 7 other sovereign states; however, English is official in 53 states, French in 29 states, Arabic in 25 states, and Spanish in 20 states.
More significantly, in each part of the world with a Portuguese-speaking country, this language is overshadowed by other powerful languages that are already official languages of the UN. For example, in the Americas, the 190 million Portuguese-speaking Brazilians are overshadowed by the most spoken languages in the Western Hemisphere: Spanish (~360 million speakers) and English (~340 million speakers). Portuguese is overshadowed to an even greater extent in Europe, the continent in which four of the six UN languages originated (English, French, Spanish, and Russian). In the European context, Portuguese is not even among the ten most spoken languages on the continent, with a number of speakers comparable to those of Czech and Bulgarian. In Africa, Portuguese is eclipsed as a continental lingua franca by English and French in countries that surround Cape Verde, São Tomé and PrÃncipe, Guinea-Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique. Finally in Asia, a continent with several languages that have hundreds of millions of speakers, the only sovereign state with Portuguese as an official language is East Timor, which has only a million people. While Brazilian migration has brought 300,000 fluent Portuguese speakers to Japan, Portuguese does not enjoy any official status whatsoever in that country. Therefore, while Portuguese will gain increasing importance as Brazil continues its development as a major economy, it will likely face the same hurdles that prevented Japanese and German (both languages of major global economies with millions of speakers) from becoming both international languages and official ones of the UN.
There is a maximum of 9 oral vowels and 19 consonants, though some varieties of the language have fewer phonemes (Brazilian Portuguese has 8 oral vowels). There are also five nasal vowels, which some linguists regard as allophones of the oral vowels, ten oral diphthongs, and five nasal diphthongs. In total, Brazilian Portuguese has 13 vowel phonemes. /ref> Handbook of the International Phonetic Association'' pg. 126-130; the reference applies to the entire section
Chart of monophthongs of the Portuguese of Lisbon
To the seven vowels of Vulgar Latin, European Portuguese has added two near central vowels, one of which tends to be elided in rapid speech, like the e caduc of French (represented as either , or , or ). The high vowels and the low vowels are four distinct phonemes, and they alternate in various forms of apophony. Like Catalan, Portuguese uses vowel quality to contrast stressed syllables with unstressed syllables: isolated vowels tend to be raised, and in some cases centralized, when unstressed. Nasal diphthongs occur mostly at the ends of words.
The consonant inventory of Portuguese is fairly conservative. The medieval affricates , , , merged with the fricatives , , , , respectively, but not with each other, and there were no other significant changes to the consonant phonemes since then. However, some notable dialectal variants and allophones have appeared, among which:
* In many regions of Brazil, and have the affricate allophones and , respectively, before and . (Quebec French has a similar phenomenon, with alveolar affricates instead of postalveolars. Japanese is another example).
* At the end of a syllable, the phoneme has the allophone in Brazilian Portuguese (L-vocalization).
* In many parts of Brazil and Angola, intervocalic is pronounced as a nasalized palatal approximant which nasalizes the preceding vowel, so that, for instance, is pronounced .
* In most of Brazil, the alveolar sibilants and occur in complementary distribution at the ends of syllables, depending on whether the consonant that follows is voiceless or voiced, as in English. But in most of Portugal and parts of Brazil, sibilants are postalveolar at the ends of syllables, before voiceless consonants, and before voiced consonants (in Judeo-Spanish, is often replaced with at the ends of syllables, too).
* There is considerable dialectal variation in the value of the rhotic phoneme . See Guttural R in Portuguese, for details.
;Excerpt from the Portuguese national epic Os LusÃadas, by author LuÃs de Camões (I, 33)
A notable aspect of the grammar of Portuguese is the verb. Morphologically, more verbal inflections from classical Latin have been preserved by Portuguese than by any other major Romance language. See Romance copula, for a detailed comparison. It has also some innovations not found in other Romance languages (except Galician and the Fala):
* The present perfect tense has an iterative sense unique to Galician-Portuguese language group. It denotes an action or a series of actions which began in the past and are expected to keep repeating in the future. For instance, the sentence Tenho tentado falar com ela would be translated to "I have been trying to talk to her", not "I have tried to talk to her". On the other hand, the correct translation of the question "Have you heard the latest news?" is not *Tem ouvido a última notÃcia?, but Ouviu a última notÃcia?, since no repetition is implied. Squartini, Mario (1998) Verbal Periphrases in Romance â Aspect, Actionality, and Grammaticalization ISBN 3-11-016160-5
* The future subjunctive tense, which was developed by medieval West Iberian Romance, but has now fallen into disuse in Spanish and Galician, is still used in vernacular Portuguese. It appears in dependent clauses that denote a condition which must be fulfilled in the future, so that the independent clause will occur. English normally employs the present tense under the same circumstances:
:Se eu for eleito presidente, mudarei a lei.
:If I am elected president, I will change the law.
:Quando fores mais velho, vais entender.
:When you are older, you will understand.
* The personal infinitive: infinitives can inflect according to their subject in person and number, often showing who is expected to perform a certain action; cf. Ã melhor voltares "It is better [for you] to go back," Ã melhor voltarmos "It is better [for us] to go back." Perhaps for this reason, infinitive clauses replace subjunctive clauses more often in Portuguese than in other Romance languages.
Portuguese is written with 23 or 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, making use of five diacritics to denote stress, vowel height, contraction, nasalization, and other sound changes (acute accent, grave accent, circumflex accent, tilde, and cedilla). Accented characters and digraphs are not counted as separate letters for collation purposes.
* Portuguese literature
* Portuguese poetry
* List of Portuguese language poets
* Brazilian literature
* List of Brazilian poets
* Lusophone
* Geographic distribution of Portuguese
* List of countries where Portuguese is an official language
* Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP)
* Instituto Camões
* International Portuguese Language Institute
* Museum of the Portuguese Language
* Portuguese-based creole languages
* Portuñol
* Portuguese in the United States
* List of English words of Portuguese origin
* Spelling reforms of Portuguese
* História da Lingua Portuguesa Instituto Camões
* A LÃngua Portuguesa in Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil (...)
* Poesia e Prosa Medievais, by Maria Ema Tarracha Ferreira, Ulisseia 1998, 3rd ed., ISBN 978-972-568-124-4.
* Bases Temáticas â LÃngua Portuguesa in Instituto Camões
* Portuguese Literature in The Catholic Encyclopedia
* International Phonetic Association (1999) Handbook of the International Phonetic Association ISBN 0-521-63751-1
* Mateus, Maria Helena & d'Andrade, Ernesto (2000) The Phonology of Portuguese ISBN 0-19-823581-X (Excerpt available at Google Books)
* Bergström, Magnus & Reis, Neves Prontuário Ortográfico Editorial NotÃcias, 2004.
* A pronúncia do português europeu - European Portuguese Pronunciation
* Dialects of Portuguese at the Instituto Camões
* Audio samples of the dialects of Portugal
* Audio samples of the dialects from outside Europe
* Antônio Houaiss (2000), Dicionário Houaiss da LÃngua Portuguesa (228,500 entries).
* Aurélio Buarque de Holanda Ferreira, Novo Dicionário da LÃngua Portuguesa (1809pp)
* English-Portuguese-Chinese Dictionary (Freeware, for Windows/Linux/Mac)
* Lindley Cintra, LuÃs F. Nova Proposta de Classificação dos Dialectos Galego-Portugueses (PDF) Boletim de Filologia, Lisboa, Centro de Estudos Filológicos, 1971.
*Swadesh list in English and Portuguese
* English Portuguese Translation Dictionary for English Portuguese translations
* Learn Portuguese BBC
* Portuguese Language Notes BBC
* AULP - Associação das Universidades de LÃngua Portuguesa Portuguese Language Universities Association.
* Portuguese in East Timor an interview with Dr. Geoffrey Hull.
* Portuguese Dictionary with gender and type of words.
* ABL - Academia Brasileira de letras (em português) - (Brazilian Academy of Letters) (Portuguese)
* Brazilian Portuguese Free resources for Portuguese learners.
* EasyPortuguese Free Portuguese learning site with audio.
|
Portuguese_language | Does the Portuguese language have its roots in the Latin language? | Yes | data/set5/a1 | Portuguese_language
Portuguese ( or lÃngua portuguesa) is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia and northern Portugal. It is derived from the Latin spoken by the romanized pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula (namely the Gallaeci, the Lusitanians, the Celtici and the Conii) around 2000 years ago. It spread worldwide in the 15th and 16th centuries as Portugal established a colonial and commercial empire (1415â1999) which spanned from Brazil in the Americas to Goa and other parts of India, Macau in China and Timor (north of Australia). It was used as the exclusive lingua franca on the island of Sri Lanka for almost 350 years. During that time, many creole languages based on Portuguese also appeared around the world, especially in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean.
Today it is one of the world's major languages, ranked seventh according to number of native speakers (between 205 and 230 million). It is the language of about half of South America's population, even though Brazil is the only Portuguese-speaking nation in the Americas. It is also a major lingua franca in Portugal's former colonial possessions in Africa. It is an official language in nine countries (see the table on the right), also being co-official with Cantonese Chinese in Macau and Tetum in East Timor. There are sizeable communities of Portuguese speakers in various regions of North America, notably in the United States (New Jersey, New England, California and south Florida) and in Ontario, Canada.
In various aspects, the system of sounds in Portuguese is more similar to the phonologies of Catalan or French than, say, those of Spanish or Italian. Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes once called Portuguese "the sweet language", /ref> Lope de Vega referred to it as "suave" 'Encyclopedia of Literature' Joseph T. Shipley; Philosophical Library, 1946. 1188 pgs. while Brazilian writer Olavo Bilac poetically described it as a última flor do Lácio, inculta e bela: "the last flower of Latium, wild and beautiful". Portuguese is also termed "the language of Camões", after one of Portugal's best known literary figures, LuÃs Vaz de Camões.
Countries and regions where Portuguese has official status.
Members of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries.
Today, Portuguese is the official language of Angola, Brazil (190.6 million), IBGE Official website Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Portugal (10.6 million), INE Official website São Tomé and PrÃncipe and Mozambique. CPLP Official website It is also one of the official languages of the special administrative region of Macau (with Chinese) and East Timor, (with Tetum). It is the language of most of the population in Portugal (100%) , Brazil (100%) , São Tomé and PrÃncipe (99.8%) and Angola (80%), and is the most widely spoken language in Mozambique (40%), though only 6.5% are native speakers. No data are available for Cape Verde, but almost all the population is bilingual, and the monolingual population speaks Cape Verdean Creole. See the main article Geographic distribution of Portuguese, for references.
Small Portuguese-speaking communities subsist in former overseas colonies of Portugal such as Macau, where it is spoken by 7% of the population, and East Timor (13.6%).
Uruguay gave Portuguese an equal status to Spanish in its educational system at the north border with Brazil. In the rest of the country, it is taught as an obligatory subject beginning in the 6th grade. Uruguay recently adopted Portuguese language in its education system as an obligatory subject /ref>
It is also spoken by substantial immigrant communities, though not official, in Andorra, Australia, The Portuguese-Speaking Community in Australia France, Luxembourg, Jersey (with a statistically significant Portuguese-speaking community of approximately 10,000 people), Paraguay, Namibia, South Africa, Switzerland, Venezuela, Japan JAPÃO: IMIGRANTES BRASILEIROS POPULARIZAM LÃNGUA PORTUGUESA and the U.S. states of California, Connecticut, Where America's Other Languages Are Spoken Florida, Widely spoken but 'minor'? Portuguese seeks respect Massachusetts, New Jersey, Hispanic Reading Room of the U.S. Library of Congress website, Twentieth-Century Arrivals from Portugal Settle in Newark, New Jersey, New York Brazucas (Brazilians living in New York) and Rhode Island. Hispanic Reading Room of the U.S. Library of Congress website, Whaling, Fishing, and Industrial Employment in Southeastern New England
In some parts of India, such as Goa Portuguese Language in Goa and Daman and Diu, The Portuguese Experience: The Case of Goa, Daman and Diu Portuguese is still spoken. There are also significant populations of Portuguese speakers in Canada (mainly concentrated in and around Toronto), Multicultural Canada Bermuda World InfoZone: Bermuda and the Netherlands Antilles.
Portuguese is an official language of several international organizations. The Community of Portuguese Language Countries (with the Portuguese acronym CPLP) consists of the eight independent countries that have Portuguese as an official language. It is also an official language of the European Union, accounting for 3% of its population, EUROPA website Languages in the EU Mercosul, the Organization of American States, the Organization of Ibero-American States, the Union of South American Nations, and the African Union (one of the working languages) and one of the official languages of other organizations. The Portuguese language is gaining popularity in Africa, Asia, and South America as a second language for study.
Estação da Luz, home of the Museum of the Portuguese Language, in São Paulo, Brazil.
Portuguese and Spanish are the fastest-growing European languages (with the exception of English, being the world lingua franca) , and, according to estimates by UNESCO, the Portuguese language has the highest potential for growth as an international language in southern Africa and South America. The Portuguese-speaking African countries are expected to have a combined population of 83 million by 2050. In total, the Portuguese-speaking countries will have 335 million people by the same year. Since 1991, when Brazil signed into the economic market of Mercosul with other South American nations, such as Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay, there has been an increase in interest in the study of Portuguese in those South American countries. The demographic weight of Brazil in the continent will continue to strengthen the presence of the language in the region. Although in the early 21st century, after Macau was ceded to China in 1999, the use of Portuguese was in decline in Asia, it is becoming a language of opportunity there; mostly because of East Timor's boost in the number of speakers in the last five years but also because of increased Chinese diplomatic and financial ties with Portuguese-speaking countries.
In July 2007, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema announced his government's decision to establish Portuguese as Equatorial Guinea's third official language, to meet the requirements to apply for full membership of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries. This upgrading from its current Associate Observer condition would result in Equatorial Guinea being able to access several professional and academic exchange programs and the facilitation of cross-border circulation of citizens. Its application is currently being assessed by other CPLP members. "Obiang convierte al portugués en tercer idioma oficial para entrar en la Comunidad lusófona de Naciones", Terra. 13-07-2007
In March 1994 the Bosque de Portugal (Portugal's Woods) was founded in the Brazilian city of Curitiba. The park houses the Portuguese Language Memorial, which honors the Portuguese immigrants and the countries that adopted the Portuguese language. Originally there were seven nations represented with pillars, but the independence of East Timor brought yet another pillar for that nation in 2007.
In March 2006, the Museum of the Portuguese Language, an interactive museum about the Portuguese language, was founded in São Paulo, Brazil, the city with the greatest number of Portuguese speakers in the world.
Portuguese is a pluricentric language with two main groups of dialects, those of Brazil and those of the Old World. For historical reasons, the dialects of Africa and Asia are generally closer to those of Portugal than the Brazilian dialects, although in some aspects of their phonetics, especially the pronunciation of unstressed vowels, they resemble Brazilian Portuguese more than European Portuguese. They have not been studied as widely as European and Brazilian Portuguese.
Audio samples of some dialects of Portuguese are available below. From Audio samples of the dialects of Portuguese at the Instituto Camões website. There are some differences between the areas but these are the best approximations possible. For example, the caipira dialect has some differences from the one of Minas Gerais, but in general it is very close. A good example of Brazilian Portuguese may be found in the capital city, BrasÃlia, because of the generalized population from all parts of the country.
Portuguese dialects of Angola
# Benguelense â Benguela province.
# 11px Luandense â Luanda province.
# Sulista â South of Angola.
Dialects of Portuguese in Brazil
# Caipira â States of São Paulo (countryside; the city of São Paulo and the eastern areas of the state have their own accent, called paulistano); southern Minas Gerais, northern Paraná, Goiás and Mato Grosso do Sul.
# Cearense â Ceará.
# Baiano â Bahia.
# 11px Fluminense â Variants spoken in the states of Rio de Janeiro (excluding the city of Rio de Janeiro and its adjacent metropolitan areas, which have their own dialect, called carioca).
# Gaúcho â Rio Grande do Sul. (There are many distinct accents in Rio Grande do Sul, mainly due to the heavy influx of European immigrants of diverse origins, those which have settled several colonies throughout the state.)
# Mineiro â Minas Gerais (not prevalent in the Triângulo Mineiro, southern and southeastern Minas Gerais and also excluding the city of Belo Horizonte, which has its own accent.).
# 11px Nordestino â northeastern states of Brazil (Pernambuco, ParaÃba and Rio Grande do Norte have a particular way of speaking). Note: the speaker of this sound file is from Rio, and he is talking about his experience with Nordestino and Nortista accents.
# Nortista â Amazon Basin states.
# Paulistano â Variants spoken around São Paulo city and the eastern areas of São Paulo state.
# Sertanejo â States of Goiás and Mato Grosso (the city of Cuiabá has a particular way of speaking).
# Sulista â Variants spoken in the areas between the northern regions of Rio Grande do Sul and southern regions of São Paulo state. (The cities of Curitiba, Florianópolis, and Itapetininga have fairly distinct accents as well.)
# Carioca â Variants spoken in Rio de Janeiro City and Niteroi
Dialects of Portuguese in Portugal
# 11px Açoriano (Azorean) â Azores.
# 11px Alentejano â Alentejo
# 11px Algarvio â Algarve (there is a particular dialect in a small part of western Algarve).
# 11px Alto-Minhoto â North of Braga (hinterland).
# 11px Baixo-Beirão; Alto-Alentejano â Central Portugal (hinterland).
# 11px Beirão â Central Portugal.
# 11px Estremenho â Regions of Coimbra and Lisbon (the Lisbon dialect has some peculiar features not shared with the one of Coimbra).
# 11px Madeirense (Madeiran) â Madeira.
# 11px Nortenho â Regions of Braga and Porto.
# 11px Transmontano â Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro.
* Cape Verde â 11px Português cabo-verdiano (Cape Verdean Portuguese)
* Daman and Diu, India â Damaense.
* East Timor â 11px Timorense (East Timorese)
* Goa, India â Goês.
* Guinea-Bissau â 11px Guineense (Guinean Portuguese).
* Macau, China â 11px Macaense (Macanese)
* Mozambique â 11px Moçambicano (Mozambican)
* São Tomé and PrÃncipe â 11px Santomense
* Uruguay â Dialectos Portugueses del Uruguay (DPU).
Differences between dialects are mostly of accent and vocabulary, but between the Brazilian dialects and other dialects, especially in their most colloquial forms, there can also be some grammatical differences. The Portuguese-based creoles spoken in various parts of Africa, Asia, and the Americas are independent languages which should not be confused with Portuguese itself.
Baroque Library of the Coimbra University, Portugal.
Arriving in the Iberian Peninsula in 216 BC, the Romans brought with them the Latin language, from which all Romance languages descend. The language was spread by arriving Roman soldiers, settlers, and merchants, who built Roman cities mostly near the settlements of previous civilizations.
Between 409 and 711 AD, as the Roman Empire collapsed in Western Europe, the Iberian Peninsula was conquered by Germanic peoples (Migration Period). The occupiers, mainly Suebi and Visigoths, quickly adopted late Roman culture and the Vulgar Latin dialects of the peninsula. After the Moorish invasion of 711, Arabic became the administrative language in the conquered regions, but most of the population continued to speak a form of Romance commonly known as Mozarabic. The influence exerted by Arabic on the Romance dialects spoken in the Christian kingdoms of the north was small, affecting mainly their lexicon.
The earliest surviving records of a distinctively Portuguese language are administrative documents of the 9th century, still interspersed with many Latin phrases. Today this phase is known as Proto-Portuguese (between the 9th and the 12th centuries). In the first period of Old Portuguese â Galician-Portuguese Period (from the 12th to the 14th century) â the language gradually came into general use. For some time, it was the language of preference for lyric poetry in Christian Hispania, much as Occitan was the language of the poetry of the troubadours. Portugal became an independent kingdom from the Kingdom of Leon in 1139, under king Afonso I of Portugal. In 1290, king Denis of Portugal created the first Portuguese university in Lisbon (the Estudos Gerais, later moved to Coimbra) and decreed that Portuguese, then simply called the "common language" should be known as the Portuguese language and used officially.
In the second period of Old Portuguese, from the 14th to the 16th centuries, with the Portuguese discoveries, the language was taken to many regions of Asia, Africa and the Americas (nowadays, the great majority of Portuguese speakers live in Brazil, in South America). By the 16th century, it had become a lingua franca in Asia and Africa, used not only for colonial administration and trade but also for communication between local officials and Europeans of all nationalities. Its spread was helped by mixed marriages between Portuguese and local people, and by its association with Roman Catholic missionary efforts, which led to the formation of a creole language called Kristang in many parts of Asia (from the word cristão, "Christian"). The language continued to be popular in parts of Asia until the 19th century. Some Portuguese-speaking Christian communities in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Indonesia preserved their language even after they were isolated from Portugal.
The end of the Old Portuguese period was marked by the publication of the Cancioneiro Geral by Garcia de Resende, in 1516. The early times of Modern Portuguese, which spans a period from the 16th century to the present day, were characterized by an increase in the number of learned words borrowed from Classical Latin and Classical Greek since the Renaissance, which greatly enriched the lexicon.
A distinctive feature of Portuguese is that it preserved the stressed vowels of Vulgar Latin, which became diphthongs in other Romance languages; cf. Fr. pierre, Sp. piedra, It. pietra, Ro. piatrÄ, Port. pedra ("stone"), from Lat. petram; or Sp. fuego, It. fuoco, Fr. feu, Ro. foc, Port. fogo, from Lat. focus ("fire"). Another characteristic of early Portuguese was the loss of intervocalic l and n, sometimes followed by the merger of the two surrounding vowels, or by the insertion of an epenthetic vowel between them: cf. Lat. salire ("to leave"), tenere ("to have"), catenam ("chain"), Sp. salir, tener, cadena, Port. sair, ter, cadeia.
When the elided consonant was n, it often nasalized the preceding vowel: cf. Lat. manum ("hand"), ranam ("frog"), bonum ("good"), Port. mão, rãa, bõo (now mão, rã, bom). This process was the source of most of the nasal diphthongs which are typical of Portuguese. In particular, the Latin endings -anem, -anum and -onem became -ão in most cases, cf. Lat. canem ("dog"), germanum ("brother"), rationem ("reason") with Modern Port. cão, irmão, razão, and their plurals -anes, -anos, -ones normally became -ães, -ãos, -ões, cf. cães, irmãos, razões.
Library of the Mafra National Palace, Portugal.
Most of the lexicon of Portuguese is derived from Latin. Nevertheless, because of the Moorish occupation of the Iberian Peninsula during the Middle Ages, and the participation of Portugal in the Age of Discovery, it has adopted loanwords from all over the world.
Very few Portuguese words can be traced to the pre-Roman inhabitants of Portugal, which included the Gallaeci, Lusitanians, Celtici and Cynetes. The Phoenicians and Carthaginians, briefly present, also left some scarce traces. Some notable examples are abóbora "pumpkin" and bezerro "year-old calf", from the nearby Celtiberian language (probably through the Celtici); cerveja "beer", from Celtic; and cachorro "dog", from Basque.
In the 5th century, the Iberian Peninsula (the Roman Hispania) was conquered by the Germanic Suebi and Visigoths. As they adopted the Roman civilization and language, however, these people contributed only a few words to the lexicon, mostly related to warfare â such as espora "spur", estaca "stake", and guerra "war", from Gothic *spaúra, *stakka, and *wirro, respectively. The influence also exists in toponymic and patronymic surnames borne by Visigoth sovereigns and their descendants, and it dwells on placenames such has Ermesinde, Esposende and Resende where sinde and sende are derived from the Germanic "sinths" (military expedition) and in the case of Resende, the prefix re comes from Germanic "reths" (council).
Between the 9th and 13th centuries, Portuguese acquired about 800 words from Arabic by influence of Moorish Iberia. They are often recognizable by the initial Arabic article a(l)-, and include many common words such as aldeia "village" from اÙضÙعة aldaya, alface "lettuce" from اÙخس alkhass, armazém "warehouse" from اÙÙ
خز٠almahazan, and azeite "olive oil" from اÙزÙت azzait. From Arabic came also the grammatically peculiar word oxalá إ٠شاء اÙÙÙ "hopefully". The Mozambican currency name metical was derived from the word Ù
تÙا٠mitqÄl, a unit of weight. The word Mozambique itself is from the Arabic name of sultan Muça Alebique (Musa Alibiki).
Starting in the 15th century, the Portuguese maritime explorations led to the introduction of many loanwords from Asian languages. For instance, catana "cutlass" from Japanese katana and chá "tea" from Chinese 'chá'.
From South America came batata "potato", from Taino; ananás and abacaxi, from Tupi-Guarani naná and Tupi ibá cati, respectively (two species of pineapple), and tucano "toucan" from Guarani tucan. See List of Brazil state name etymologies, for some more examples.
From the 16th to the 19th centuries, because of the role of Portugal as intermediary in the Atlantic slave trade, and the establishment of large Portuguese colonies in Angola, Mozambique, and Brazil, Portuguese got several words of African and Amerind origin, especially names for most of the animals and plants found in those territories. While those terms are mostly used in the former colonies, many became current in European Portuguese as well. From Kimbundu, for example, came kifumate â cafuné "head caress", kusula â caçula "youngest child", marimbondo "tropical wasp", and kubungula â bungular "to dance like a wizard".
Finally, it has received a steady influx of loanwords from other European languages. For example, melena "hair lock", fiambre "wet-cured ham" (in contrast with presunto "dry-cured ham" from Latin prae-exsuctus "dehydrated"), and castelhano "Castilian", from Spanish; colchete/crochê "bracket"/"crochet", paletó "jacket", batom "lipstick", and filé/filete "steak"/"slice" respectively, from French crochet, paletot, bâton, filet; macarrão "pasta", piloto "pilot", carroça "carriage", and barraca "barrack", from Italian maccherone, pilota, carrozza, baracca; and bife "steak", futebol, revólver, estoque, folclore, time from English beef,
football, revolver, stock, folklore, and team.
Portuguese belongs to the West Iberian branch of the Romance languages, and it has special ties with the following members of this group:
* Galician and Fala, its closest relatives. See below.
* Spanish, the major language closest to Portuguese. (See also Differences between Spanish and Portuguese.)
* Mirandese and Leonese, two other West Iberian languages spoken in Portugal.
* Judeo-Portuguese and Judeo-Spanish, languages spoken by Sephardic Jews, and which remained close to Portuguese and Spanish.
Despite the obvious lexical and grammatical similarities between Portuguese and other Romance languages, it is not mutually intelligible with them. Apart from Galician, Portuguese speakers will usually need some formal study of basic grammar and vocabulary, before attaining a reasonable level of comprehension of those languages, and vice versa. Native speakers of Portuguese do tend to understand standard Spanish which is spoken clearly, but the reverse is generally not true unless formal education is involved.
The closest language to Portuguese is Galician, spoken in the autonomous community of Galicia (northwestern Spain). The two were at one time a single language, known today as Galician-Portuguese, but since the political separation of Portugal from Galicia they have diverged somewhat, especially in pronunciation and vocabulary. Nevertheless, the core vocabulary and grammar of Galician are still noticeably closer to Portuguese than to those of Spanish. In particular, like Portuguese, it uses the future subjunctive, the personal infinitive, and the synthetic pluperfect (see the section on the grammar of Portuguese, below). Mutual intelligibility (estimated at 85% by R. A. Hall, Jr., 1989) Ethnologue is good between Galicians and northern Portuguese, but poorer between Galicians and speakers from central Portugal.
The Fala language is another descendant of Galician-Portuguese, spoken by a small number of people in the Spanish towns of Valverde del Fresno, Eljas and San MartÃn de Trevejo (autonomous community of Extremadura, near the border with Portugal).
Portuguese has provided loanwords to many languages, such as Indonesian, Manado Malay, Sri Lankan Tamil and Sinhalese (see Sri Lanka Indo-Portuguese), Malay, Bengali, English, Hindi, Konkani, Marathi, Tetum, Xitsonga, Papiamentu, Japanese, Lanc-Patuá (spoken in northern Brazil) and Sranan Tongo (spoken in Suriname). It left a strong influence on the lÃngua brasÃlica, a Tupi-Guarani language which was the most widely spoken in Brazil until the 18th century, and on the language spoken around Sikka in Flores Island, Indonesia. In nearby Larantuka, Portuguese is used for prayers in Holy Week rituals.
The Japanese-Portuguese dictionary Nippo Jisho (1603) was the first dictionary of Japanese in a European language, a product of Jesuit missionary activity in Japan. Building on the work of earlier Portuguese missionaries, the Dictionarium Anamiticum, Lusitanum et Latinum (Annamite-Portuguese-Latin dictionary) of Alexandre de Rhodes (1651) introduced the modern orthography of Vietnamese, which is based on the orthography of 17th-century Portuguese. The Romanization of Chinese was also influenced by the Portuguese language (among others), particularly regarding Chinese surnames; one example is Mei. During 1583-88 Italian Jesuits Michele Ruggieri and Matteo Ricci created a Portuguese-Chinese dictionary - the first ever European-Chinese dictionary. Yves Camus, "Jesuits' Journeys in Chinese Studies" "Dicionário Português-Chinês : Pu Han ci dian : Portuguese-Chinese dictionary", by Michele Ruggieri, Matteo Ricci; edited by John W. Witek. Published 2001, Biblioteca Nacional. ISBN 9725652983. Partial preview available on Google Books
See also List of English words of Portuguese origin, Loan words in Indonesian, Japanese words of Portuguese origin, Borrowed words in Malay, Sinhala words of Portuguese origin, Loan words from Portuguese in Sri Lankan Tamil.
Beginning in the 16th century, the extensive contacts between Portuguese travelers and settlers, African slaves, and local populations led to the appearance of many pidgins with varying amounts of Portuguese influence. As each of these pidgins became the mother tongue of succeeding generations, they evolved into fully fledged creole languages, which remained in use in many parts of Asia and Africa until the 18th century. Some Portuguese-based or Portuguese-influenced creoles are still spoken today, by over 3 million people worldwide, especially people of partial Portuguese ancestry.
There is a growing number of people in the Portuguese-speaking media and the internet who are presenting the case to the CPLP and other organizations to run a debate in the Lusophone community with the purpose of bringing forward a petition to make Portuguese an official language of the United Nations.
In October 2005, during the international Convention of the Elos Club International that took place in Tavira, Portugal, ONU: Petição para tornar português lÃngua oficial a petition was written and unanimously approved whose text can be found on the internet with the title Petição Para Tornar Oficial o Idioma Português na ONU. Romulo Alexandre Soares, president of the Brazil-Portugal Chamber highlights that the positioning of Brazil in the international arena as one of the emergent powers of the 21st century, the size of its population, and the presence of the language around the world provides legitimacy and justifies a petition to the UN to make the Portuguese language an official language of the UN. Português pode ser lÃngua oficial na ONU
Several factors detract from this campaign. The current official languages of the UN are either 1) official/dominant in many countries (English, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, and French) or 2) have several hundreds of millions of speakers (Chinese). English, Spanish, Russian and Arabic fulfill both criteria. Portuguese is a global language in that it is the official tongue of several sovereign countries on four continents. It also has over 200 million speakers. However, it exhibits some noticeable differences when compared to the current 6 UN official languages. For example, English, French, Arabic and Spanish are each official languages of multiple states and of over half of the world's countries. In contrast, four out of every five speakers of the Portuguese-speaking world live in just one country: Brazil. In addition to Brazil, Portuguese is the official language in only 7 other sovereign states; however, English is official in 53 states, French in 29 states, Arabic in 25 states, and Spanish in 20 states.
More significantly, in each part of the world with a Portuguese-speaking country, this language is overshadowed by other powerful languages that are already official languages of the UN. For example, in the Americas, the 190 million Portuguese-speaking Brazilians are overshadowed by the most spoken languages in the Western Hemisphere: Spanish (~360 million speakers) and English (~340 million speakers). Portuguese is overshadowed to an even greater extent in Europe, the continent in which four of the six UN languages originated (English, French, Spanish, and Russian). In the European context, Portuguese is not even among the ten most spoken languages on the continent, with a number of speakers comparable to those of Czech and Bulgarian. In Africa, Portuguese is eclipsed as a continental lingua franca by English and French in countries that surround Cape Verde, São Tomé and PrÃncipe, Guinea-Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique. Finally in Asia, a continent with several languages that have hundreds of millions of speakers, the only sovereign state with Portuguese as an official language is East Timor, which has only a million people. While Brazilian migration has brought 300,000 fluent Portuguese speakers to Japan, Portuguese does not enjoy any official status whatsoever in that country. Therefore, while Portuguese will gain increasing importance as Brazil continues its development as a major economy, it will likely face the same hurdles that prevented Japanese and German (both languages of major global economies with millions of speakers) from becoming both international languages and official ones of the UN.
There is a maximum of 9 oral vowels and 19 consonants, though some varieties of the language have fewer phonemes (Brazilian Portuguese has 8 oral vowels). There are also five nasal vowels, which some linguists regard as allophones of the oral vowels, ten oral diphthongs, and five nasal diphthongs. In total, Brazilian Portuguese has 13 vowel phonemes. /ref> Handbook of the International Phonetic Association'' pg. 126-130; the reference applies to the entire section
Chart of monophthongs of the Portuguese of Lisbon
To the seven vowels of Vulgar Latin, European Portuguese has added two near central vowels, one of which tends to be elided in rapid speech, like the e caduc of French (represented as either , or , or ). The high vowels and the low vowels are four distinct phonemes, and they alternate in various forms of apophony. Like Catalan, Portuguese uses vowel quality to contrast stressed syllables with unstressed syllables: isolated vowels tend to be raised, and in some cases centralized, when unstressed. Nasal diphthongs occur mostly at the ends of words.
The consonant inventory of Portuguese is fairly conservative. The medieval affricates , , , merged with the fricatives , , , , respectively, but not with each other, and there were no other significant changes to the consonant phonemes since then. However, some notable dialectal variants and allophones have appeared, among which:
* In many regions of Brazil, and have the affricate allophones and , respectively, before and . (Quebec French has a similar phenomenon, with alveolar affricates instead of postalveolars. Japanese is another example).
* At the end of a syllable, the phoneme has the allophone in Brazilian Portuguese (L-vocalization).
* In many parts of Brazil and Angola, intervocalic is pronounced as a nasalized palatal approximant which nasalizes the preceding vowel, so that, for instance, is pronounced .
* In most of Brazil, the alveolar sibilants and occur in complementary distribution at the ends of syllables, depending on whether the consonant that follows is voiceless or voiced, as in English. But in most of Portugal and parts of Brazil, sibilants are postalveolar at the ends of syllables, before voiceless consonants, and before voiced consonants (in Judeo-Spanish, is often replaced with at the ends of syllables, too).
* There is considerable dialectal variation in the value of the rhotic phoneme . See Guttural R in Portuguese, for details.
;Excerpt from the Portuguese national epic Os LusÃadas, by author LuÃs de Camões (I, 33)
A notable aspect of the grammar of Portuguese is the verb. Morphologically, more verbal inflections from classical Latin have been preserved by Portuguese than by any other major Romance language. See Romance copula, for a detailed comparison. It has also some innovations not found in other Romance languages (except Galician and the Fala):
* The present perfect tense has an iterative sense unique to Galician-Portuguese language group. It denotes an action or a series of actions which began in the past and are expected to keep repeating in the future. For instance, the sentence Tenho tentado falar com ela would be translated to "I have been trying to talk to her", not "I have tried to talk to her". On the other hand, the correct translation of the question "Have you heard the latest news?" is not *Tem ouvido a última notÃcia?, but Ouviu a última notÃcia?, since no repetition is implied. Squartini, Mario (1998) Verbal Periphrases in Romance â Aspect, Actionality, and Grammaticalization ISBN 3-11-016160-5
* The future subjunctive tense, which was developed by medieval West Iberian Romance, but has now fallen into disuse in Spanish and Galician, is still used in vernacular Portuguese. It appears in dependent clauses that denote a condition which must be fulfilled in the future, so that the independent clause will occur. English normally employs the present tense under the same circumstances:
:Se eu for eleito presidente, mudarei a lei.
:If I am elected president, I will change the law.
:Quando fores mais velho, vais entender.
:When you are older, you will understand.
* The personal infinitive: infinitives can inflect according to their subject in person and number, often showing who is expected to perform a certain action; cf. Ã melhor voltares "It is better [for you] to go back," Ã melhor voltarmos "It is better [for us] to go back." Perhaps for this reason, infinitive clauses replace subjunctive clauses more often in Portuguese than in other Romance languages.
Portuguese is written with 23 or 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, making use of five diacritics to denote stress, vowel height, contraction, nasalization, and other sound changes (acute accent, grave accent, circumflex accent, tilde, and cedilla). Accented characters and digraphs are not counted as separate letters for collation purposes.
* Portuguese literature
* Portuguese poetry
* List of Portuguese language poets
* Brazilian literature
* List of Brazilian poets
* Lusophone
* Geographic distribution of Portuguese
* List of countries where Portuguese is an official language
* Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP)
* Instituto Camões
* International Portuguese Language Institute
* Museum of the Portuguese Language
* Portuguese-based creole languages
* Portuñol
* Portuguese in the United States
* List of English words of Portuguese origin
* Spelling reforms of Portuguese
* História da Lingua Portuguesa Instituto Camões
* A LÃngua Portuguesa in Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil (...)
* Poesia e Prosa Medievais, by Maria Ema Tarracha Ferreira, Ulisseia 1998, 3rd ed., ISBN 978-972-568-124-4.
* Bases Temáticas â LÃngua Portuguesa in Instituto Camões
* Portuguese Literature in The Catholic Encyclopedia
* International Phonetic Association (1999) Handbook of the International Phonetic Association ISBN 0-521-63751-1
* Mateus, Maria Helena & d'Andrade, Ernesto (2000) The Phonology of Portuguese ISBN 0-19-823581-X (Excerpt available at Google Books)
* Bergström, Magnus & Reis, Neves Prontuário Ortográfico Editorial NotÃcias, 2004.
* A pronúncia do português europeu - European Portuguese Pronunciation
* Dialects of Portuguese at the Instituto Camões
* Audio samples of the dialects of Portugal
* Audio samples of the dialects from outside Europe
* Antônio Houaiss (2000), Dicionário Houaiss da LÃngua Portuguesa (228,500 entries).
* Aurélio Buarque de Holanda Ferreira, Novo Dicionário da LÃngua Portuguesa (1809pp)
* English-Portuguese-Chinese Dictionary (Freeware, for Windows/Linux/Mac)
* Lindley Cintra, LuÃs F. Nova Proposta de Classificação dos Dialectos Galego-Portugueses (PDF) Boletim de Filologia, Lisboa, Centro de Estudos Filológicos, 1971.
*Swadesh list in English and Portuguese
* English Portuguese Translation Dictionary for English Portuguese translations
* Learn Portuguese BBC
* Portuguese Language Notes BBC
* AULP - Associação das Universidades de LÃngua Portuguesa Portuguese Language Universities Association.
* Portuguese in East Timor an interview with Dr. Geoffrey Hull.
* Portuguese Dictionary with gender and type of words.
* ABL - Academia Brasileira de letras (em português) - (Brazilian Academy of Letters) (Portuguese)
* Brazilian Portuguese Free resources for Portuguese learners.
* EasyPortuguese Free Portuguese learning site with audio.
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Portuguese_language | Does the Portuguese language have its roots in the Latin language? | Yes, Portuguese is derived from Latin. | data/set5/a1 | Portuguese_language
Portuguese ( or lÃngua portuguesa) is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia and northern Portugal. It is derived from the Latin spoken by the romanized pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula (namely the Gallaeci, the Lusitanians, the Celtici and the Conii) around 2000 years ago. It spread worldwide in the 15th and 16th centuries as Portugal established a colonial and commercial empire (1415â1999) which spanned from Brazil in the Americas to Goa and other parts of India, Macau in China and Timor (north of Australia). It was used as the exclusive lingua franca on the island of Sri Lanka for almost 350 years. During that time, many creole languages based on Portuguese also appeared around the world, especially in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean.
Today it is one of the world's major languages, ranked seventh according to number of native speakers (between 205 and 230 million). It is the language of about half of South America's population, even though Brazil is the only Portuguese-speaking nation in the Americas. It is also a major lingua franca in Portugal's former colonial possessions in Africa. It is an official language in nine countries (see the table on the right), also being co-official with Cantonese Chinese in Macau and Tetum in East Timor. There are sizeable communities of Portuguese speakers in various regions of North America, notably in the United States (New Jersey, New England, California and south Florida) and in Ontario, Canada.
In various aspects, the system of sounds in Portuguese is more similar to the phonologies of Catalan or French than, say, those of Spanish or Italian. Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes once called Portuguese "the sweet language", /ref> Lope de Vega referred to it as "suave" 'Encyclopedia of Literature' Joseph T. Shipley; Philosophical Library, 1946. 1188 pgs. while Brazilian writer Olavo Bilac poetically described it as a última flor do Lácio, inculta e bela: "the last flower of Latium, wild and beautiful". Portuguese is also termed "the language of Camões", after one of Portugal's best known literary figures, LuÃs Vaz de Camões.
Countries and regions where Portuguese has official status.
Members of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries.
Today, Portuguese is the official language of Angola, Brazil (190.6 million), IBGE Official website Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Portugal (10.6 million), INE Official website São Tomé and PrÃncipe and Mozambique. CPLP Official website It is also one of the official languages of the special administrative region of Macau (with Chinese) and East Timor, (with Tetum). It is the language of most of the population in Portugal (100%) , Brazil (100%) , São Tomé and PrÃncipe (99.8%) and Angola (80%), and is the most widely spoken language in Mozambique (40%), though only 6.5% are native speakers. No data are available for Cape Verde, but almost all the population is bilingual, and the monolingual population speaks Cape Verdean Creole. See the main article Geographic distribution of Portuguese, for references.
Small Portuguese-speaking communities subsist in former overseas colonies of Portugal such as Macau, where it is spoken by 7% of the population, and East Timor (13.6%).
Uruguay gave Portuguese an equal status to Spanish in its educational system at the north border with Brazil. In the rest of the country, it is taught as an obligatory subject beginning in the 6th grade. Uruguay recently adopted Portuguese language in its education system as an obligatory subject /ref>
It is also spoken by substantial immigrant communities, though not official, in Andorra, Australia, The Portuguese-Speaking Community in Australia France, Luxembourg, Jersey (with a statistically significant Portuguese-speaking community of approximately 10,000 people), Paraguay, Namibia, South Africa, Switzerland, Venezuela, Japan JAPÃO: IMIGRANTES BRASILEIROS POPULARIZAM LÃNGUA PORTUGUESA and the U.S. states of California, Connecticut, Where America's Other Languages Are Spoken Florida, Widely spoken but 'minor'? Portuguese seeks respect Massachusetts, New Jersey, Hispanic Reading Room of the U.S. Library of Congress website, Twentieth-Century Arrivals from Portugal Settle in Newark, New Jersey, New York Brazucas (Brazilians living in New York) and Rhode Island. Hispanic Reading Room of the U.S. Library of Congress website, Whaling, Fishing, and Industrial Employment in Southeastern New England
In some parts of India, such as Goa Portuguese Language in Goa and Daman and Diu, The Portuguese Experience: The Case of Goa, Daman and Diu Portuguese is still spoken. There are also significant populations of Portuguese speakers in Canada (mainly concentrated in and around Toronto), Multicultural Canada Bermuda World InfoZone: Bermuda and the Netherlands Antilles.
Portuguese is an official language of several international organizations. The Community of Portuguese Language Countries (with the Portuguese acronym CPLP) consists of the eight independent countries that have Portuguese as an official language. It is also an official language of the European Union, accounting for 3% of its population, EUROPA website Languages in the EU Mercosul, the Organization of American States, the Organization of Ibero-American States, the Union of South American Nations, and the African Union (one of the working languages) and one of the official languages of other organizations. The Portuguese language is gaining popularity in Africa, Asia, and South America as a second language for study.
Estação da Luz, home of the Museum of the Portuguese Language, in São Paulo, Brazil.
Portuguese and Spanish are the fastest-growing European languages (with the exception of English, being the world lingua franca) , and, according to estimates by UNESCO, the Portuguese language has the highest potential for growth as an international language in southern Africa and South America. The Portuguese-speaking African countries are expected to have a combined population of 83 million by 2050. In total, the Portuguese-speaking countries will have 335 million people by the same year. Since 1991, when Brazil signed into the economic market of Mercosul with other South American nations, such as Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay, there has been an increase in interest in the study of Portuguese in those South American countries. The demographic weight of Brazil in the continent will continue to strengthen the presence of the language in the region. Although in the early 21st century, after Macau was ceded to China in 1999, the use of Portuguese was in decline in Asia, it is becoming a language of opportunity there; mostly because of East Timor's boost in the number of speakers in the last five years but also because of increased Chinese diplomatic and financial ties with Portuguese-speaking countries.
In July 2007, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema announced his government's decision to establish Portuguese as Equatorial Guinea's third official language, to meet the requirements to apply for full membership of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries. This upgrading from its current Associate Observer condition would result in Equatorial Guinea being able to access several professional and academic exchange programs and the facilitation of cross-border circulation of citizens. Its application is currently being assessed by other CPLP members. "Obiang convierte al portugués en tercer idioma oficial para entrar en la Comunidad lusófona de Naciones", Terra. 13-07-2007
In March 1994 the Bosque de Portugal (Portugal's Woods) was founded in the Brazilian city of Curitiba. The park houses the Portuguese Language Memorial, which honors the Portuguese immigrants and the countries that adopted the Portuguese language. Originally there were seven nations represented with pillars, but the independence of East Timor brought yet another pillar for that nation in 2007.
In March 2006, the Museum of the Portuguese Language, an interactive museum about the Portuguese language, was founded in São Paulo, Brazil, the city with the greatest number of Portuguese speakers in the world.
Portuguese is a pluricentric language with two main groups of dialects, those of Brazil and those of the Old World. For historical reasons, the dialects of Africa and Asia are generally closer to those of Portugal than the Brazilian dialects, although in some aspects of their phonetics, especially the pronunciation of unstressed vowels, they resemble Brazilian Portuguese more than European Portuguese. They have not been studied as widely as European and Brazilian Portuguese.
Audio samples of some dialects of Portuguese are available below. From Audio samples of the dialects of Portuguese at the Instituto Camões website. There are some differences between the areas but these are the best approximations possible. For example, the caipira dialect has some differences from the one of Minas Gerais, but in general it is very close. A good example of Brazilian Portuguese may be found in the capital city, BrasÃlia, because of the generalized population from all parts of the country.
Portuguese dialects of Angola
# Benguelense â Benguela province.
# 11px Luandense â Luanda province.
# Sulista â South of Angola.
Dialects of Portuguese in Brazil
# Caipira â States of São Paulo (countryside; the city of São Paulo and the eastern areas of the state have their own accent, called paulistano); southern Minas Gerais, northern Paraná, Goiás and Mato Grosso do Sul.
# Cearense â Ceará.
# Baiano â Bahia.
# 11px Fluminense â Variants spoken in the states of Rio de Janeiro (excluding the city of Rio de Janeiro and its adjacent metropolitan areas, which have their own dialect, called carioca).
# Gaúcho â Rio Grande do Sul. (There are many distinct accents in Rio Grande do Sul, mainly due to the heavy influx of European immigrants of diverse origins, those which have settled several colonies throughout the state.)
# Mineiro â Minas Gerais (not prevalent in the Triângulo Mineiro, southern and southeastern Minas Gerais and also excluding the city of Belo Horizonte, which has its own accent.).
# 11px Nordestino â northeastern states of Brazil (Pernambuco, ParaÃba and Rio Grande do Norte have a particular way of speaking). Note: the speaker of this sound file is from Rio, and he is talking about his experience with Nordestino and Nortista accents.
# Nortista â Amazon Basin states.
# Paulistano â Variants spoken around São Paulo city and the eastern areas of São Paulo state.
# Sertanejo â States of Goiás and Mato Grosso (the city of Cuiabá has a particular way of speaking).
# Sulista â Variants spoken in the areas between the northern regions of Rio Grande do Sul and southern regions of São Paulo state. (The cities of Curitiba, Florianópolis, and Itapetininga have fairly distinct accents as well.)
# Carioca â Variants spoken in Rio de Janeiro City and Niteroi
Dialects of Portuguese in Portugal
# 11px Açoriano (Azorean) â Azores.
# 11px Alentejano â Alentejo
# 11px Algarvio â Algarve (there is a particular dialect in a small part of western Algarve).
# 11px Alto-Minhoto â North of Braga (hinterland).
# 11px Baixo-Beirão; Alto-Alentejano â Central Portugal (hinterland).
# 11px Beirão â Central Portugal.
# 11px Estremenho â Regions of Coimbra and Lisbon (the Lisbon dialect has some peculiar features not shared with the one of Coimbra).
# 11px Madeirense (Madeiran) â Madeira.
# 11px Nortenho â Regions of Braga and Porto.
# 11px Transmontano â Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro.
* Cape Verde â 11px Português cabo-verdiano (Cape Verdean Portuguese)
* Daman and Diu, India â Damaense.
* East Timor â 11px Timorense (East Timorese)
* Goa, India â Goês.
* Guinea-Bissau â 11px Guineense (Guinean Portuguese).
* Macau, China â 11px Macaense (Macanese)
* Mozambique â 11px Moçambicano (Mozambican)
* São Tomé and PrÃncipe â 11px Santomense
* Uruguay â Dialectos Portugueses del Uruguay (DPU).
Differences between dialects are mostly of accent and vocabulary, but between the Brazilian dialects and other dialects, especially in their most colloquial forms, there can also be some grammatical differences. The Portuguese-based creoles spoken in various parts of Africa, Asia, and the Americas are independent languages which should not be confused with Portuguese itself.
Baroque Library of the Coimbra University, Portugal.
Arriving in the Iberian Peninsula in 216 BC, the Romans brought with them the Latin language, from which all Romance languages descend. The language was spread by arriving Roman soldiers, settlers, and merchants, who built Roman cities mostly near the settlements of previous civilizations.
Between 409 and 711 AD, as the Roman Empire collapsed in Western Europe, the Iberian Peninsula was conquered by Germanic peoples (Migration Period). The occupiers, mainly Suebi and Visigoths, quickly adopted late Roman culture and the Vulgar Latin dialects of the peninsula. After the Moorish invasion of 711, Arabic became the administrative language in the conquered regions, but most of the population continued to speak a form of Romance commonly known as Mozarabic. The influence exerted by Arabic on the Romance dialects spoken in the Christian kingdoms of the north was small, affecting mainly their lexicon.
The earliest surviving records of a distinctively Portuguese language are administrative documents of the 9th century, still interspersed with many Latin phrases. Today this phase is known as Proto-Portuguese (between the 9th and the 12th centuries). In the first period of Old Portuguese â Galician-Portuguese Period (from the 12th to the 14th century) â the language gradually came into general use. For some time, it was the language of preference for lyric poetry in Christian Hispania, much as Occitan was the language of the poetry of the troubadours. Portugal became an independent kingdom from the Kingdom of Leon in 1139, under king Afonso I of Portugal. In 1290, king Denis of Portugal created the first Portuguese university in Lisbon (the Estudos Gerais, later moved to Coimbra) and decreed that Portuguese, then simply called the "common language" should be known as the Portuguese language and used officially.
In the second period of Old Portuguese, from the 14th to the 16th centuries, with the Portuguese discoveries, the language was taken to many regions of Asia, Africa and the Americas (nowadays, the great majority of Portuguese speakers live in Brazil, in South America). By the 16th century, it had become a lingua franca in Asia and Africa, used not only for colonial administration and trade but also for communication between local officials and Europeans of all nationalities. Its spread was helped by mixed marriages between Portuguese and local people, and by its association with Roman Catholic missionary efforts, which led to the formation of a creole language called Kristang in many parts of Asia (from the word cristão, "Christian"). The language continued to be popular in parts of Asia until the 19th century. Some Portuguese-speaking Christian communities in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Indonesia preserved their language even after they were isolated from Portugal.
The end of the Old Portuguese period was marked by the publication of the Cancioneiro Geral by Garcia de Resende, in 1516. The early times of Modern Portuguese, which spans a period from the 16th century to the present day, were characterized by an increase in the number of learned words borrowed from Classical Latin and Classical Greek since the Renaissance, which greatly enriched the lexicon.
A distinctive feature of Portuguese is that it preserved the stressed vowels of Vulgar Latin, which became diphthongs in other Romance languages; cf. Fr. pierre, Sp. piedra, It. pietra, Ro. piatrÄ, Port. pedra ("stone"), from Lat. petram; or Sp. fuego, It. fuoco, Fr. feu, Ro. foc, Port. fogo, from Lat. focus ("fire"). Another characteristic of early Portuguese was the loss of intervocalic l and n, sometimes followed by the merger of the two surrounding vowels, or by the insertion of an epenthetic vowel between them: cf. Lat. salire ("to leave"), tenere ("to have"), catenam ("chain"), Sp. salir, tener, cadena, Port. sair, ter, cadeia.
When the elided consonant was n, it often nasalized the preceding vowel: cf. Lat. manum ("hand"), ranam ("frog"), bonum ("good"), Port. mão, rãa, bõo (now mão, rã, bom). This process was the source of most of the nasal diphthongs which are typical of Portuguese. In particular, the Latin endings -anem, -anum and -onem became -ão in most cases, cf. Lat. canem ("dog"), germanum ("brother"), rationem ("reason") with Modern Port. cão, irmão, razão, and their plurals -anes, -anos, -ones normally became -ães, -ãos, -ões, cf. cães, irmãos, razões.
Library of the Mafra National Palace, Portugal.
Most of the lexicon of Portuguese is derived from Latin. Nevertheless, because of the Moorish occupation of the Iberian Peninsula during the Middle Ages, and the participation of Portugal in the Age of Discovery, it has adopted loanwords from all over the world.
Very few Portuguese words can be traced to the pre-Roman inhabitants of Portugal, which included the Gallaeci, Lusitanians, Celtici and Cynetes. The Phoenicians and Carthaginians, briefly present, also left some scarce traces. Some notable examples are abóbora "pumpkin" and bezerro "year-old calf", from the nearby Celtiberian language (probably through the Celtici); cerveja "beer", from Celtic; and cachorro "dog", from Basque.
In the 5th century, the Iberian Peninsula (the Roman Hispania) was conquered by the Germanic Suebi and Visigoths. As they adopted the Roman civilization and language, however, these people contributed only a few words to the lexicon, mostly related to warfare â such as espora "spur", estaca "stake", and guerra "war", from Gothic *spaúra, *stakka, and *wirro, respectively. The influence also exists in toponymic and patronymic surnames borne by Visigoth sovereigns and their descendants, and it dwells on placenames such has Ermesinde, Esposende and Resende where sinde and sende are derived from the Germanic "sinths" (military expedition) and in the case of Resende, the prefix re comes from Germanic "reths" (council).
Between the 9th and 13th centuries, Portuguese acquired about 800 words from Arabic by influence of Moorish Iberia. They are often recognizable by the initial Arabic article a(l)-, and include many common words such as aldeia "village" from اÙضÙعة aldaya, alface "lettuce" from اÙخس alkhass, armazém "warehouse" from اÙÙ
خز٠almahazan, and azeite "olive oil" from اÙزÙت azzait. From Arabic came also the grammatically peculiar word oxalá إ٠شاء اÙÙÙ "hopefully". The Mozambican currency name metical was derived from the word Ù
تÙا٠mitqÄl, a unit of weight. The word Mozambique itself is from the Arabic name of sultan Muça Alebique (Musa Alibiki).
Starting in the 15th century, the Portuguese maritime explorations led to the introduction of many loanwords from Asian languages. For instance, catana "cutlass" from Japanese katana and chá "tea" from Chinese 'chá'.
From South America came batata "potato", from Taino; ananás and abacaxi, from Tupi-Guarani naná and Tupi ibá cati, respectively (two species of pineapple), and tucano "toucan" from Guarani tucan. See List of Brazil state name etymologies, for some more examples.
From the 16th to the 19th centuries, because of the role of Portugal as intermediary in the Atlantic slave trade, and the establishment of large Portuguese colonies in Angola, Mozambique, and Brazil, Portuguese got several words of African and Amerind origin, especially names for most of the animals and plants found in those territories. While those terms are mostly used in the former colonies, many became current in European Portuguese as well. From Kimbundu, for example, came kifumate â cafuné "head caress", kusula â caçula "youngest child", marimbondo "tropical wasp", and kubungula â bungular "to dance like a wizard".
Finally, it has received a steady influx of loanwords from other European languages. For example, melena "hair lock", fiambre "wet-cured ham" (in contrast with presunto "dry-cured ham" from Latin prae-exsuctus "dehydrated"), and castelhano "Castilian", from Spanish; colchete/crochê "bracket"/"crochet", paletó "jacket", batom "lipstick", and filé/filete "steak"/"slice" respectively, from French crochet, paletot, bâton, filet; macarrão "pasta", piloto "pilot", carroça "carriage", and barraca "barrack", from Italian maccherone, pilota, carrozza, baracca; and bife "steak", futebol, revólver, estoque, folclore, time from English beef,
football, revolver, stock, folklore, and team.
Portuguese belongs to the West Iberian branch of the Romance languages, and it has special ties with the following members of this group:
* Galician and Fala, its closest relatives. See below.
* Spanish, the major language closest to Portuguese. (See also Differences between Spanish and Portuguese.)
* Mirandese and Leonese, two other West Iberian languages spoken in Portugal.
* Judeo-Portuguese and Judeo-Spanish, languages spoken by Sephardic Jews, and which remained close to Portuguese and Spanish.
Despite the obvious lexical and grammatical similarities between Portuguese and other Romance languages, it is not mutually intelligible with them. Apart from Galician, Portuguese speakers will usually need some formal study of basic grammar and vocabulary, before attaining a reasonable level of comprehension of those languages, and vice versa. Native speakers of Portuguese do tend to understand standard Spanish which is spoken clearly, but the reverse is generally not true unless formal education is involved.
The closest language to Portuguese is Galician, spoken in the autonomous community of Galicia (northwestern Spain). The two were at one time a single language, known today as Galician-Portuguese, but since the political separation of Portugal from Galicia they have diverged somewhat, especially in pronunciation and vocabulary. Nevertheless, the core vocabulary and grammar of Galician are still noticeably closer to Portuguese than to those of Spanish. In particular, like Portuguese, it uses the future subjunctive, the personal infinitive, and the synthetic pluperfect (see the section on the grammar of Portuguese, below). Mutual intelligibility (estimated at 85% by R. A. Hall, Jr., 1989) Ethnologue is good between Galicians and northern Portuguese, but poorer between Galicians and speakers from central Portugal.
The Fala language is another descendant of Galician-Portuguese, spoken by a small number of people in the Spanish towns of Valverde del Fresno, Eljas and San MartÃn de Trevejo (autonomous community of Extremadura, near the border with Portugal).
Portuguese has provided loanwords to many languages, such as Indonesian, Manado Malay, Sri Lankan Tamil and Sinhalese (see Sri Lanka Indo-Portuguese), Malay, Bengali, English, Hindi, Konkani, Marathi, Tetum, Xitsonga, Papiamentu, Japanese, Lanc-Patuá (spoken in northern Brazil) and Sranan Tongo (spoken in Suriname). It left a strong influence on the lÃngua brasÃlica, a Tupi-Guarani language which was the most widely spoken in Brazil until the 18th century, and on the language spoken around Sikka in Flores Island, Indonesia. In nearby Larantuka, Portuguese is used for prayers in Holy Week rituals.
The Japanese-Portuguese dictionary Nippo Jisho (1603) was the first dictionary of Japanese in a European language, a product of Jesuit missionary activity in Japan. Building on the work of earlier Portuguese missionaries, the Dictionarium Anamiticum, Lusitanum et Latinum (Annamite-Portuguese-Latin dictionary) of Alexandre de Rhodes (1651) introduced the modern orthography of Vietnamese, which is based on the orthography of 17th-century Portuguese. The Romanization of Chinese was also influenced by the Portuguese language (among others), particularly regarding Chinese surnames; one example is Mei. During 1583-88 Italian Jesuits Michele Ruggieri and Matteo Ricci created a Portuguese-Chinese dictionary - the first ever European-Chinese dictionary. Yves Camus, "Jesuits' Journeys in Chinese Studies" "Dicionário Português-Chinês : Pu Han ci dian : Portuguese-Chinese dictionary", by Michele Ruggieri, Matteo Ricci; edited by John W. Witek. Published 2001, Biblioteca Nacional. ISBN 9725652983. Partial preview available on Google Books
See also List of English words of Portuguese origin, Loan words in Indonesian, Japanese words of Portuguese origin, Borrowed words in Malay, Sinhala words of Portuguese origin, Loan words from Portuguese in Sri Lankan Tamil.
Beginning in the 16th century, the extensive contacts between Portuguese travelers and settlers, African slaves, and local populations led to the appearance of many pidgins with varying amounts of Portuguese influence. As each of these pidgins became the mother tongue of succeeding generations, they evolved into fully fledged creole languages, which remained in use in many parts of Asia and Africa until the 18th century. Some Portuguese-based or Portuguese-influenced creoles are still spoken today, by over 3 million people worldwide, especially people of partial Portuguese ancestry.
There is a growing number of people in the Portuguese-speaking media and the internet who are presenting the case to the CPLP and other organizations to run a debate in the Lusophone community with the purpose of bringing forward a petition to make Portuguese an official language of the United Nations.
In October 2005, during the international Convention of the Elos Club International that took place in Tavira, Portugal, ONU: Petição para tornar português lÃngua oficial a petition was written and unanimously approved whose text can be found on the internet with the title Petição Para Tornar Oficial o Idioma Português na ONU. Romulo Alexandre Soares, president of the Brazil-Portugal Chamber highlights that the positioning of Brazil in the international arena as one of the emergent powers of the 21st century, the size of its population, and the presence of the language around the world provides legitimacy and justifies a petition to the UN to make the Portuguese language an official language of the UN. Português pode ser lÃngua oficial na ONU
Several factors detract from this campaign. The current official languages of the UN are either 1) official/dominant in many countries (English, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, and French) or 2) have several hundreds of millions of speakers (Chinese). English, Spanish, Russian and Arabic fulfill both criteria. Portuguese is a global language in that it is the official tongue of several sovereign countries on four continents. It also has over 200 million speakers. However, it exhibits some noticeable differences when compared to the current 6 UN official languages. For example, English, French, Arabic and Spanish are each official languages of multiple states and of over half of the world's countries. In contrast, four out of every five speakers of the Portuguese-speaking world live in just one country: Brazil. In addition to Brazil, Portuguese is the official language in only 7 other sovereign states; however, English is official in 53 states, French in 29 states, Arabic in 25 states, and Spanish in 20 states.
More significantly, in each part of the world with a Portuguese-speaking country, this language is overshadowed by other powerful languages that are already official languages of the UN. For example, in the Americas, the 190 million Portuguese-speaking Brazilians are overshadowed by the most spoken languages in the Western Hemisphere: Spanish (~360 million speakers) and English (~340 million speakers). Portuguese is overshadowed to an even greater extent in Europe, the continent in which four of the six UN languages originated (English, French, Spanish, and Russian). In the European context, Portuguese is not even among the ten most spoken languages on the continent, with a number of speakers comparable to those of Czech and Bulgarian. In Africa, Portuguese is eclipsed as a continental lingua franca by English and French in countries that surround Cape Verde, São Tomé and PrÃncipe, Guinea-Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique. Finally in Asia, a continent with several languages that have hundreds of millions of speakers, the only sovereign state with Portuguese as an official language is East Timor, which has only a million people. While Brazilian migration has brought 300,000 fluent Portuguese speakers to Japan, Portuguese does not enjoy any official status whatsoever in that country. Therefore, while Portuguese will gain increasing importance as Brazil continues its development as a major economy, it will likely face the same hurdles that prevented Japanese and German (both languages of major global economies with millions of speakers) from becoming both international languages and official ones of the UN.
There is a maximum of 9 oral vowels and 19 consonants, though some varieties of the language have fewer phonemes (Brazilian Portuguese has 8 oral vowels). There are also five nasal vowels, which some linguists regard as allophones of the oral vowels, ten oral diphthongs, and five nasal diphthongs. In total, Brazilian Portuguese has 13 vowel phonemes. /ref> Handbook of the International Phonetic Association'' pg. 126-130; the reference applies to the entire section
Chart of monophthongs of the Portuguese of Lisbon
To the seven vowels of Vulgar Latin, European Portuguese has added two near central vowels, one of which tends to be elided in rapid speech, like the e caduc of French (represented as either , or , or ). The high vowels and the low vowels are four distinct phonemes, and they alternate in various forms of apophony. Like Catalan, Portuguese uses vowel quality to contrast stressed syllables with unstressed syllables: isolated vowels tend to be raised, and in some cases centralized, when unstressed. Nasal diphthongs occur mostly at the ends of words.
The consonant inventory of Portuguese is fairly conservative. The medieval affricates , , , merged with the fricatives , , , , respectively, but not with each other, and there were no other significant changes to the consonant phonemes since then. However, some notable dialectal variants and allophones have appeared, among which:
* In many regions of Brazil, and have the affricate allophones and , respectively, before and . (Quebec French has a similar phenomenon, with alveolar affricates instead of postalveolars. Japanese is another example).
* At the end of a syllable, the phoneme has the allophone in Brazilian Portuguese (L-vocalization).
* In many parts of Brazil and Angola, intervocalic is pronounced as a nasalized palatal approximant which nasalizes the preceding vowel, so that, for instance, is pronounced .
* In most of Brazil, the alveolar sibilants and occur in complementary distribution at the ends of syllables, depending on whether the consonant that follows is voiceless or voiced, as in English. But in most of Portugal and parts of Brazil, sibilants are postalveolar at the ends of syllables, before voiceless consonants, and before voiced consonants (in Judeo-Spanish, is often replaced with at the ends of syllables, too).
* There is considerable dialectal variation in the value of the rhotic phoneme . See Guttural R in Portuguese, for details.
;Excerpt from the Portuguese national epic Os LusÃadas, by author LuÃs de Camões (I, 33)
A notable aspect of the grammar of Portuguese is the verb. Morphologically, more verbal inflections from classical Latin have been preserved by Portuguese than by any other major Romance language. See Romance copula, for a detailed comparison. It has also some innovations not found in other Romance languages (except Galician and the Fala):
* The present perfect tense has an iterative sense unique to Galician-Portuguese language group. It denotes an action or a series of actions which began in the past and are expected to keep repeating in the future. For instance, the sentence Tenho tentado falar com ela would be translated to "I have been trying to talk to her", not "I have tried to talk to her". On the other hand, the correct translation of the question "Have you heard the latest news?" is not *Tem ouvido a última notÃcia?, but Ouviu a última notÃcia?, since no repetition is implied. Squartini, Mario (1998) Verbal Periphrases in Romance â Aspect, Actionality, and Grammaticalization ISBN 3-11-016160-5
* The future subjunctive tense, which was developed by medieval West Iberian Romance, but has now fallen into disuse in Spanish and Galician, is still used in vernacular Portuguese. It appears in dependent clauses that denote a condition which must be fulfilled in the future, so that the independent clause will occur. English normally employs the present tense under the same circumstances:
:Se eu for eleito presidente, mudarei a lei.
:If I am elected president, I will change the law.
:Quando fores mais velho, vais entender.
:When you are older, you will understand.
* The personal infinitive: infinitives can inflect according to their subject in person and number, often showing who is expected to perform a certain action; cf. Ã melhor voltares "It is better [for you] to go back," Ã melhor voltarmos "It is better [for us] to go back." Perhaps for this reason, infinitive clauses replace subjunctive clauses more often in Portuguese than in other Romance languages.
Portuguese is written with 23 or 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, making use of five diacritics to denote stress, vowel height, contraction, nasalization, and other sound changes (acute accent, grave accent, circumflex accent, tilde, and cedilla). Accented characters and digraphs are not counted as separate letters for collation purposes.
* Portuguese literature
* Portuguese poetry
* List of Portuguese language poets
* Brazilian literature
* List of Brazilian poets
* Lusophone
* Geographic distribution of Portuguese
* List of countries where Portuguese is an official language
* Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP)
* Instituto Camões
* International Portuguese Language Institute
* Museum of the Portuguese Language
* Portuguese-based creole languages
* Portuñol
* Portuguese in the United States
* List of English words of Portuguese origin
* Spelling reforms of Portuguese
* História da Lingua Portuguesa Instituto Camões
* A LÃngua Portuguesa in Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil (...)
* Poesia e Prosa Medievais, by Maria Ema Tarracha Ferreira, Ulisseia 1998, 3rd ed., ISBN 978-972-568-124-4.
* Bases Temáticas â LÃngua Portuguesa in Instituto Camões
* Portuguese Literature in The Catholic Encyclopedia
* International Phonetic Association (1999) Handbook of the International Phonetic Association ISBN 0-521-63751-1
* Mateus, Maria Helena & d'Andrade, Ernesto (2000) The Phonology of Portuguese ISBN 0-19-823581-X (Excerpt available at Google Books)
* Bergström, Magnus & Reis, Neves Prontuário Ortográfico Editorial NotÃcias, 2004.
* A pronúncia do português europeu - European Portuguese Pronunciation
* Dialects of Portuguese at the Instituto Camões
* Audio samples of the dialects of Portugal
* Audio samples of the dialects from outside Europe
* Antônio Houaiss (2000), Dicionário Houaiss da LÃngua Portuguesa (228,500 entries).
* Aurélio Buarque de Holanda Ferreira, Novo Dicionário da LÃngua Portuguesa (1809pp)
* English-Portuguese-Chinese Dictionary (Freeware, for Windows/Linux/Mac)
* Lindley Cintra, LuÃs F. Nova Proposta de Classificação dos Dialectos Galego-Portugueses (PDF) Boletim de Filologia, Lisboa, Centro de Estudos Filológicos, 1971.
*Swadesh list in English and Portuguese
* English Portuguese Translation Dictionary for English Portuguese translations
* Learn Portuguese BBC
* Portuguese Language Notes BBC
* AULP - Associação das Universidades de LÃngua Portuguesa Portuguese Language Universities Association.
* Portuguese in East Timor an interview with Dr. Geoffrey Hull.
* Portuguese Dictionary with gender and type of words.
* ABL - Academia Brasileira de letras (em português) - (Brazilian Academy of Letters) (Portuguese)
* Brazilian Portuguese Free resources for Portuguese learners.
* EasyPortuguese Free Portuguese learning site with audio.
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Portuguese_language | Does Portuguese contain words from the Arabic language? | Yes | data/set5/a1 | Portuguese_language
Portuguese ( or lÃngua portuguesa) is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia and northern Portugal. It is derived from the Latin spoken by the romanized pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula (namely the Gallaeci, the Lusitanians, the Celtici and the Conii) around 2000 years ago. It spread worldwide in the 15th and 16th centuries as Portugal established a colonial and commercial empire (1415â1999) which spanned from Brazil in the Americas to Goa and other parts of India, Macau in China and Timor (north of Australia). It was used as the exclusive lingua franca on the island of Sri Lanka for almost 350 years. During that time, many creole languages based on Portuguese also appeared around the world, especially in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean.
Today it is one of the world's major languages, ranked seventh according to number of native speakers (between 205 and 230 million). It is the language of about half of South America's population, even though Brazil is the only Portuguese-speaking nation in the Americas. It is also a major lingua franca in Portugal's former colonial possessions in Africa. It is an official language in nine countries (see the table on the right), also being co-official with Cantonese Chinese in Macau and Tetum in East Timor. There are sizeable communities of Portuguese speakers in various regions of North America, notably in the United States (New Jersey, New England, California and south Florida) and in Ontario, Canada.
In various aspects, the system of sounds in Portuguese is more similar to the phonologies of Catalan or French than, say, those of Spanish or Italian. Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes once called Portuguese "the sweet language", /ref> Lope de Vega referred to it as "suave" 'Encyclopedia of Literature' Joseph T. Shipley; Philosophical Library, 1946. 1188 pgs. while Brazilian writer Olavo Bilac poetically described it as a última flor do Lácio, inculta e bela: "the last flower of Latium, wild and beautiful". Portuguese is also termed "the language of Camões", after one of Portugal's best known literary figures, LuÃs Vaz de Camões.
Countries and regions where Portuguese has official status.
Members of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries.
Today, Portuguese is the official language of Angola, Brazil (190.6 million), IBGE Official website Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Portugal (10.6 million), INE Official website São Tomé and PrÃncipe and Mozambique. CPLP Official website It is also one of the official languages of the special administrative region of Macau (with Chinese) and East Timor, (with Tetum). It is the language of most of the population in Portugal (100%) , Brazil (100%) , São Tomé and PrÃncipe (99.8%) and Angola (80%), and is the most widely spoken language in Mozambique (40%), though only 6.5% are native speakers. No data are available for Cape Verde, but almost all the population is bilingual, and the monolingual population speaks Cape Verdean Creole. See the main article Geographic distribution of Portuguese, for references.
Small Portuguese-speaking communities subsist in former overseas colonies of Portugal such as Macau, where it is spoken by 7% of the population, and East Timor (13.6%).
Uruguay gave Portuguese an equal status to Spanish in its educational system at the north border with Brazil. In the rest of the country, it is taught as an obligatory subject beginning in the 6th grade. Uruguay recently adopted Portuguese language in its education system as an obligatory subject /ref>
It is also spoken by substantial immigrant communities, though not official, in Andorra, Australia, The Portuguese-Speaking Community in Australia France, Luxembourg, Jersey (with a statistically significant Portuguese-speaking community of approximately 10,000 people), Paraguay, Namibia, South Africa, Switzerland, Venezuela, Japan JAPÃO: IMIGRANTES BRASILEIROS POPULARIZAM LÃNGUA PORTUGUESA and the U.S. states of California, Connecticut, Where America's Other Languages Are Spoken Florida, Widely spoken but 'minor'? Portuguese seeks respect Massachusetts, New Jersey, Hispanic Reading Room of the U.S. Library of Congress website, Twentieth-Century Arrivals from Portugal Settle in Newark, New Jersey, New York Brazucas (Brazilians living in New York) and Rhode Island. Hispanic Reading Room of the U.S. Library of Congress website, Whaling, Fishing, and Industrial Employment in Southeastern New England
In some parts of India, such as Goa Portuguese Language in Goa and Daman and Diu, The Portuguese Experience: The Case of Goa, Daman and Diu Portuguese is still spoken. There are also significant populations of Portuguese speakers in Canada (mainly concentrated in and around Toronto), Multicultural Canada Bermuda World InfoZone: Bermuda and the Netherlands Antilles.
Portuguese is an official language of several international organizations. The Community of Portuguese Language Countries (with the Portuguese acronym CPLP) consists of the eight independent countries that have Portuguese as an official language. It is also an official language of the European Union, accounting for 3% of its population, EUROPA website Languages in the EU Mercosul, the Organization of American States, the Organization of Ibero-American States, the Union of South American Nations, and the African Union (one of the working languages) and one of the official languages of other organizations. The Portuguese language is gaining popularity in Africa, Asia, and South America as a second language for study.
Estação da Luz, home of the Museum of the Portuguese Language, in São Paulo, Brazil.
Portuguese and Spanish are the fastest-growing European languages (with the exception of English, being the world lingua franca) , and, according to estimates by UNESCO, the Portuguese language has the highest potential for growth as an international language in southern Africa and South America. The Portuguese-speaking African countries are expected to have a combined population of 83 million by 2050. In total, the Portuguese-speaking countries will have 335 million people by the same year. Since 1991, when Brazil signed into the economic market of Mercosul with other South American nations, such as Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay, there has been an increase in interest in the study of Portuguese in those South American countries. The demographic weight of Brazil in the continent will continue to strengthen the presence of the language in the region. Although in the early 21st century, after Macau was ceded to China in 1999, the use of Portuguese was in decline in Asia, it is becoming a language of opportunity there; mostly because of East Timor's boost in the number of speakers in the last five years but also because of increased Chinese diplomatic and financial ties with Portuguese-speaking countries.
In July 2007, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema announced his government's decision to establish Portuguese as Equatorial Guinea's third official language, to meet the requirements to apply for full membership of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries. This upgrading from its current Associate Observer condition would result in Equatorial Guinea being able to access several professional and academic exchange programs and the facilitation of cross-border circulation of citizens. Its application is currently being assessed by other CPLP members. "Obiang convierte al portugués en tercer idioma oficial para entrar en la Comunidad lusófona de Naciones", Terra. 13-07-2007
In March 1994 the Bosque de Portugal (Portugal's Woods) was founded in the Brazilian city of Curitiba. The park houses the Portuguese Language Memorial, which honors the Portuguese immigrants and the countries that adopted the Portuguese language. Originally there were seven nations represented with pillars, but the independence of East Timor brought yet another pillar for that nation in 2007.
In March 2006, the Museum of the Portuguese Language, an interactive museum about the Portuguese language, was founded in São Paulo, Brazil, the city with the greatest number of Portuguese speakers in the world.
Portuguese is a pluricentric language with two main groups of dialects, those of Brazil and those of the Old World. For historical reasons, the dialects of Africa and Asia are generally closer to those of Portugal than the Brazilian dialects, although in some aspects of their phonetics, especially the pronunciation of unstressed vowels, they resemble Brazilian Portuguese more than European Portuguese. They have not been studied as widely as European and Brazilian Portuguese.
Audio samples of some dialects of Portuguese are available below. From Audio samples of the dialects of Portuguese at the Instituto Camões website. There are some differences between the areas but these are the best approximations possible. For example, the caipira dialect has some differences from the one of Minas Gerais, but in general it is very close. A good example of Brazilian Portuguese may be found in the capital city, BrasÃlia, because of the generalized population from all parts of the country.
Portuguese dialects of Angola
# Benguelense â Benguela province.
# 11px Luandense â Luanda province.
# Sulista â South of Angola.
Dialects of Portuguese in Brazil
# Caipira â States of São Paulo (countryside; the city of São Paulo and the eastern areas of the state have their own accent, called paulistano); southern Minas Gerais, northern Paraná, Goiás and Mato Grosso do Sul.
# Cearense â Ceará.
# Baiano â Bahia.
# 11px Fluminense â Variants spoken in the states of Rio de Janeiro (excluding the city of Rio de Janeiro and its adjacent metropolitan areas, which have their own dialect, called carioca).
# Gaúcho â Rio Grande do Sul. (There are many distinct accents in Rio Grande do Sul, mainly due to the heavy influx of European immigrants of diverse origins, those which have settled several colonies throughout the state.)
# Mineiro â Minas Gerais (not prevalent in the Triângulo Mineiro, southern and southeastern Minas Gerais and also excluding the city of Belo Horizonte, which has its own accent.).
# 11px Nordestino â northeastern states of Brazil (Pernambuco, ParaÃba and Rio Grande do Norte have a particular way of speaking). Note: the speaker of this sound file is from Rio, and he is talking about his experience with Nordestino and Nortista accents.
# Nortista â Amazon Basin states.
# Paulistano â Variants spoken around São Paulo city and the eastern areas of São Paulo state.
# Sertanejo â States of Goiás and Mato Grosso (the city of Cuiabá has a particular way of speaking).
# Sulista â Variants spoken in the areas between the northern regions of Rio Grande do Sul and southern regions of São Paulo state. (The cities of Curitiba, Florianópolis, and Itapetininga have fairly distinct accents as well.)
# Carioca â Variants spoken in Rio de Janeiro City and Niteroi
Dialects of Portuguese in Portugal
# 11px Açoriano (Azorean) â Azores.
# 11px Alentejano â Alentejo
# 11px Algarvio â Algarve (there is a particular dialect in a small part of western Algarve).
# 11px Alto-Minhoto â North of Braga (hinterland).
# 11px Baixo-Beirão; Alto-Alentejano â Central Portugal (hinterland).
# 11px Beirão â Central Portugal.
# 11px Estremenho â Regions of Coimbra and Lisbon (the Lisbon dialect has some peculiar features not shared with the one of Coimbra).
# 11px Madeirense (Madeiran) â Madeira.
# 11px Nortenho â Regions of Braga and Porto.
# 11px Transmontano â Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro.
* Cape Verde â 11px Português cabo-verdiano (Cape Verdean Portuguese)
* Daman and Diu, India â Damaense.
* East Timor â 11px Timorense (East Timorese)
* Goa, India â Goês.
* Guinea-Bissau â 11px Guineense (Guinean Portuguese).
* Macau, China â 11px Macaense (Macanese)
* Mozambique â 11px Moçambicano (Mozambican)
* São Tomé and PrÃncipe â 11px Santomense
* Uruguay â Dialectos Portugueses del Uruguay (DPU).
Differences between dialects are mostly of accent and vocabulary, but between the Brazilian dialects and other dialects, especially in their most colloquial forms, there can also be some grammatical differences. The Portuguese-based creoles spoken in various parts of Africa, Asia, and the Americas are independent languages which should not be confused with Portuguese itself.
Baroque Library of the Coimbra University, Portugal.
Arriving in the Iberian Peninsula in 216 BC, the Romans brought with them the Latin language, from which all Romance languages descend. The language was spread by arriving Roman soldiers, settlers, and merchants, who built Roman cities mostly near the settlements of previous civilizations.
Between 409 and 711 AD, as the Roman Empire collapsed in Western Europe, the Iberian Peninsula was conquered by Germanic peoples (Migration Period). The occupiers, mainly Suebi and Visigoths, quickly adopted late Roman culture and the Vulgar Latin dialects of the peninsula. After the Moorish invasion of 711, Arabic became the administrative language in the conquered regions, but most of the population continued to speak a form of Romance commonly known as Mozarabic. The influence exerted by Arabic on the Romance dialects spoken in the Christian kingdoms of the north was small, affecting mainly their lexicon.
The earliest surviving records of a distinctively Portuguese language are administrative documents of the 9th century, still interspersed with many Latin phrases. Today this phase is known as Proto-Portuguese (between the 9th and the 12th centuries). In the first period of Old Portuguese â Galician-Portuguese Period (from the 12th to the 14th century) â the language gradually came into general use. For some time, it was the language of preference for lyric poetry in Christian Hispania, much as Occitan was the language of the poetry of the troubadours. Portugal became an independent kingdom from the Kingdom of Leon in 1139, under king Afonso I of Portugal. In 1290, king Denis of Portugal created the first Portuguese university in Lisbon (the Estudos Gerais, later moved to Coimbra) and decreed that Portuguese, then simply called the "common language" should be known as the Portuguese language and used officially.
In the second period of Old Portuguese, from the 14th to the 16th centuries, with the Portuguese discoveries, the language was taken to many regions of Asia, Africa and the Americas (nowadays, the great majority of Portuguese speakers live in Brazil, in South America). By the 16th century, it had become a lingua franca in Asia and Africa, used not only for colonial administration and trade but also for communication between local officials and Europeans of all nationalities. Its spread was helped by mixed marriages between Portuguese and local people, and by its association with Roman Catholic missionary efforts, which led to the formation of a creole language called Kristang in many parts of Asia (from the word cristão, "Christian"). The language continued to be popular in parts of Asia until the 19th century. Some Portuguese-speaking Christian communities in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Indonesia preserved their language even after they were isolated from Portugal.
The end of the Old Portuguese period was marked by the publication of the Cancioneiro Geral by Garcia de Resende, in 1516. The early times of Modern Portuguese, which spans a period from the 16th century to the present day, were characterized by an increase in the number of learned words borrowed from Classical Latin and Classical Greek since the Renaissance, which greatly enriched the lexicon.
A distinctive feature of Portuguese is that it preserved the stressed vowels of Vulgar Latin, which became diphthongs in other Romance languages; cf. Fr. pierre, Sp. piedra, It. pietra, Ro. piatrÄ, Port. pedra ("stone"), from Lat. petram; or Sp. fuego, It. fuoco, Fr. feu, Ro. foc, Port. fogo, from Lat. focus ("fire"). Another characteristic of early Portuguese was the loss of intervocalic l and n, sometimes followed by the merger of the two surrounding vowels, or by the insertion of an epenthetic vowel between them: cf. Lat. salire ("to leave"), tenere ("to have"), catenam ("chain"), Sp. salir, tener, cadena, Port. sair, ter, cadeia.
When the elided consonant was n, it often nasalized the preceding vowel: cf. Lat. manum ("hand"), ranam ("frog"), bonum ("good"), Port. mão, rãa, bõo (now mão, rã, bom). This process was the source of most of the nasal diphthongs which are typical of Portuguese. In particular, the Latin endings -anem, -anum and -onem became -ão in most cases, cf. Lat. canem ("dog"), germanum ("brother"), rationem ("reason") with Modern Port. cão, irmão, razão, and their plurals -anes, -anos, -ones normally became -ães, -ãos, -ões, cf. cães, irmãos, razões.
Library of the Mafra National Palace, Portugal.
Most of the lexicon of Portuguese is derived from Latin. Nevertheless, because of the Moorish occupation of the Iberian Peninsula during the Middle Ages, and the participation of Portugal in the Age of Discovery, it has adopted loanwords from all over the world.
Very few Portuguese words can be traced to the pre-Roman inhabitants of Portugal, which included the Gallaeci, Lusitanians, Celtici and Cynetes. The Phoenicians and Carthaginians, briefly present, also left some scarce traces. Some notable examples are abóbora "pumpkin" and bezerro "year-old calf", from the nearby Celtiberian language (probably through the Celtici); cerveja "beer", from Celtic; and cachorro "dog", from Basque.
In the 5th century, the Iberian Peninsula (the Roman Hispania) was conquered by the Germanic Suebi and Visigoths. As they adopted the Roman civilization and language, however, these people contributed only a few words to the lexicon, mostly related to warfare â such as espora "spur", estaca "stake", and guerra "war", from Gothic *spaúra, *stakka, and *wirro, respectively. The influence also exists in toponymic and patronymic surnames borne by Visigoth sovereigns and their descendants, and it dwells on placenames such has Ermesinde, Esposende and Resende where sinde and sende are derived from the Germanic "sinths" (military expedition) and in the case of Resende, the prefix re comes from Germanic "reths" (council).
Between the 9th and 13th centuries, Portuguese acquired about 800 words from Arabic by influence of Moorish Iberia. They are often recognizable by the initial Arabic article a(l)-, and include many common words such as aldeia "village" from اÙضÙعة aldaya, alface "lettuce" from اÙخس alkhass, armazém "warehouse" from اÙÙ
خز٠almahazan, and azeite "olive oil" from اÙزÙت azzait. From Arabic came also the grammatically peculiar word oxalá إ٠شاء اÙÙÙ "hopefully". The Mozambican currency name metical was derived from the word Ù
تÙا٠mitqÄl, a unit of weight. The word Mozambique itself is from the Arabic name of sultan Muça Alebique (Musa Alibiki).
Starting in the 15th century, the Portuguese maritime explorations led to the introduction of many loanwords from Asian languages. For instance, catana "cutlass" from Japanese katana and chá "tea" from Chinese 'chá'.
From South America came batata "potato", from Taino; ananás and abacaxi, from Tupi-Guarani naná and Tupi ibá cati, respectively (two species of pineapple), and tucano "toucan" from Guarani tucan. See List of Brazil state name etymologies, for some more examples.
From the 16th to the 19th centuries, because of the role of Portugal as intermediary in the Atlantic slave trade, and the establishment of large Portuguese colonies in Angola, Mozambique, and Brazil, Portuguese got several words of African and Amerind origin, especially names for most of the animals and plants found in those territories. While those terms are mostly used in the former colonies, many became current in European Portuguese as well. From Kimbundu, for example, came kifumate â cafuné "head caress", kusula â caçula "youngest child", marimbondo "tropical wasp", and kubungula â bungular "to dance like a wizard".
Finally, it has received a steady influx of loanwords from other European languages. For example, melena "hair lock", fiambre "wet-cured ham" (in contrast with presunto "dry-cured ham" from Latin prae-exsuctus "dehydrated"), and castelhano "Castilian", from Spanish; colchete/crochê "bracket"/"crochet", paletó "jacket", batom "lipstick", and filé/filete "steak"/"slice" respectively, from French crochet, paletot, bâton, filet; macarrão "pasta", piloto "pilot", carroça "carriage", and barraca "barrack", from Italian maccherone, pilota, carrozza, baracca; and bife "steak", futebol, revólver, estoque, folclore, time from English beef,
football, revolver, stock, folklore, and team.
Portuguese belongs to the West Iberian branch of the Romance languages, and it has special ties with the following members of this group:
* Galician and Fala, its closest relatives. See below.
* Spanish, the major language closest to Portuguese. (See also Differences between Spanish and Portuguese.)
* Mirandese and Leonese, two other West Iberian languages spoken in Portugal.
* Judeo-Portuguese and Judeo-Spanish, languages spoken by Sephardic Jews, and which remained close to Portuguese and Spanish.
Despite the obvious lexical and grammatical similarities between Portuguese and other Romance languages, it is not mutually intelligible with them. Apart from Galician, Portuguese speakers will usually need some formal study of basic grammar and vocabulary, before attaining a reasonable level of comprehension of those languages, and vice versa. Native speakers of Portuguese do tend to understand standard Spanish which is spoken clearly, but the reverse is generally not true unless formal education is involved.
The closest language to Portuguese is Galician, spoken in the autonomous community of Galicia (northwestern Spain). The two were at one time a single language, known today as Galician-Portuguese, but since the political separation of Portugal from Galicia they have diverged somewhat, especially in pronunciation and vocabulary. Nevertheless, the core vocabulary and grammar of Galician are still noticeably closer to Portuguese than to those of Spanish. In particular, like Portuguese, it uses the future subjunctive, the personal infinitive, and the synthetic pluperfect (see the section on the grammar of Portuguese, below). Mutual intelligibility (estimated at 85% by R. A. Hall, Jr., 1989) Ethnologue is good between Galicians and northern Portuguese, but poorer between Galicians and speakers from central Portugal.
The Fala language is another descendant of Galician-Portuguese, spoken by a small number of people in the Spanish towns of Valverde del Fresno, Eljas and San MartÃn de Trevejo (autonomous community of Extremadura, near the border with Portugal).
Portuguese has provided loanwords to many languages, such as Indonesian, Manado Malay, Sri Lankan Tamil and Sinhalese (see Sri Lanka Indo-Portuguese), Malay, Bengali, English, Hindi, Konkani, Marathi, Tetum, Xitsonga, Papiamentu, Japanese, Lanc-Patuá (spoken in northern Brazil) and Sranan Tongo (spoken in Suriname). It left a strong influence on the lÃngua brasÃlica, a Tupi-Guarani language which was the most widely spoken in Brazil until the 18th century, and on the language spoken around Sikka in Flores Island, Indonesia. In nearby Larantuka, Portuguese is used for prayers in Holy Week rituals.
The Japanese-Portuguese dictionary Nippo Jisho (1603) was the first dictionary of Japanese in a European language, a product of Jesuit missionary activity in Japan. Building on the work of earlier Portuguese missionaries, the Dictionarium Anamiticum, Lusitanum et Latinum (Annamite-Portuguese-Latin dictionary) of Alexandre de Rhodes (1651) introduced the modern orthography of Vietnamese, which is based on the orthography of 17th-century Portuguese. The Romanization of Chinese was also influenced by the Portuguese language (among others), particularly regarding Chinese surnames; one example is Mei. During 1583-88 Italian Jesuits Michele Ruggieri and Matteo Ricci created a Portuguese-Chinese dictionary - the first ever European-Chinese dictionary. Yves Camus, "Jesuits' Journeys in Chinese Studies" "Dicionário Português-Chinês : Pu Han ci dian : Portuguese-Chinese dictionary", by Michele Ruggieri, Matteo Ricci; edited by John W. Witek. Published 2001, Biblioteca Nacional. ISBN 9725652983. Partial preview available on Google Books
See also List of English words of Portuguese origin, Loan words in Indonesian, Japanese words of Portuguese origin, Borrowed words in Malay, Sinhala words of Portuguese origin, Loan words from Portuguese in Sri Lankan Tamil.
Beginning in the 16th century, the extensive contacts between Portuguese travelers and settlers, African slaves, and local populations led to the appearance of many pidgins with varying amounts of Portuguese influence. As each of these pidgins became the mother tongue of succeeding generations, they evolved into fully fledged creole languages, which remained in use in many parts of Asia and Africa until the 18th century. Some Portuguese-based or Portuguese-influenced creoles are still spoken today, by over 3 million people worldwide, especially people of partial Portuguese ancestry.
There is a growing number of people in the Portuguese-speaking media and the internet who are presenting the case to the CPLP and other organizations to run a debate in the Lusophone community with the purpose of bringing forward a petition to make Portuguese an official language of the United Nations.
In October 2005, during the international Convention of the Elos Club International that took place in Tavira, Portugal, ONU: Petição para tornar português lÃngua oficial a petition was written and unanimously approved whose text can be found on the internet with the title Petição Para Tornar Oficial o Idioma Português na ONU. Romulo Alexandre Soares, president of the Brazil-Portugal Chamber highlights that the positioning of Brazil in the international arena as one of the emergent powers of the 21st century, the size of its population, and the presence of the language around the world provides legitimacy and justifies a petition to the UN to make the Portuguese language an official language of the UN. Português pode ser lÃngua oficial na ONU
Several factors detract from this campaign. The current official languages of the UN are either 1) official/dominant in many countries (English, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, and French) or 2) have several hundreds of millions of speakers (Chinese). English, Spanish, Russian and Arabic fulfill both criteria. Portuguese is a global language in that it is the official tongue of several sovereign countries on four continents. It also has over 200 million speakers. However, it exhibits some noticeable differences when compared to the current 6 UN official languages. For example, English, French, Arabic and Spanish are each official languages of multiple states and of over half of the world's countries. In contrast, four out of every five speakers of the Portuguese-speaking world live in just one country: Brazil. In addition to Brazil, Portuguese is the official language in only 7 other sovereign states; however, English is official in 53 states, French in 29 states, Arabic in 25 states, and Spanish in 20 states.
More significantly, in each part of the world with a Portuguese-speaking country, this language is overshadowed by other powerful languages that are already official languages of the UN. For example, in the Americas, the 190 million Portuguese-speaking Brazilians are overshadowed by the most spoken languages in the Western Hemisphere: Spanish (~360 million speakers) and English (~340 million speakers). Portuguese is overshadowed to an even greater extent in Europe, the continent in which four of the six UN languages originated (English, French, Spanish, and Russian). In the European context, Portuguese is not even among the ten most spoken languages on the continent, with a number of speakers comparable to those of Czech and Bulgarian. In Africa, Portuguese is eclipsed as a continental lingua franca by English and French in countries that surround Cape Verde, São Tomé and PrÃncipe, Guinea-Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique. Finally in Asia, a continent with several languages that have hundreds of millions of speakers, the only sovereign state with Portuguese as an official language is East Timor, which has only a million people. While Brazilian migration has brought 300,000 fluent Portuguese speakers to Japan, Portuguese does not enjoy any official status whatsoever in that country. Therefore, while Portuguese will gain increasing importance as Brazil continues its development as a major economy, it will likely face the same hurdles that prevented Japanese and German (both languages of major global economies with millions of speakers) from becoming both international languages and official ones of the UN.
There is a maximum of 9 oral vowels and 19 consonants, though some varieties of the language have fewer phonemes (Brazilian Portuguese has 8 oral vowels). There are also five nasal vowels, which some linguists regard as allophones of the oral vowels, ten oral diphthongs, and five nasal diphthongs. In total, Brazilian Portuguese has 13 vowel phonemes. /ref> Handbook of the International Phonetic Association'' pg. 126-130; the reference applies to the entire section
Chart of monophthongs of the Portuguese of Lisbon
To the seven vowels of Vulgar Latin, European Portuguese has added two near central vowels, one of which tends to be elided in rapid speech, like the e caduc of French (represented as either , or , or ). The high vowels and the low vowels are four distinct phonemes, and they alternate in various forms of apophony. Like Catalan, Portuguese uses vowel quality to contrast stressed syllables with unstressed syllables: isolated vowels tend to be raised, and in some cases centralized, when unstressed. Nasal diphthongs occur mostly at the ends of words.
The consonant inventory of Portuguese is fairly conservative. The medieval affricates , , , merged with the fricatives , , , , respectively, but not with each other, and there were no other significant changes to the consonant phonemes since then. However, some notable dialectal variants and allophones have appeared, among which:
* In many regions of Brazil, and have the affricate allophones and , respectively, before and . (Quebec French has a similar phenomenon, with alveolar affricates instead of postalveolars. Japanese is another example).
* At the end of a syllable, the phoneme has the allophone in Brazilian Portuguese (L-vocalization).
* In many parts of Brazil and Angola, intervocalic is pronounced as a nasalized palatal approximant which nasalizes the preceding vowel, so that, for instance, is pronounced .
* In most of Brazil, the alveolar sibilants and occur in complementary distribution at the ends of syllables, depending on whether the consonant that follows is voiceless or voiced, as in English. But in most of Portugal and parts of Brazil, sibilants are postalveolar at the ends of syllables, before voiceless consonants, and before voiced consonants (in Judeo-Spanish, is often replaced with at the ends of syllables, too).
* There is considerable dialectal variation in the value of the rhotic phoneme . See Guttural R in Portuguese, for details.
;Excerpt from the Portuguese national epic Os LusÃadas, by author LuÃs de Camões (I, 33)
A notable aspect of the grammar of Portuguese is the verb. Morphologically, more verbal inflections from classical Latin have been preserved by Portuguese than by any other major Romance language. See Romance copula, for a detailed comparison. It has also some innovations not found in other Romance languages (except Galician and the Fala):
* The present perfect tense has an iterative sense unique to Galician-Portuguese language group. It denotes an action or a series of actions which began in the past and are expected to keep repeating in the future. For instance, the sentence Tenho tentado falar com ela would be translated to "I have been trying to talk to her", not "I have tried to talk to her". On the other hand, the correct translation of the question "Have you heard the latest news?" is not *Tem ouvido a última notÃcia?, but Ouviu a última notÃcia?, since no repetition is implied. Squartini, Mario (1998) Verbal Periphrases in Romance â Aspect, Actionality, and Grammaticalization ISBN 3-11-016160-5
* The future subjunctive tense, which was developed by medieval West Iberian Romance, but has now fallen into disuse in Spanish and Galician, is still used in vernacular Portuguese. It appears in dependent clauses that denote a condition which must be fulfilled in the future, so that the independent clause will occur. English normally employs the present tense under the same circumstances:
:Se eu for eleito presidente, mudarei a lei.
:If I am elected president, I will change the law.
:Quando fores mais velho, vais entender.
:When you are older, you will understand.
* The personal infinitive: infinitives can inflect according to their subject in person and number, often showing who is expected to perform a certain action; cf. Ã melhor voltares "It is better [for you] to go back," Ã melhor voltarmos "It is better [for us] to go back." Perhaps for this reason, infinitive clauses replace subjunctive clauses more often in Portuguese than in other Romance languages.
Portuguese is written with 23 or 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, making use of five diacritics to denote stress, vowel height, contraction, nasalization, and other sound changes (acute accent, grave accent, circumflex accent, tilde, and cedilla). Accented characters and digraphs are not counted as separate letters for collation purposes.
* Portuguese literature
* Portuguese poetry
* List of Portuguese language poets
* Brazilian literature
* List of Brazilian poets
* Lusophone
* Geographic distribution of Portuguese
* List of countries where Portuguese is an official language
* Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP)
* Instituto Camões
* International Portuguese Language Institute
* Museum of the Portuguese Language
* Portuguese-based creole languages
* Portuñol
* Portuguese in the United States
* List of English words of Portuguese origin
* Spelling reforms of Portuguese
* História da Lingua Portuguesa Instituto Camões
* A LÃngua Portuguesa in Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil (...)
* Poesia e Prosa Medievais, by Maria Ema Tarracha Ferreira, Ulisseia 1998, 3rd ed., ISBN 978-972-568-124-4.
* Bases Temáticas â LÃngua Portuguesa in Instituto Camões
* Portuguese Literature in The Catholic Encyclopedia
* International Phonetic Association (1999) Handbook of the International Phonetic Association ISBN 0-521-63751-1
* Mateus, Maria Helena & d'Andrade, Ernesto (2000) The Phonology of Portuguese ISBN 0-19-823581-X (Excerpt available at Google Books)
* Bergström, Magnus & Reis, Neves Prontuário Ortográfico Editorial NotÃcias, 2004.
* A pronúncia do português europeu - European Portuguese Pronunciation
* Dialects of Portuguese at the Instituto Camões
* Audio samples of the dialects of Portugal
* Audio samples of the dialects from outside Europe
* Antônio Houaiss (2000), Dicionário Houaiss da LÃngua Portuguesa (228,500 entries).
* Aurélio Buarque de Holanda Ferreira, Novo Dicionário da LÃngua Portuguesa (1809pp)
* English-Portuguese-Chinese Dictionary (Freeware, for Windows/Linux/Mac)
* Lindley Cintra, LuÃs F. Nova Proposta de Classificação dos Dialectos Galego-Portugueses (PDF) Boletim de Filologia, Lisboa, Centro de Estudos Filológicos, 1971.
*Swadesh list in English and Portuguese
* English Portuguese Translation Dictionary for English Portuguese translations
* Learn Portuguese BBC
* Portuguese Language Notes BBC
* AULP - Associação das Universidades de LÃngua Portuguesa Portuguese Language Universities Association.
* Portuguese in East Timor an interview with Dr. Geoffrey Hull.
* Portuguese Dictionary with gender and type of words.
* ABL - Academia Brasileira de letras (em português) - (Brazilian Academy of Letters) (Portuguese)
* Brazilian Portuguese Free resources for Portuguese learners.
* EasyPortuguese Free Portuguese learning site with audio.
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Portuguese_language | Does Portuguese contain words from the Arabic language? | Yes, Portuguese contains words from the Arabic language. | data/set5/a1 | Portuguese_language
Portuguese ( or lÃngua portuguesa) is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia and northern Portugal. It is derived from the Latin spoken by the romanized pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula (namely the Gallaeci, the Lusitanians, the Celtici and the Conii) around 2000 years ago. It spread worldwide in the 15th and 16th centuries as Portugal established a colonial and commercial empire (1415â1999) which spanned from Brazil in the Americas to Goa and other parts of India, Macau in China and Timor (north of Australia). It was used as the exclusive lingua franca on the island of Sri Lanka for almost 350 years. During that time, many creole languages based on Portuguese also appeared around the world, especially in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean.
Today it is one of the world's major languages, ranked seventh according to number of native speakers (between 205 and 230 million). It is the language of about half of South America's population, even though Brazil is the only Portuguese-speaking nation in the Americas. It is also a major lingua franca in Portugal's former colonial possessions in Africa. It is an official language in nine countries (see the table on the right), also being co-official with Cantonese Chinese in Macau and Tetum in East Timor. There are sizeable communities of Portuguese speakers in various regions of North America, notably in the United States (New Jersey, New England, California and south Florida) and in Ontario, Canada.
In various aspects, the system of sounds in Portuguese is more similar to the phonologies of Catalan or French than, say, those of Spanish or Italian. Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes once called Portuguese "the sweet language", /ref> Lope de Vega referred to it as "suave" 'Encyclopedia of Literature' Joseph T. Shipley; Philosophical Library, 1946. 1188 pgs. while Brazilian writer Olavo Bilac poetically described it as a última flor do Lácio, inculta e bela: "the last flower of Latium, wild and beautiful". Portuguese is also termed "the language of Camões", after one of Portugal's best known literary figures, LuÃs Vaz de Camões.
Countries and regions where Portuguese has official status.
Members of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries.
Today, Portuguese is the official language of Angola, Brazil (190.6 million), IBGE Official website Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Portugal (10.6 million), INE Official website São Tomé and PrÃncipe and Mozambique. CPLP Official website It is also one of the official languages of the special administrative region of Macau (with Chinese) and East Timor, (with Tetum). It is the language of most of the population in Portugal (100%) , Brazil (100%) , São Tomé and PrÃncipe (99.8%) and Angola (80%), and is the most widely spoken language in Mozambique (40%), though only 6.5% are native speakers. No data are available for Cape Verde, but almost all the population is bilingual, and the monolingual population speaks Cape Verdean Creole. See the main article Geographic distribution of Portuguese, for references.
Small Portuguese-speaking communities subsist in former overseas colonies of Portugal such as Macau, where it is spoken by 7% of the population, and East Timor (13.6%).
Uruguay gave Portuguese an equal status to Spanish in its educational system at the north border with Brazil. In the rest of the country, it is taught as an obligatory subject beginning in the 6th grade. Uruguay recently adopted Portuguese language in its education system as an obligatory subject /ref>
It is also spoken by substantial immigrant communities, though not official, in Andorra, Australia, The Portuguese-Speaking Community in Australia France, Luxembourg, Jersey (with a statistically significant Portuguese-speaking community of approximately 10,000 people), Paraguay, Namibia, South Africa, Switzerland, Venezuela, Japan JAPÃO: IMIGRANTES BRASILEIROS POPULARIZAM LÃNGUA PORTUGUESA and the U.S. states of California, Connecticut, Where America's Other Languages Are Spoken Florida, Widely spoken but 'minor'? Portuguese seeks respect Massachusetts, New Jersey, Hispanic Reading Room of the U.S. Library of Congress website, Twentieth-Century Arrivals from Portugal Settle in Newark, New Jersey, New York Brazucas (Brazilians living in New York) and Rhode Island. Hispanic Reading Room of the U.S. Library of Congress website, Whaling, Fishing, and Industrial Employment in Southeastern New England
In some parts of India, such as Goa Portuguese Language in Goa and Daman and Diu, The Portuguese Experience: The Case of Goa, Daman and Diu Portuguese is still spoken. There are also significant populations of Portuguese speakers in Canada (mainly concentrated in and around Toronto), Multicultural Canada Bermuda World InfoZone: Bermuda and the Netherlands Antilles.
Portuguese is an official language of several international organizations. The Community of Portuguese Language Countries (with the Portuguese acronym CPLP) consists of the eight independent countries that have Portuguese as an official language. It is also an official language of the European Union, accounting for 3% of its population, EUROPA website Languages in the EU Mercosul, the Organization of American States, the Organization of Ibero-American States, the Union of South American Nations, and the African Union (one of the working languages) and one of the official languages of other organizations. The Portuguese language is gaining popularity in Africa, Asia, and South America as a second language for study.
Estação da Luz, home of the Museum of the Portuguese Language, in São Paulo, Brazil.
Portuguese and Spanish are the fastest-growing European languages (with the exception of English, being the world lingua franca) , and, according to estimates by UNESCO, the Portuguese language has the highest potential for growth as an international language in southern Africa and South America. The Portuguese-speaking African countries are expected to have a combined population of 83 million by 2050. In total, the Portuguese-speaking countries will have 335 million people by the same year. Since 1991, when Brazil signed into the economic market of Mercosul with other South American nations, such as Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay, there has been an increase in interest in the study of Portuguese in those South American countries. The demographic weight of Brazil in the continent will continue to strengthen the presence of the language in the region. Although in the early 21st century, after Macau was ceded to China in 1999, the use of Portuguese was in decline in Asia, it is becoming a language of opportunity there; mostly because of East Timor's boost in the number of speakers in the last five years but also because of increased Chinese diplomatic and financial ties with Portuguese-speaking countries.
In July 2007, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema announced his government's decision to establish Portuguese as Equatorial Guinea's third official language, to meet the requirements to apply for full membership of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries. This upgrading from its current Associate Observer condition would result in Equatorial Guinea being able to access several professional and academic exchange programs and the facilitation of cross-border circulation of citizens. Its application is currently being assessed by other CPLP members. "Obiang convierte al portugués en tercer idioma oficial para entrar en la Comunidad lusófona de Naciones", Terra. 13-07-2007
In March 1994 the Bosque de Portugal (Portugal's Woods) was founded in the Brazilian city of Curitiba. The park houses the Portuguese Language Memorial, which honors the Portuguese immigrants and the countries that adopted the Portuguese language. Originally there were seven nations represented with pillars, but the independence of East Timor brought yet another pillar for that nation in 2007.
In March 2006, the Museum of the Portuguese Language, an interactive museum about the Portuguese language, was founded in São Paulo, Brazil, the city with the greatest number of Portuguese speakers in the world.
Portuguese is a pluricentric language with two main groups of dialects, those of Brazil and those of the Old World. For historical reasons, the dialects of Africa and Asia are generally closer to those of Portugal than the Brazilian dialects, although in some aspects of their phonetics, especially the pronunciation of unstressed vowels, they resemble Brazilian Portuguese more than European Portuguese. They have not been studied as widely as European and Brazilian Portuguese.
Audio samples of some dialects of Portuguese are available below. From Audio samples of the dialects of Portuguese at the Instituto Camões website. There are some differences between the areas but these are the best approximations possible. For example, the caipira dialect has some differences from the one of Minas Gerais, but in general it is very close. A good example of Brazilian Portuguese may be found in the capital city, BrasÃlia, because of the generalized population from all parts of the country.
Portuguese dialects of Angola
# Benguelense â Benguela province.
# 11px Luandense â Luanda province.
# Sulista â South of Angola.
Dialects of Portuguese in Brazil
# Caipira â States of São Paulo (countryside; the city of São Paulo and the eastern areas of the state have their own accent, called paulistano); southern Minas Gerais, northern Paraná, Goiás and Mato Grosso do Sul.
# Cearense â Ceará.
# Baiano â Bahia.
# 11px Fluminense â Variants spoken in the states of Rio de Janeiro (excluding the city of Rio de Janeiro and its adjacent metropolitan areas, which have their own dialect, called carioca).
# Gaúcho â Rio Grande do Sul. (There are many distinct accents in Rio Grande do Sul, mainly due to the heavy influx of European immigrants of diverse origins, those which have settled several colonies throughout the state.)
# Mineiro â Minas Gerais (not prevalent in the Triângulo Mineiro, southern and southeastern Minas Gerais and also excluding the city of Belo Horizonte, which has its own accent.).
# 11px Nordestino â northeastern states of Brazil (Pernambuco, ParaÃba and Rio Grande do Norte have a particular way of speaking). Note: the speaker of this sound file is from Rio, and he is talking about his experience with Nordestino and Nortista accents.
# Nortista â Amazon Basin states.
# Paulistano â Variants spoken around São Paulo city and the eastern areas of São Paulo state.
# Sertanejo â States of Goiás and Mato Grosso (the city of Cuiabá has a particular way of speaking).
# Sulista â Variants spoken in the areas between the northern regions of Rio Grande do Sul and southern regions of São Paulo state. (The cities of Curitiba, Florianópolis, and Itapetininga have fairly distinct accents as well.)
# Carioca â Variants spoken in Rio de Janeiro City and Niteroi
Dialects of Portuguese in Portugal
# 11px Açoriano (Azorean) â Azores.
# 11px Alentejano â Alentejo
# 11px Algarvio â Algarve (there is a particular dialect in a small part of western Algarve).
# 11px Alto-Minhoto â North of Braga (hinterland).
# 11px Baixo-Beirão; Alto-Alentejano â Central Portugal (hinterland).
# 11px Beirão â Central Portugal.
# 11px Estremenho â Regions of Coimbra and Lisbon (the Lisbon dialect has some peculiar features not shared with the one of Coimbra).
# 11px Madeirense (Madeiran) â Madeira.
# 11px Nortenho â Regions of Braga and Porto.
# 11px Transmontano â Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro.
* Cape Verde â 11px Português cabo-verdiano (Cape Verdean Portuguese)
* Daman and Diu, India â Damaense.
* East Timor â 11px Timorense (East Timorese)
* Goa, India â Goês.
* Guinea-Bissau â 11px Guineense (Guinean Portuguese).
* Macau, China â 11px Macaense (Macanese)
* Mozambique â 11px Moçambicano (Mozambican)
* São Tomé and PrÃncipe â 11px Santomense
* Uruguay â Dialectos Portugueses del Uruguay (DPU).
Differences between dialects are mostly of accent and vocabulary, but between the Brazilian dialects and other dialects, especially in their most colloquial forms, there can also be some grammatical differences. The Portuguese-based creoles spoken in various parts of Africa, Asia, and the Americas are independent languages which should not be confused with Portuguese itself.
Baroque Library of the Coimbra University, Portugal.
Arriving in the Iberian Peninsula in 216 BC, the Romans brought with them the Latin language, from which all Romance languages descend. The language was spread by arriving Roman soldiers, settlers, and merchants, who built Roman cities mostly near the settlements of previous civilizations.
Between 409 and 711 AD, as the Roman Empire collapsed in Western Europe, the Iberian Peninsula was conquered by Germanic peoples (Migration Period). The occupiers, mainly Suebi and Visigoths, quickly adopted late Roman culture and the Vulgar Latin dialects of the peninsula. After the Moorish invasion of 711, Arabic became the administrative language in the conquered regions, but most of the population continued to speak a form of Romance commonly known as Mozarabic. The influence exerted by Arabic on the Romance dialects spoken in the Christian kingdoms of the north was small, affecting mainly their lexicon.
The earliest surviving records of a distinctively Portuguese language are administrative documents of the 9th century, still interspersed with many Latin phrases. Today this phase is known as Proto-Portuguese (between the 9th and the 12th centuries). In the first period of Old Portuguese â Galician-Portuguese Period (from the 12th to the 14th century) â the language gradually came into general use. For some time, it was the language of preference for lyric poetry in Christian Hispania, much as Occitan was the language of the poetry of the troubadours. Portugal became an independent kingdom from the Kingdom of Leon in 1139, under king Afonso I of Portugal. In 1290, king Denis of Portugal created the first Portuguese university in Lisbon (the Estudos Gerais, later moved to Coimbra) and decreed that Portuguese, then simply called the "common language" should be known as the Portuguese language and used officially.
In the second period of Old Portuguese, from the 14th to the 16th centuries, with the Portuguese discoveries, the language was taken to many regions of Asia, Africa and the Americas (nowadays, the great majority of Portuguese speakers live in Brazil, in South America). By the 16th century, it had become a lingua franca in Asia and Africa, used not only for colonial administration and trade but also for communication between local officials and Europeans of all nationalities. Its spread was helped by mixed marriages between Portuguese and local people, and by its association with Roman Catholic missionary efforts, which led to the formation of a creole language called Kristang in many parts of Asia (from the word cristão, "Christian"). The language continued to be popular in parts of Asia until the 19th century. Some Portuguese-speaking Christian communities in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Indonesia preserved their language even after they were isolated from Portugal.
The end of the Old Portuguese period was marked by the publication of the Cancioneiro Geral by Garcia de Resende, in 1516. The early times of Modern Portuguese, which spans a period from the 16th century to the present day, were characterized by an increase in the number of learned words borrowed from Classical Latin and Classical Greek since the Renaissance, which greatly enriched the lexicon.
A distinctive feature of Portuguese is that it preserved the stressed vowels of Vulgar Latin, which became diphthongs in other Romance languages; cf. Fr. pierre, Sp. piedra, It. pietra, Ro. piatrÄ, Port. pedra ("stone"), from Lat. petram; or Sp. fuego, It. fuoco, Fr. feu, Ro. foc, Port. fogo, from Lat. focus ("fire"). Another characteristic of early Portuguese was the loss of intervocalic l and n, sometimes followed by the merger of the two surrounding vowels, or by the insertion of an epenthetic vowel between them: cf. Lat. salire ("to leave"), tenere ("to have"), catenam ("chain"), Sp. salir, tener, cadena, Port. sair, ter, cadeia.
When the elided consonant was n, it often nasalized the preceding vowel: cf. Lat. manum ("hand"), ranam ("frog"), bonum ("good"), Port. mão, rãa, bõo (now mão, rã, bom). This process was the source of most of the nasal diphthongs which are typical of Portuguese. In particular, the Latin endings -anem, -anum and -onem became -ão in most cases, cf. Lat. canem ("dog"), germanum ("brother"), rationem ("reason") with Modern Port. cão, irmão, razão, and their plurals -anes, -anos, -ones normally became -ães, -ãos, -ões, cf. cães, irmãos, razões.
Library of the Mafra National Palace, Portugal.
Most of the lexicon of Portuguese is derived from Latin. Nevertheless, because of the Moorish occupation of the Iberian Peninsula during the Middle Ages, and the participation of Portugal in the Age of Discovery, it has adopted loanwords from all over the world.
Very few Portuguese words can be traced to the pre-Roman inhabitants of Portugal, which included the Gallaeci, Lusitanians, Celtici and Cynetes. The Phoenicians and Carthaginians, briefly present, also left some scarce traces. Some notable examples are abóbora "pumpkin" and bezerro "year-old calf", from the nearby Celtiberian language (probably through the Celtici); cerveja "beer", from Celtic; and cachorro "dog", from Basque.
In the 5th century, the Iberian Peninsula (the Roman Hispania) was conquered by the Germanic Suebi and Visigoths. As they adopted the Roman civilization and language, however, these people contributed only a few words to the lexicon, mostly related to warfare â such as espora "spur", estaca "stake", and guerra "war", from Gothic *spaúra, *stakka, and *wirro, respectively. The influence also exists in toponymic and patronymic surnames borne by Visigoth sovereigns and their descendants, and it dwells on placenames such has Ermesinde, Esposende and Resende where sinde and sende are derived from the Germanic "sinths" (military expedition) and in the case of Resende, the prefix re comes from Germanic "reths" (council).
Between the 9th and 13th centuries, Portuguese acquired about 800 words from Arabic by influence of Moorish Iberia. They are often recognizable by the initial Arabic article a(l)-, and include many common words such as aldeia "village" from اÙضÙعة aldaya, alface "lettuce" from اÙخس alkhass, armazém "warehouse" from اÙÙ
خز٠almahazan, and azeite "olive oil" from اÙزÙت azzait. From Arabic came also the grammatically peculiar word oxalá إ٠شاء اÙÙÙ "hopefully". The Mozambican currency name metical was derived from the word Ù
تÙا٠mitqÄl, a unit of weight. The word Mozambique itself is from the Arabic name of sultan Muça Alebique (Musa Alibiki).
Starting in the 15th century, the Portuguese maritime explorations led to the introduction of many loanwords from Asian languages. For instance, catana "cutlass" from Japanese katana and chá "tea" from Chinese 'chá'.
From South America came batata "potato", from Taino; ananás and abacaxi, from Tupi-Guarani naná and Tupi ibá cati, respectively (two species of pineapple), and tucano "toucan" from Guarani tucan. See List of Brazil state name etymologies, for some more examples.
From the 16th to the 19th centuries, because of the role of Portugal as intermediary in the Atlantic slave trade, and the establishment of large Portuguese colonies in Angola, Mozambique, and Brazil, Portuguese got several words of African and Amerind origin, especially names for most of the animals and plants found in those territories. While those terms are mostly used in the former colonies, many became current in European Portuguese as well. From Kimbundu, for example, came kifumate â cafuné "head caress", kusula â caçula "youngest child", marimbondo "tropical wasp", and kubungula â bungular "to dance like a wizard".
Finally, it has received a steady influx of loanwords from other European languages. For example, melena "hair lock", fiambre "wet-cured ham" (in contrast with presunto "dry-cured ham" from Latin prae-exsuctus "dehydrated"), and castelhano "Castilian", from Spanish; colchete/crochê "bracket"/"crochet", paletó "jacket", batom "lipstick", and filé/filete "steak"/"slice" respectively, from French crochet, paletot, bâton, filet; macarrão "pasta", piloto "pilot", carroça "carriage", and barraca "barrack", from Italian maccherone, pilota, carrozza, baracca; and bife "steak", futebol, revólver, estoque, folclore, time from English beef,
football, revolver, stock, folklore, and team.
Portuguese belongs to the West Iberian branch of the Romance languages, and it has special ties with the following members of this group:
* Galician and Fala, its closest relatives. See below.
* Spanish, the major language closest to Portuguese. (See also Differences between Spanish and Portuguese.)
* Mirandese and Leonese, two other West Iberian languages spoken in Portugal.
* Judeo-Portuguese and Judeo-Spanish, languages spoken by Sephardic Jews, and which remained close to Portuguese and Spanish.
Despite the obvious lexical and grammatical similarities between Portuguese and other Romance languages, it is not mutually intelligible with them. Apart from Galician, Portuguese speakers will usually need some formal study of basic grammar and vocabulary, before attaining a reasonable level of comprehension of those languages, and vice versa. Native speakers of Portuguese do tend to understand standard Spanish which is spoken clearly, but the reverse is generally not true unless formal education is involved.
The closest language to Portuguese is Galician, spoken in the autonomous community of Galicia (northwestern Spain). The two were at one time a single language, known today as Galician-Portuguese, but since the political separation of Portugal from Galicia they have diverged somewhat, especially in pronunciation and vocabulary. Nevertheless, the core vocabulary and grammar of Galician are still noticeably closer to Portuguese than to those of Spanish. In particular, like Portuguese, it uses the future subjunctive, the personal infinitive, and the synthetic pluperfect (see the section on the grammar of Portuguese, below). Mutual intelligibility (estimated at 85% by R. A. Hall, Jr., 1989) Ethnologue is good between Galicians and northern Portuguese, but poorer between Galicians and speakers from central Portugal.
The Fala language is another descendant of Galician-Portuguese, spoken by a small number of people in the Spanish towns of Valverde del Fresno, Eljas and San MartÃn de Trevejo (autonomous community of Extremadura, near the border with Portugal).
Portuguese has provided loanwords to many languages, such as Indonesian, Manado Malay, Sri Lankan Tamil and Sinhalese (see Sri Lanka Indo-Portuguese), Malay, Bengali, English, Hindi, Konkani, Marathi, Tetum, Xitsonga, Papiamentu, Japanese, Lanc-Patuá (spoken in northern Brazil) and Sranan Tongo (spoken in Suriname). It left a strong influence on the lÃngua brasÃlica, a Tupi-Guarani language which was the most widely spoken in Brazil until the 18th century, and on the language spoken around Sikka in Flores Island, Indonesia. In nearby Larantuka, Portuguese is used for prayers in Holy Week rituals.
The Japanese-Portuguese dictionary Nippo Jisho (1603) was the first dictionary of Japanese in a European language, a product of Jesuit missionary activity in Japan. Building on the work of earlier Portuguese missionaries, the Dictionarium Anamiticum, Lusitanum et Latinum (Annamite-Portuguese-Latin dictionary) of Alexandre de Rhodes (1651) introduced the modern orthography of Vietnamese, which is based on the orthography of 17th-century Portuguese. The Romanization of Chinese was also influenced by the Portuguese language (among others), particularly regarding Chinese surnames; one example is Mei. During 1583-88 Italian Jesuits Michele Ruggieri and Matteo Ricci created a Portuguese-Chinese dictionary - the first ever European-Chinese dictionary. Yves Camus, "Jesuits' Journeys in Chinese Studies" "Dicionário Português-Chinês : Pu Han ci dian : Portuguese-Chinese dictionary", by Michele Ruggieri, Matteo Ricci; edited by John W. Witek. Published 2001, Biblioteca Nacional. ISBN 9725652983. Partial preview available on Google Books
See also List of English words of Portuguese origin, Loan words in Indonesian, Japanese words of Portuguese origin, Borrowed words in Malay, Sinhala words of Portuguese origin, Loan words from Portuguese in Sri Lankan Tamil.
Beginning in the 16th century, the extensive contacts between Portuguese travelers and settlers, African slaves, and local populations led to the appearance of many pidgins with varying amounts of Portuguese influence. As each of these pidgins became the mother tongue of succeeding generations, they evolved into fully fledged creole languages, which remained in use in many parts of Asia and Africa until the 18th century. Some Portuguese-based or Portuguese-influenced creoles are still spoken today, by over 3 million people worldwide, especially people of partial Portuguese ancestry.
There is a growing number of people in the Portuguese-speaking media and the internet who are presenting the case to the CPLP and other organizations to run a debate in the Lusophone community with the purpose of bringing forward a petition to make Portuguese an official language of the United Nations.
In October 2005, during the international Convention of the Elos Club International that took place in Tavira, Portugal, ONU: Petição para tornar português lÃngua oficial a petition was written and unanimously approved whose text can be found on the internet with the title Petição Para Tornar Oficial o Idioma Português na ONU. Romulo Alexandre Soares, president of the Brazil-Portugal Chamber highlights that the positioning of Brazil in the international arena as one of the emergent powers of the 21st century, the size of its population, and the presence of the language around the world provides legitimacy and justifies a petition to the UN to make the Portuguese language an official language of the UN. Português pode ser lÃngua oficial na ONU
Several factors detract from this campaign. The current official languages of the UN are either 1) official/dominant in many countries (English, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, and French) or 2) have several hundreds of millions of speakers (Chinese). English, Spanish, Russian and Arabic fulfill both criteria. Portuguese is a global language in that it is the official tongue of several sovereign countries on four continents. It also has over 200 million speakers. However, it exhibits some noticeable differences when compared to the current 6 UN official languages. For example, English, French, Arabic and Spanish are each official languages of multiple states and of over half of the world's countries. In contrast, four out of every five speakers of the Portuguese-speaking world live in just one country: Brazil. In addition to Brazil, Portuguese is the official language in only 7 other sovereign states; however, English is official in 53 states, French in 29 states, Arabic in 25 states, and Spanish in 20 states.
More significantly, in each part of the world with a Portuguese-speaking country, this language is overshadowed by other powerful languages that are already official languages of the UN. For example, in the Americas, the 190 million Portuguese-speaking Brazilians are overshadowed by the most spoken languages in the Western Hemisphere: Spanish (~360 million speakers) and English (~340 million speakers). Portuguese is overshadowed to an even greater extent in Europe, the continent in which four of the six UN languages originated (English, French, Spanish, and Russian). In the European context, Portuguese is not even among the ten most spoken languages on the continent, with a number of speakers comparable to those of Czech and Bulgarian. In Africa, Portuguese is eclipsed as a continental lingua franca by English and French in countries that surround Cape Verde, São Tomé and PrÃncipe, Guinea-Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique. Finally in Asia, a continent with several languages that have hundreds of millions of speakers, the only sovereign state with Portuguese as an official language is East Timor, which has only a million people. While Brazilian migration has brought 300,000 fluent Portuguese speakers to Japan, Portuguese does not enjoy any official status whatsoever in that country. Therefore, while Portuguese will gain increasing importance as Brazil continues its development as a major economy, it will likely face the same hurdles that prevented Japanese and German (both languages of major global economies with millions of speakers) from becoming both international languages and official ones of the UN.
There is a maximum of 9 oral vowels and 19 consonants, though some varieties of the language have fewer phonemes (Brazilian Portuguese has 8 oral vowels). There are also five nasal vowels, which some linguists regard as allophones of the oral vowels, ten oral diphthongs, and five nasal diphthongs. In total, Brazilian Portuguese has 13 vowel phonemes. /ref> Handbook of the International Phonetic Association'' pg. 126-130; the reference applies to the entire section
Chart of monophthongs of the Portuguese of Lisbon
To the seven vowels of Vulgar Latin, European Portuguese has added two near central vowels, one of which tends to be elided in rapid speech, like the e caduc of French (represented as either , or , or ). The high vowels and the low vowels are four distinct phonemes, and they alternate in various forms of apophony. Like Catalan, Portuguese uses vowel quality to contrast stressed syllables with unstressed syllables: isolated vowels tend to be raised, and in some cases centralized, when unstressed. Nasal diphthongs occur mostly at the ends of words.
The consonant inventory of Portuguese is fairly conservative. The medieval affricates , , , merged with the fricatives , , , , respectively, but not with each other, and there were no other significant changes to the consonant phonemes since then. However, some notable dialectal variants and allophones have appeared, among which:
* In many regions of Brazil, and have the affricate allophones and , respectively, before and . (Quebec French has a similar phenomenon, with alveolar affricates instead of postalveolars. Japanese is another example).
* At the end of a syllable, the phoneme has the allophone in Brazilian Portuguese (L-vocalization).
* In many parts of Brazil and Angola, intervocalic is pronounced as a nasalized palatal approximant which nasalizes the preceding vowel, so that, for instance, is pronounced .
* In most of Brazil, the alveolar sibilants and occur in complementary distribution at the ends of syllables, depending on whether the consonant that follows is voiceless or voiced, as in English. But in most of Portugal and parts of Brazil, sibilants are postalveolar at the ends of syllables, before voiceless consonants, and before voiced consonants (in Judeo-Spanish, is often replaced with at the ends of syllables, too).
* There is considerable dialectal variation in the value of the rhotic phoneme . See Guttural R in Portuguese, for details.
;Excerpt from the Portuguese national epic Os LusÃadas, by author LuÃs de Camões (I, 33)
A notable aspect of the grammar of Portuguese is the verb. Morphologically, more verbal inflections from classical Latin have been preserved by Portuguese than by any other major Romance language. See Romance copula, for a detailed comparison. It has also some innovations not found in other Romance languages (except Galician and the Fala):
* The present perfect tense has an iterative sense unique to Galician-Portuguese language group. It denotes an action or a series of actions which began in the past and are expected to keep repeating in the future. For instance, the sentence Tenho tentado falar com ela would be translated to "I have been trying to talk to her", not "I have tried to talk to her". On the other hand, the correct translation of the question "Have you heard the latest news?" is not *Tem ouvido a última notÃcia?, but Ouviu a última notÃcia?, since no repetition is implied. Squartini, Mario (1998) Verbal Periphrases in Romance â Aspect, Actionality, and Grammaticalization ISBN 3-11-016160-5
* The future subjunctive tense, which was developed by medieval West Iberian Romance, but has now fallen into disuse in Spanish and Galician, is still used in vernacular Portuguese. It appears in dependent clauses that denote a condition which must be fulfilled in the future, so that the independent clause will occur. English normally employs the present tense under the same circumstances:
:Se eu for eleito presidente, mudarei a lei.
:If I am elected president, I will change the law.
:Quando fores mais velho, vais entender.
:When you are older, you will understand.
* The personal infinitive: infinitives can inflect according to their subject in person and number, often showing who is expected to perform a certain action; cf. Ã melhor voltares "It is better [for you] to go back," Ã melhor voltarmos "It is better [for us] to go back." Perhaps for this reason, infinitive clauses replace subjunctive clauses more often in Portuguese than in other Romance languages.
Portuguese is written with 23 or 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, making use of five diacritics to denote stress, vowel height, contraction, nasalization, and other sound changes (acute accent, grave accent, circumflex accent, tilde, and cedilla). Accented characters and digraphs are not counted as separate letters for collation purposes.
* Portuguese literature
* Portuguese poetry
* List of Portuguese language poets
* Brazilian literature
* List of Brazilian poets
* Lusophone
* Geographic distribution of Portuguese
* List of countries where Portuguese is an official language
* Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP)
* Instituto Camões
* International Portuguese Language Institute
* Museum of the Portuguese Language
* Portuguese-based creole languages
* Portuñol
* Portuguese in the United States
* List of English words of Portuguese origin
* Spelling reforms of Portuguese
* História da Lingua Portuguesa Instituto Camões
* A LÃngua Portuguesa in Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil (...)
* Poesia e Prosa Medievais, by Maria Ema Tarracha Ferreira, Ulisseia 1998, 3rd ed., ISBN 978-972-568-124-4.
* Bases Temáticas â LÃngua Portuguesa in Instituto Camões
* Portuguese Literature in The Catholic Encyclopedia
* International Phonetic Association (1999) Handbook of the International Phonetic Association ISBN 0-521-63751-1
* Mateus, Maria Helena & d'Andrade, Ernesto (2000) The Phonology of Portuguese ISBN 0-19-823581-X (Excerpt available at Google Books)
* Bergström, Magnus & Reis, Neves Prontuário Ortográfico Editorial NotÃcias, 2004.
* A pronúncia do português europeu - European Portuguese Pronunciation
* Dialects of Portuguese at the Instituto Camões
* Audio samples of the dialects of Portugal
* Audio samples of the dialects from outside Europe
* Antônio Houaiss (2000), Dicionário Houaiss da LÃngua Portuguesa (228,500 entries).
* Aurélio Buarque de Holanda Ferreira, Novo Dicionário da LÃngua Portuguesa (1809pp)
* English-Portuguese-Chinese Dictionary (Freeware, for Windows/Linux/Mac)
* Lindley Cintra, LuÃs F. Nova Proposta de Classificação dos Dialectos Galego-Portugueses (PDF) Boletim de Filologia, Lisboa, Centro de Estudos Filológicos, 1971.
*Swadesh list in English and Portuguese
* English Portuguese Translation Dictionary for English Portuguese translations
* Learn Portuguese BBC
* Portuguese Language Notes BBC
* AULP - Associação das Universidades de LÃngua Portuguesa Portuguese Language Universities Association.
* Portuguese in East Timor an interview with Dr. Geoffrey Hull.
* Portuguese Dictionary with gender and type of words.
* ABL - Academia Brasileira de letras (em português) - (Brazilian Academy of Letters) (Portuguese)
* Brazilian Portuguese Free resources for Portuguese learners.
* EasyPortuguese Free Portuguese learning site with audio.
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Portuguese_language | Where are there small Portuguese-speaking communities? | Former overseas colonies of Portugal such as Macau and East Timor | data/set5/a1 | Portuguese_language
Portuguese ( or lÃngua portuguesa) is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia and northern Portugal. It is derived from the Latin spoken by the romanized pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula (namely the Gallaeci, the Lusitanians, the Celtici and the Conii) around 2000 years ago. It spread worldwide in the 15th and 16th centuries as Portugal established a colonial and commercial empire (1415â1999) which spanned from Brazil in the Americas to Goa and other parts of India, Macau in China and Timor (north of Australia). It was used as the exclusive lingua franca on the island of Sri Lanka for almost 350 years. During that time, many creole languages based on Portuguese also appeared around the world, especially in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean.
Today it is one of the world's major languages, ranked seventh according to number of native speakers (between 205 and 230 million). It is the language of about half of South America's population, even though Brazil is the only Portuguese-speaking nation in the Americas. It is also a major lingua franca in Portugal's former colonial possessions in Africa. It is an official language in nine countries (see the table on the right), also being co-official with Cantonese Chinese in Macau and Tetum in East Timor. There are sizeable communities of Portuguese speakers in various regions of North America, notably in the United States (New Jersey, New England, California and south Florida) and in Ontario, Canada.
In various aspects, the system of sounds in Portuguese is more similar to the phonologies of Catalan or French than, say, those of Spanish or Italian. Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes once called Portuguese "the sweet language", /ref> Lope de Vega referred to it as "suave" 'Encyclopedia of Literature' Joseph T. Shipley; Philosophical Library, 1946. 1188 pgs. while Brazilian writer Olavo Bilac poetically described it as a última flor do Lácio, inculta e bela: "the last flower of Latium, wild and beautiful". Portuguese is also termed "the language of Camões", after one of Portugal's best known literary figures, LuÃs Vaz de Camões.
Countries and regions where Portuguese has official status.
Members of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries.
Today, Portuguese is the official language of Angola, Brazil (190.6 million), IBGE Official website Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Portugal (10.6 million), INE Official website São Tomé and PrÃncipe and Mozambique. CPLP Official website It is also one of the official languages of the special administrative region of Macau (with Chinese) and East Timor, (with Tetum). It is the language of most of the population in Portugal (100%) , Brazil (100%) , São Tomé and PrÃncipe (99.8%) and Angola (80%), and is the most widely spoken language in Mozambique (40%), though only 6.5% are native speakers. No data are available for Cape Verde, but almost all the population is bilingual, and the monolingual population speaks Cape Verdean Creole. See the main article Geographic distribution of Portuguese, for references.
Small Portuguese-speaking communities subsist in former overseas colonies of Portugal such as Macau, where it is spoken by 7% of the population, and East Timor (13.6%).
Uruguay gave Portuguese an equal status to Spanish in its educational system at the north border with Brazil. In the rest of the country, it is taught as an obligatory subject beginning in the 6th grade. Uruguay recently adopted Portuguese language in its education system as an obligatory subject /ref>
It is also spoken by substantial immigrant communities, though not official, in Andorra, Australia, The Portuguese-Speaking Community in Australia France, Luxembourg, Jersey (with a statistically significant Portuguese-speaking community of approximately 10,000 people), Paraguay, Namibia, South Africa, Switzerland, Venezuela, Japan JAPÃO: IMIGRANTES BRASILEIROS POPULARIZAM LÃNGUA PORTUGUESA and the U.S. states of California, Connecticut, Where America's Other Languages Are Spoken Florida, Widely spoken but 'minor'? Portuguese seeks respect Massachusetts, New Jersey, Hispanic Reading Room of the U.S. Library of Congress website, Twentieth-Century Arrivals from Portugal Settle in Newark, New Jersey, New York Brazucas (Brazilians living in New York) and Rhode Island. Hispanic Reading Room of the U.S. Library of Congress website, Whaling, Fishing, and Industrial Employment in Southeastern New England
In some parts of India, such as Goa Portuguese Language in Goa and Daman and Diu, The Portuguese Experience: The Case of Goa, Daman and Diu Portuguese is still spoken. There are also significant populations of Portuguese speakers in Canada (mainly concentrated in and around Toronto), Multicultural Canada Bermuda World InfoZone: Bermuda and the Netherlands Antilles.
Portuguese is an official language of several international organizations. The Community of Portuguese Language Countries (with the Portuguese acronym CPLP) consists of the eight independent countries that have Portuguese as an official language. It is also an official language of the European Union, accounting for 3% of its population, EUROPA website Languages in the EU Mercosul, the Organization of American States, the Organization of Ibero-American States, the Union of South American Nations, and the African Union (one of the working languages) and one of the official languages of other organizations. The Portuguese language is gaining popularity in Africa, Asia, and South America as a second language for study.
Estação da Luz, home of the Museum of the Portuguese Language, in São Paulo, Brazil.
Portuguese and Spanish are the fastest-growing European languages (with the exception of English, being the world lingua franca) , and, according to estimates by UNESCO, the Portuguese language has the highest potential for growth as an international language in southern Africa and South America. The Portuguese-speaking African countries are expected to have a combined population of 83 million by 2050. In total, the Portuguese-speaking countries will have 335 million people by the same year. Since 1991, when Brazil signed into the economic market of Mercosul with other South American nations, such as Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay, there has been an increase in interest in the study of Portuguese in those South American countries. The demographic weight of Brazil in the continent will continue to strengthen the presence of the language in the region. Although in the early 21st century, after Macau was ceded to China in 1999, the use of Portuguese was in decline in Asia, it is becoming a language of opportunity there; mostly because of East Timor's boost in the number of speakers in the last five years but also because of increased Chinese diplomatic and financial ties with Portuguese-speaking countries.
In July 2007, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema announced his government's decision to establish Portuguese as Equatorial Guinea's third official language, to meet the requirements to apply for full membership of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries. This upgrading from its current Associate Observer condition would result in Equatorial Guinea being able to access several professional and academic exchange programs and the facilitation of cross-border circulation of citizens. Its application is currently being assessed by other CPLP members. "Obiang convierte al portugués en tercer idioma oficial para entrar en la Comunidad lusófona de Naciones", Terra. 13-07-2007
In March 1994 the Bosque de Portugal (Portugal's Woods) was founded in the Brazilian city of Curitiba. The park houses the Portuguese Language Memorial, which honors the Portuguese immigrants and the countries that adopted the Portuguese language. Originally there were seven nations represented with pillars, but the independence of East Timor brought yet another pillar for that nation in 2007.
In March 2006, the Museum of the Portuguese Language, an interactive museum about the Portuguese language, was founded in São Paulo, Brazil, the city with the greatest number of Portuguese speakers in the world.
Portuguese is a pluricentric language with two main groups of dialects, those of Brazil and those of the Old World. For historical reasons, the dialects of Africa and Asia are generally closer to those of Portugal than the Brazilian dialects, although in some aspects of their phonetics, especially the pronunciation of unstressed vowels, they resemble Brazilian Portuguese more than European Portuguese. They have not been studied as widely as European and Brazilian Portuguese.
Audio samples of some dialects of Portuguese are available below. From Audio samples of the dialects of Portuguese at the Instituto Camões website. There are some differences between the areas but these are the best approximations possible. For example, the caipira dialect has some differences from the one of Minas Gerais, but in general it is very close. A good example of Brazilian Portuguese may be found in the capital city, BrasÃlia, because of the generalized population from all parts of the country.
Portuguese dialects of Angola
# Benguelense â Benguela province.
# 11px Luandense â Luanda province.
# Sulista â South of Angola.
Dialects of Portuguese in Brazil
# Caipira â States of São Paulo (countryside; the city of São Paulo and the eastern areas of the state have their own accent, called paulistano); southern Minas Gerais, northern Paraná, Goiás and Mato Grosso do Sul.
# Cearense â Ceará.
# Baiano â Bahia.
# 11px Fluminense â Variants spoken in the states of Rio de Janeiro (excluding the city of Rio de Janeiro and its adjacent metropolitan areas, which have their own dialect, called carioca).
# Gaúcho â Rio Grande do Sul. (There are many distinct accents in Rio Grande do Sul, mainly due to the heavy influx of European immigrants of diverse origins, those which have settled several colonies throughout the state.)
# Mineiro â Minas Gerais (not prevalent in the Triângulo Mineiro, southern and southeastern Minas Gerais and also excluding the city of Belo Horizonte, which has its own accent.).
# 11px Nordestino â northeastern states of Brazil (Pernambuco, ParaÃba and Rio Grande do Norte have a particular way of speaking). Note: the speaker of this sound file is from Rio, and he is talking about his experience with Nordestino and Nortista accents.
# Nortista â Amazon Basin states.
# Paulistano â Variants spoken around São Paulo city and the eastern areas of São Paulo state.
# Sertanejo â States of Goiás and Mato Grosso (the city of Cuiabá has a particular way of speaking).
# Sulista â Variants spoken in the areas between the northern regions of Rio Grande do Sul and southern regions of São Paulo state. (The cities of Curitiba, Florianópolis, and Itapetininga have fairly distinct accents as well.)
# Carioca â Variants spoken in Rio de Janeiro City and Niteroi
Dialects of Portuguese in Portugal
# 11px Açoriano (Azorean) â Azores.
# 11px Alentejano â Alentejo
# 11px Algarvio â Algarve (there is a particular dialect in a small part of western Algarve).
# 11px Alto-Minhoto â North of Braga (hinterland).
# 11px Baixo-Beirão; Alto-Alentejano â Central Portugal (hinterland).
# 11px Beirão â Central Portugal.
# 11px Estremenho â Regions of Coimbra and Lisbon (the Lisbon dialect has some peculiar features not shared with the one of Coimbra).
# 11px Madeirense (Madeiran) â Madeira.
# 11px Nortenho â Regions of Braga and Porto.
# 11px Transmontano â Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro.
* Cape Verde â 11px Português cabo-verdiano (Cape Verdean Portuguese)
* Daman and Diu, India â Damaense.
* East Timor â 11px Timorense (East Timorese)
* Goa, India â Goês.
* Guinea-Bissau â 11px Guineense (Guinean Portuguese).
* Macau, China â 11px Macaense (Macanese)
* Mozambique â 11px Moçambicano (Mozambican)
* São Tomé and PrÃncipe â 11px Santomense
* Uruguay â Dialectos Portugueses del Uruguay (DPU).
Differences between dialects are mostly of accent and vocabulary, but between the Brazilian dialects and other dialects, especially in their most colloquial forms, there can also be some grammatical differences. The Portuguese-based creoles spoken in various parts of Africa, Asia, and the Americas are independent languages which should not be confused with Portuguese itself.
Baroque Library of the Coimbra University, Portugal.
Arriving in the Iberian Peninsula in 216 BC, the Romans brought with them the Latin language, from which all Romance languages descend. The language was spread by arriving Roman soldiers, settlers, and merchants, who built Roman cities mostly near the settlements of previous civilizations.
Between 409 and 711 AD, as the Roman Empire collapsed in Western Europe, the Iberian Peninsula was conquered by Germanic peoples (Migration Period). The occupiers, mainly Suebi and Visigoths, quickly adopted late Roman culture and the Vulgar Latin dialects of the peninsula. After the Moorish invasion of 711, Arabic became the administrative language in the conquered regions, but most of the population continued to speak a form of Romance commonly known as Mozarabic. The influence exerted by Arabic on the Romance dialects spoken in the Christian kingdoms of the north was small, affecting mainly their lexicon.
The earliest surviving records of a distinctively Portuguese language are administrative documents of the 9th century, still interspersed with many Latin phrases. Today this phase is known as Proto-Portuguese (between the 9th and the 12th centuries). In the first period of Old Portuguese â Galician-Portuguese Period (from the 12th to the 14th century) â the language gradually came into general use. For some time, it was the language of preference for lyric poetry in Christian Hispania, much as Occitan was the language of the poetry of the troubadours. Portugal became an independent kingdom from the Kingdom of Leon in 1139, under king Afonso I of Portugal. In 1290, king Denis of Portugal created the first Portuguese university in Lisbon (the Estudos Gerais, later moved to Coimbra) and decreed that Portuguese, then simply called the "common language" should be known as the Portuguese language and used officially.
In the second period of Old Portuguese, from the 14th to the 16th centuries, with the Portuguese discoveries, the language was taken to many regions of Asia, Africa and the Americas (nowadays, the great majority of Portuguese speakers live in Brazil, in South America). By the 16th century, it had become a lingua franca in Asia and Africa, used not only for colonial administration and trade but also for communication between local officials and Europeans of all nationalities. Its spread was helped by mixed marriages between Portuguese and local people, and by its association with Roman Catholic missionary efforts, which led to the formation of a creole language called Kristang in many parts of Asia (from the word cristão, "Christian"). The language continued to be popular in parts of Asia until the 19th century. Some Portuguese-speaking Christian communities in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Indonesia preserved their language even after they were isolated from Portugal.
The end of the Old Portuguese period was marked by the publication of the Cancioneiro Geral by Garcia de Resende, in 1516. The early times of Modern Portuguese, which spans a period from the 16th century to the present day, were characterized by an increase in the number of learned words borrowed from Classical Latin and Classical Greek since the Renaissance, which greatly enriched the lexicon.
A distinctive feature of Portuguese is that it preserved the stressed vowels of Vulgar Latin, which became diphthongs in other Romance languages; cf. Fr. pierre, Sp. piedra, It. pietra, Ro. piatrÄ, Port. pedra ("stone"), from Lat. petram; or Sp. fuego, It. fuoco, Fr. feu, Ro. foc, Port. fogo, from Lat. focus ("fire"). Another characteristic of early Portuguese was the loss of intervocalic l and n, sometimes followed by the merger of the two surrounding vowels, or by the insertion of an epenthetic vowel between them: cf. Lat. salire ("to leave"), tenere ("to have"), catenam ("chain"), Sp. salir, tener, cadena, Port. sair, ter, cadeia.
When the elided consonant was n, it often nasalized the preceding vowel: cf. Lat. manum ("hand"), ranam ("frog"), bonum ("good"), Port. mão, rãa, bõo (now mão, rã, bom). This process was the source of most of the nasal diphthongs which are typical of Portuguese. In particular, the Latin endings -anem, -anum and -onem became -ão in most cases, cf. Lat. canem ("dog"), germanum ("brother"), rationem ("reason") with Modern Port. cão, irmão, razão, and their plurals -anes, -anos, -ones normally became -ães, -ãos, -ões, cf. cães, irmãos, razões.
Library of the Mafra National Palace, Portugal.
Most of the lexicon of Portuguese is derived from Latin. Nevertheless, because of the Moorish occupation of the Iberian Peninsula during the Middle Ages, and the participation of Portugal in the Age of Discovery, it has adopted loanwords from all over the world.
Very few Portuguese words can be traced to the pre-Roman inhabitants of Portugal, which included the Gallaeci, Lusitanians, Celtici and Cynetes. The Phoenicians and Carthaginians, briefly present, also left some scarce traces. Some notable examples are abóbora "pumpkin" and bezerro "year-old calf", from the nearby Celtiberian language (probably through the Celtici); cerveja "beer", from Celtic; and cachorro "dog", from Basque.
In the 5th century, the Iberian Peninsula (the Roman Hispania) was conquered by the Germanic Suebi and Visigoths. As they adopted the Roman civilization and language, however, these people contributed only a few words to the lexicon, mostly related to warfare â such as espora "spur", estaca "stake", and guerra "war", from Gothic *spaúra, *stakka, and *wirro, respectively. The influence also exists in toponymic and patronymic surnames borne by Visigoth sovereigns and their descendants, and it dwells on placenames such has Ermesinde, Esposende and Resende where sinde and sende are derived from the Germanic "sinths" (military expedition) and in the case of Resende, the prefix re comes from Germanic "reths" (council).
Between the 9th and 13th centuries, Portuguese acquired about 800 words from Arabic by influence of Moorish Iberia. They are often recognizable by the initial Arabic article a(l)-, and include many common words such as aldeia "village" from اÙضÙعة aldaya, alface "lettuce" from اÙخس alkhass, armazém "warehouse" from اÙÙ
خز٠almahazan, and azeite "olive oil" from اÙزÙت azzait. From Arabic came also the grammatically peculiar word oxalá إ٠شاء اÙÙÙ "hopefully". The Mozambican currency name metical was derived from the word Ù
تÙا٠mitqÄl, a unit of weight. The word Mozambique itself is from the Arabic name of sultan Muça Alebique (Musa Alibiki).
Starting in the 15th century, the Portuguese maritime explorations led to the introduction of many loanwords from Asian languages. For instance, catana "cutlass" from Japanese katana and chá "tea" from Chinese 'chá'.
From South America came batata "potato", from Taino; ananás and abacaxi, from Tupi-Guarani naná and Tupi ibá cati, respectively (two species of pineapple), and tucano "toucan" from Guarani tucan. See List of Brazil state name etymologies, for some more examples.
From the 16th to the 19th centuries, because of the role of Portugal as intermediary in the Atlantic slave trade, and the establishment of large Portuguese colonies in Angola, Mozambique, and Brazil, Portuguese got several words of African and Amerind origin, especially names for most of the animals and plants found in those territories. While those terms are mostly used in the former colonies, many became current in European Portuguese as well. From Kimbundu, for example, came kifumate â cafuné "head caress", kusula â caçula "youngest child", marimbondo "tropical wasp", and kubungula â bungular "to dance like a wizard".
Finally, it has received a steady influx of loanwords from other European languages. For example, melena "hair lock", fiambre "wet-cured ham" (in contrast with presunto "dry-cured ham" from Latin prae-exsuctus "dehydrated"), and castelhano "Castilian", from Spanish; colchete/crochê "bracket"/"crochet", paletó "jacket", batom "lipstick", and filé/filete "steak"/"slice" respectively, from French crochet, paletot, bâton, filet; macarrão "pasta", piloto "pilot", carroça "carriage", and barraca "barrack", from Italian maccherone, pilota, carrozza, baracca; and bife "steak", futebol, revólver, estoque, folclore, time from English beef,
football, revolver, stock, folklore, and team.
Portuguese belongs to the West Iberian branch of the Romance languages, and it has special ties with the following members of this group:
* Galician and Fala, its closest relatives. See below.
* Spanish, the major language closest to Portuguese. (See also Differences between Spanish and Portuguese.)
* Mirandese and Leonese, two other West Iberian languages spoken in Portugal.
* Judeo-Portuguese and Judeo-Spanish, languages spoken by Sephardic Jews, and which remained close to Portuguese and Spanish.
Despite the obvious lexical and grammatical similarities between Portuguese and other Romance languages, it is not mutually intelligible with them. Apart from Galician, Portuguese speakers will usually need some formal study of basic grammar and vocabulary, before attaining a reasonable level of comprehension of those languages, and vice versa. Native speakers of Portuguese do tend to understand standard Spanish which is spoken clearly, but the reverse is generally not true unless formal education is involved.
The closest language to Portuguese is Galician, spoken in the autonomous community of Galicia (northwestern Spain). The two were at one time a single language, known today as Galician-Portuguese, but since the political separation of Portugal from Galicia they have diverged somewhat, especially in pronunciation and vocabulary. Nevertheless, the core vocabulary and grammar of Galician are still noticeably closer to Portuguese than to those of Spanish. In particular, like Portuguese, it uses the future subjunctive, the personal infinitive, and the synthetic pluperfect (see the section on the grammar of Portuguese, below). Mutual intelligibility (estimated at 85% by R. A. Hall, Jr., 1989) Ethnologue is good between Galicians and northern Portuguese, but poorer between Galicians and speakers from central Portugal.
The Fala language is another descendant of Galician-Portuguese, spoken by a small number of people in the Spanish towns of Valverde del Fresno, Eljas and San MartÃn de Trevejo (autonomous community of Extremadura, near the border with Portugal).
Portuguese has provided loanwords to many languages, such as Indonesian, Manado Malay, Sri Lankan Tamil and Sinhalese (see Sri Lanka Indo-Portuguese), Malay, Bengali, English, Hindi, Konkani, Marathi, Tetum, Xitsonga, Papiamentu, Japanese, Lanc-Patuá (spoken in northern Brazil) and Sranan Tongo (spoken in Suriname). It left a strong influence on the lÃngua brasÃlica, a Tupi-Guarani language which was the most widely spoken in Brazil until the 18th century, and on the language spoken around Sikka in Flores Island, Indonesia. In nearby Larantuka, Portuguese is used for prayers in Holy Week rituals.
The Japanese-Portuguese dictionary Nippo Jisho (1603) was the first dictionary of Japanese in a European language, a product of Jesuit missionary activity in Japan. Building on the work of earlier Portuguese missionaries, the Dictionarium Anamiticum, Lusitanum et Latinum (Annamite-Portuguese-Latin dictionary) of Alexandre de Rhodes (1651) introduced the modern orthography of Vietnamese, which is based on the orthography of 17th-century Portuguese. The Romanization of Chinese was also influenced by the Portuguese language (among others), particularly regarding Chinese surnames; one example is Mei. During 1583-88 Italian Jesuits Michele Ruggieri and Matteo Ricci created a Portuguese-Chinese dictionary - the first ever European-Chinese dictionary. Yves Camus, "Jesuits' Journeys in Chinese Studies" "Dicionário Português-Chinês : Pu Han ci dian : Portuguese-Chinese dictionary", by Michele Ruggieri, Matteo Ricci; edited by John W. Witek. Published 2001, Biblioteca Nacional. ISBN 9725652983. Partial preview available on Google Books
See also List of English words of Portuguese origin, Loan words in Indonesian, Japanese words of Portuguese origin, Borrowed words in Malay, Sinhala words of Portuguese origin, Loan words from Portuguese in Sri Lankan Tamil.
Beginning in the 16th century, the extensive contacts between Portuguese travelers and settlers, African slaves, and local populations led to the appearance of many pidgins with varying amounts of Portuguese influence. As each of these pidgins became the mother tongue of succeeding generations, they evolved into fully fledged creole languages, which remained in use in many parts of Asia and Africa until the 18th century. Some Portuguese-based or Portuguese-influenced creoles are still spoken today, by over 3 million people worldwide, especially people of partial Portuguese ancestry.
There is a growing number of people in the Portuguese-speaking media and the internet who are presenting the case to the CPLP and other organizations to run a debate in the Lusophone community with the purpose of bringing forward a petition to make Portuguese an official language of the United Nations.
In October 2005, during the international Convention of the Elos Club International that took place in Tavira, Portugal, ONU: Petição para tornar português lÃngua oficial a petition was written and unanimously approved whose text can be found on the internet with the title Petição Para Tornar Oficial o Idioma Português na ONU. Romulo Alexandre Soares, president of the Brazil-Portugal Chamber highlights that the positioning of Brazil in the international arena as one of the emergent powers of the 21st century, the size of its population, and the presence of the language around the world provides legitimacy and justifies a petition to the UN to make the Portuguese language an official language of the UN. Português pode ser lÃngua oficial na ONU
Several factors detract from this campaign. The current official languages of the UN are either 1) official/dominant in many countries (English, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, and French) or 2) have several hundreds of millions of speakers (Chinese). English, Spanish, Russian and Arabic fulfill both criteria. Portuguese is a global language in that it is the official tongue of several sovereign countries on four continents. It also has over 200 million speakers. However, it exhibits some noticeable differences when compared to the current 6 UN official languages. For example, English, French, Arabic and Spanish are each official languages of multiple states and of over half of the world's countries. In contrast, four out of every five speakers of the Portuguese-speaking world live in just one country: Brazil. In addition to Brazil, Portuguese is the official language in only 7 other sovereign states; however, English is official in 53 states, French in 29 states, Arabic in 25 states, and Spanish in 20 states.
More significantly, in each part of the world with a Portuguese-speaking country, this language is overshadowed by other powerful languages that are already official languages of the UN. For example, in the Americas, the 190 million Portuguese-speaking Brazilians are overshadowed by the most spoken languages in the Western Hemisphere: Spanish (~360 million speakers) and English (~340 million speakers). Portuguese is overshadowed to an even greater extent in Europe, the continent in which four of the six UN languages originated (English, French, Spanish, and Russian). In the European context, Portuguese is not even among the ten most spoken languages on the continent, with a number of speakers comparable to those of Czech and Bulgarian. In Africa, Portuguese is eclipsed as a continental lingua franca by English and French in countries that surround Cape Verde, São Tomé and PrÃncipe, Guinea-Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique. Finally in Asia, a continent with several languages that have hundreds of millions of speakers, the only sovereign state with Portuguese as an official language is East Timor, which has only a million people. While Brazilian migration has brought 300,000 fluent Portuguese speakers to Japan, Portuguese does not enjoy any official status whatsoever in that country. Therefore, while Portuguese will gain increasing importance as Brazil continues its development as a major economy, it will likely face the same hurdles that prevented Japanese and German (both languages of major global economies with millions of speakers) from becoming both international languages and official ones of the UN.
There is a maximum of 9 oral vowels and 19 consonants, though some varieties of the language have fewer phonemes (Brazilian Portuguese has 8 oral vowels). There are also five nasal vowels, which some linguists regard as allophones of the oral vowels, ten oral diphthongs, and five nasal diphthongs. In total, Brazilian Portuguese has 13 vowel phonemes. /ref> Handbook of the International Phonetic Association'' pg. 126-130; the reference applies to the entire section
Chart of monophthongs of the Portuguese of Lisbon
To the seven vowels of Vulgar Latin, European Portuguese has added two near central vowels, one of which tends to be elided in rapid speech, like the e caduc of French (represented as either , or , or ). The high vowels and the low vowels are four distinct phonemes, and they alternate in various forms of apophony. Like Catalan, Portuguese uses vowel quality to contrast stressed syllables with unstressed syllables: isolated vowels tend to be raised, and in some cases centralized, when unstressed. Nasal diphthongs occur mostly at the ends of words.
The consonant inventory of Portuguese is fairly conservative. The medieval affricates , , , merged with the fricatives , , , , respectively, but not with each other, and there were no other significant changes to the consonant phonemes since then. However, some notable dialectal variants and allophones have appeared, among which:
* In many regions of Brazil, and have the affricate allophones and , respectively, before and . (Quebec French has a similar phenomenon, with alveolar affricates instead of postalveolars. Japanese is another example).
* At the end of a syllable, the phoneme has the allophone in Brazilian Portuguese (L-vocalization).
* In many parts of Brazil and Angola, intervocalic is pronounced as a nasalized palatal approximant which nasalizes the preceding vowel, so that, for instance, is pronounced .
* In most of Brazil, the alveolar sibilants and occur in complementary distribution at the ends of syllables, depending on whether the consonant that follows is voiceless or voiced, as in English. But in most of Portugal and parts of Brazil, sibilants are postalveolar at the ends of syllables, before voiceless consonants, and before voiced consonants (in Judeo-Spanish, is often replaced with at the ends of syllables, too).
* There is considerable dialectal variation in the value of the rhotic phoneme . See Guttural R in Portuguese, for details.
;Excerpt from the Portuguese national epic Os LusÃadas, by author LuÃs de Camões (I, 33)
A notable aspect of the grammar of Portuguese is the verb. Morphologically, more verbal inflections from classical Latin have been preserved by Portuguese than by any other major Romance language. See Romance copula, for a detailed comparison. It has also some innovations not found in other Romance languages (except Galician and the Fala):
* The present perfect tense has an iterative sense unique to Galician-Portuguese language group. It denotes an action or a series of actions which began in the past and are expected to keep repeating in the future. For instance, the sentence Tenho tentado falar com ela would be translated to "I have been trying to talk to her", not "I have tried to talk to her". On the other hand, the correct translation of the question "Have you heard the latest news?" is not *Tem ouvido a última notÃcia?, but Ouviu a última notÃcia?, since no repetition is implied. Squartini, Mario (1998) Verbal Periphrases in Romance â Aspect, Actionality, and Grammaticalization ISBN 3-11-016160-5
* The future subjunctive tense, which was developed by medieval West Iberian Romance, but has now fallen into disuse in Spanish and Galician, is still used in vernacular Portuguese. It appears in dependent clauses that denote a condition which must be fulfilled in the future, so that the independent clause will occur. English normally employs the present tense under the same circumstances:
:Se eu for eleito presidente, mudarei a lei.
:If I am elected president, I will change the law.
:Quando fores mais velho, vais entender.
:When you are older, you will understand.
* The personal infinitive: infinitives can inflect according to their subject in person and number, often showing who is expected to perform a certain action; cf. Ã melhor voltares "It is better [for you] to go back," Ã melhor voltarmos "It is better [for us] to go back." Perhaps for this reason, infinitive clauses replace subjunctive clauses more often in Portuguese than in other Romance languages.
Portuguese is written with 23 or 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, making use of five diacritics to denote stress, vowel height, contraction, nasalization, and other sound changes (acute accent, grave accent, circumflex accent, tilde, and cedilla). Accented characters and digraphs are not counted as separate letters for collation purposes.
* Portuguese literature
* Portuguese poetry
* List of Portuguese language poets
* Brazilian literature
* List of Brazilian poets
* Lusophone
* Geographic distribution of Portuguese
* List of countries where Portuguese is an official language
* Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP)
* Instituto Camões
* International Portuguese Language Institute
* Museum of the Portuguese Language
* Portuguese-based creole languages
* Portuñol
* Portuguese in the United States
* List of English words of Portuguese origin
* Spelling reforms of Portuguese
* História da Lingua Portuguesa Instituto Camões
* A LÃngua Portuguesa in Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil (...)
* Poesia e Prosa Medievais, by Maria Ema Tarracha Ferreira, Ulisseia 1998, 3rd ed., ISBN 978-972-568-124-4.
* Bases Temáticas â LÃngua Portuguesa in Instituto Camões
* Portuguese Literature in The Catholic Encyclopedia
* International Phonetic Association (1999) Handbook of the International Phonetic Association ISBN 0-521-63751-1
* Mateus, Maria Helena & d'Andrade, Ernesto (2000) The Phonology of Portuguese ISBN 0-19-823581-X (Excerpt available at Google Books)
* Bergström, Magnus & Reis, Neves Prontuário Ortográfico Editorial NotÃcias, 2004.
* A pronúncia do português europeu - European Portuguese Pronunciation
* Dialects of Portuguese at the Instituto Camões
* Audio samples of the dialects of Portugal
* Audio samples of the dialects from outside Europe
* Antônio Houaiss (2000), Dicionário Houaiss da LÃngua Portuguesa (228,500 entries).
* Aurélio Buarque de Holanda Ferreira, Novo Dicionário da LÃngua Portuguesa (1809pp)
* English-Portuguese-Chinese Dictionary (Freeware, for Windows/Linux/Mac)
* Lindley Cintra, LuÃs F. Nova Proposta de Classificação dos Dialectos Galego-Portugueses (PDF) Boletim de Filologia, Lisboa, Centro de Estudos Filológicos, 1971.
*Swadesh list in English and Portuguese
* English Portuguese Translation Dictionary for English Portuguese translations
* Learn Portuguese BBC
* Portuguese Language Notes BBC
* AULP - Associação das Universidades de LÃngua Portuguesa Portuguese Language Universities Association.
* Portuguese in East Timor an interview with Dr. Geoffrey Hull.
* Portuguese Dictionary with gender and type of words.
* ABL - Academia Brasileira de letras (em português) - (Brazilian Academy of Letters) (Portuguese)
* Brazilian Portuguese Free resources for Portuguese learners.
* EasyPortuguese Free Portuguese learning site with audio.
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Portuguese_language | Where are there small Portuguese-speaking communities? | There are small Portuguese-speaking communities in Macau and East Timor. | data/set5/a1 | Portuguese_language
Portuguese ( or lÃngua portuguesa) is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia and northern Portugal. It is derived from the Latin spoken by the romanized pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula (namely the Gallaeci, the Lusitanians, the Celtici and the Conii) around 2000 years ago. It spread worldwide in the 15th and 16th centuries as Portugal established a colonial and commercial empire (1415â1999) which spanned from Brazil in the Americas to Goa and other parts of India, Macau in China and Timor (north of Australia). It was used as the exclusive lingua franca on the island of Sri Lanka for almost 350 years. During that time, many creole languages based on Portuguese also appeared around the world, especially in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean.
Today it is one of the world's major languages, ranked seventh according to number of native speakers (between 205 and 230 million). It is the language of about half of South America's population, even though Brazil is the only Portuguese-speaking nation in the Americas. It is also a major lingua franca in Portugal's former colonial possessions in Africa. It is an official language in nine countries (see the table on the right), also being co-official with Cantonese Chinese in Macau and Tetum in East Timor. There are sizeable communities of Portuguese speakers in various regions of North America, notably in the United States (New Jersey, New England, California and south Florida) and in Ontario, Canada.
In various aspects, the system of sounds in Portuguese is more similar to the phonologies of Catalan or French than, say, those of Spanish or Italian. Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes once called Portuguese "the sweet language", /ref> Lope de Vega referred to it as "suave" 'Encyclopedia of Literature' Joseph T. Shipley; Philosophical Library, 1946. 1188 pgs. while Brazilian writer Olavo Bilac poetically described it as a última flor do Lácio, inculta e bela: "the last flower of Latium, wild and beautiful". Portuguese is also termed "the language of Camões", after one of Portugal's best known literary figures, LuÃs Vaz de Camões.
Countries and regions where Portuguese has official status.
Members of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries.
Today, Portuguese is the official language of Angola, Brazil (190.6 million), IBGE Official website Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Portugal (10.6 million), INE Official website São Tomé and PrÃncipe and Mozambique. CPLP Official website It is also one of the official languages of the special administrative region of Macau (with Chinese) and East Timor, (with Tetum). It is the language of most of the population in Portugal (100%) , Brazil (100%) , São Tomé and PrÃncipe (99.8%) and Angola (80%), and is the most widely spoken language in Mozambique (40%), though only 6.5% are native speakers. No data are available for Cape Verde, but almost all the population is bilingual, and the monolingual population speaks Cape Verdean Creole. See the main article Geographic distribution of Portuguese, for references.
Small Portuguese-speaking communities subsist in former overseas colonies of Portugal such as Macau, where it is spoken by 7% of the population, and East Timor (13.6%).
Uruguay gave Portuguese an equal status to Spanish in its educational system at the north border with Brazil. In the rest of the country, it is taught as an obligatory subject beginning in the 6th grade. Uruguay recently adopted Portuguese language in its education system as an obligatory subject /ref>
It is also spoken by substantial immigrant communities, though not official, in Andorra, Australia, The Portuguese-Speaking Community in Australia France, Luxembourg, Jersey (with a statistically significant Portuguese-speaking community of approximately 10,000 people), Paraguay, Namibia, South Africa, Switzerland, Venezuela, Japan JAPÃO: IMIGRANTES BRASILEIROS POPULARIZAM LÃNGUA PORTUGUESA and the U.S. states of California, Connecticut, Where America's Other Languages Are Spoken Florida, Widely spoken but 'minor'? Portuguese seeks respect Massachusetts, New Jersey, Hispanic Reading Room of the U.S. Library of Congress website, Twentieth-Century Arrivals from Portugal Settle in Newark, New Jersey, New York Brazucas (Brazilians living in New York) and Rhode Island. Hispanic Reading Room of the U.S. Library of Congress website, Whaling, Fishing, and Industrial Employment in Southeastern New England
In some parts of India, such as Goa Portuguese Language in Goa and Daman and Diu, The Portuguese Experience: The Case of Goa, Daman and Diu Portuguese is still spoken. There are also significant populations of Portuguese speakers in Canada (mainly concentrated in and around Toronto), Multicultural Canada Bermuda World InfoZone: Bermuda and the Netherlands Antilles.
Portuguese is an official language of several international organizations. The Community of Portuguese Language Countries (with the Portuguese acronym CPLP) consists of the eight independent countries that have Portuguese as an official language. It is also an official language of the European Union, accounting for 3% of its population, EUROPA website Languages in the EU Mercosul, the Organization of American States, the Organization of Ibero-American States, the Union of South American Nations, and the African Union (one of the working languages) and one of the official languages of other organizations. The Portuguese language is gaining popularity in Africa, Asia, and South America as a second language for study.
Estação da Luz, home of the Museum of the Portuguese Language, in São Paulo, Brazil.
Portuguese and Spanish are the fastest-growing European languages (with the exception of English, being the world lingua franca) , and, according to estimates by UNESCO, the Portuguese language has the highest potential for growth as an international language in southern Africa and South America. The Portuguese-speaking African countries are expected to have a combined population of 83 million by 2050. In total, the Portuguese-speaking countries will have 335 million people by the same year. Since 1991, when Brazil signed into the economic market of Mercosul with other South American nations, such as Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay, there has been an increase in interest in the study of Portuguese in those South American countries. The demographic weight of Brazil in the continent will continue to strengthen the presence of the language in the region. Although in the early 21st century, after Macau was ceded to China in 1999, the use of Portuguese was in decline in Asia, it is becoming a language of opportunity there; mostly because of East Timor's boost in the number of speakers in the last five years but also because of increased Chinese diplomatic and financial ties with Portuguese-speaking countries.
In July 2007, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema announced his government's decision to establish Portuguese as Equatorial Guinea's third official language, to meet the requirements to apply for full membership of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries. This upgrading from its current Associate Observer condition would result in Equatorial Guinea being able to access several professional and academic exchange programs and the facilitation of cross-border circulation of citizens. Its application is currently being assessed by other CPLP members. "Obiang convierte al portugués en tercer idioma oficial para entrar en la Comunidad lusófona de Naciones", Terra. 13-07-2007
In March 1994 the Bosque de Portugal (Portugal's Woods) was founded in the Brazilian city of Curitiba. The park houses the Portuguese Language Memorial, which honors the Portuguese immigrants and the countries that adopted the Portuguese language. Originally there were seven nations represented with pillars, but the independence of East Timor brought yet another pillar for that nation in 2007.
In March 2006, the Museum of the Portuguese Language, an interactive museum about the Portuguese language, was founded in São Paulo, Brazil, the city with the greatest number of Portuguese speakers in the world.
Portuguese is a pluricentric language with two main groups of dialects, those of Brazil and those of the Old World. For historical reasons, the dialects of Africa and Asia are generally closer to those of Portugal than the Brazilian dialects, although in some aspects of their phonetics, especially the pronunciation of unstressed vowels, they resemble Brazilian Portuguese more than European Portuguese. They have not been studied as widely as European and Brazilian Portuguese.
Audio samples of some dialects of Portuguese are available below. From Audio samples of the dialects of Portuguese at the Instituto Camões website. There are some differences between the areas but these are the best approximations possible. For example, the caipira dialect has some differences from the one of Minas Gerais, but in general it is very close. A good example of Brazilian Portuguese may be found in the capital city, BrasÃlia, because of the generalized population from all parts of the country.
Portuguese dialects of Angola
# Benguelense â Benguela province.
# 11px Luandense â Luanda province.
# Sulista â South of Angola.
Dialects of Portuguese in Brazil
# Caipira â States of São Paulo (countryside; the city of São Paulo and the eastern areas of the state have their own accent, called paulistano); southern Minas Gerais, northern Paraná, Goiás and Mato Grosso do Sul.
# Cearense â Ceará.
# Baiano â Bahia.
# 11px Fluminense â Variants spoken in the states of Rio de Janeiro (excluding the city of Rio de Janeiro and its adjacent metropolitan areas, which have their own dialect, called carioca).
# Gaúcho â Rio Grande do Sul. (There are many distinct accents in Rio Grande do Sul, mainly due to the heavy influx of European immigrants of diverse origins, those which have settled several colonies throughout the state.)
# Mineiro â Minas Gerais (not prevalent in the Triângulo Mineiro, southern and southeastern Minas Gerais and also excluding the city of Belo Horizonte, which has its own accent.).
# 11px Nordestino â northeastern states of Brazil (Pernambuco, ParaÃba and Rio Grande do Norte have a particular way of speaking). Note: the speaker of this sound file is from Rio, and he is talking about his experience with Nordestino and Nortista accents.
# Nortista â Amazon Basin states.
# Paulistano â Variants spoken around São Paulo city and the eastern areas of São Paulo state.
# Sertanejo â States of Goiás and Mato Grosso (the city of Cuiabá has a particular way of speaking).
# Sulista â Variants spoken in the areas between the northern regions of Rio Grande do Sul and southern regions of São Paulo state. (The cities of Curitiba, Florianópolis, and Itapetininga have fairly distinct accents as well.)
# Carioca â Variants spoken in Rio de Janeiro City and Niteroi
Dialects of Portuguese in Portugal
# 11px Açoriano (Azorean) â Azores.
# 11px Alentejano â Alentejo
# 11px Algarvio â Algarve (there is a particular dialect in a small part of western Algarve).
# 11px Alto-Minhoto â North of Braga (hinterland).
# 11px Baixo-Beirão; Alto-Alentejano â Central Portugal (hinterland).
# 11px Beirão â Central Portugal.
# 11px Estremenho â Regions of Coimbra and Lisbon (the Lisbon dialect has some peculiar features not shared with the one of Coimbra).
# 11px Madeirense (Madeiran) â Madeira.
# 11px Nortenho â Regions of Braga and Porto.
# 11px Transmontano â Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro.
* Cape Verde â 11px Português cabo-verdiano (Cape Verdean Portuguese)
* Daman and Diu, India â Damaense.
* East Timor â 11px Timorense (East Timorese)
* Goa, India â Goês.
* Guinea-Bissau â 11px Guineense (Guinean Portuguese).
* Macau, China â 11px Macaense (Macanese)
* Mozambique â 11px Moçambicano (Mozambican)
* São Tomé and PrÃncipe â 11px Santomense
* Uruguay â Dialectos Portugueses del Uruguay (DPU).
Differences between dialects are mostly of accent and vocabulary, but between the Brazilian dialects and other dialects, especially in their most colloquial forms, there can also be some grammatical differences. The Portuguese-based creoles spoken in various parts of Africa, Asia, and the Americas are independent languages which should not be confused with Portuguese itself.
Baroque Library of the Coimbra University, Portugal.
Arriving in the Iberian Peninsula in 216 BC, the Romans brought with them the Latin language, from which all Romance languages descend. The language was spread by arriving Roman soldiers, settlers, and merchants, who built Roman cities mostly near the settlements of previous civilizations.
Between 409 and 711 AD, as the Roman Empire collapsed in Western Europe, the Iberian Peninsula was conquered by Germanic peoples (Migration Period). The occupiers, mainly Suebi and Visigoths, quickly adopted late Roman culture and the Vulgar Latin dialects of the peninsula. After the Moorish invasion of 711, Arabic became the administrative language in the conquered regions, but most of the population continued to speak a form of Romance commonly known as Mozarabic. The influence exerted by Arabic on the Romance dialects spoken in the Christian kingdoms of the north was small, affecting mainly their lexicon.
The earliest surviving records of a distinctively Portuguese language are administrative documents of the 9th century, still interspersed with many Latin phrases. Today this phase is known as Proto-Portuguese (between the 9th and the 12th centuries). In the first period of Old Portuguese â Galician-Portuguese Period (from the 12th to the 14th century) â the language gradually came into general use. For some time, it was the language of preference for lyric poetry in Christian Hispania, much as Occitan was the language of the poetry of the troubadours. Portugal became an independent kingdom from the Kingdom of Leon in 1139, under king Afonso I of Portugal. In 1290, king Denis of Portugal created the first Portuguese university in Lisbon (the Estudos Gerais, later moved to Coimbra) and decreed that Portuguese, then simply called the "common language" should be known as the Portuguese language and used officially.
In the second period of Old Portuguese, from the 14th to the 16th centuries, with the Portuguese discoveries, the language was taken to many regions of Asia, Africa and the Americas (nowadays, the great majority of Portuguese speakers live in Brazil, in South America). By the 16th century, it had become a lingua franca in Asia and Africa, used not only for colonial administration and trade but also for communication between local officials and Europeans of all nationalities. Its spread was helped by mixed marriages between Portuguese and local people, and by its association with Roman Catholic missionary efforts, which led to the formation of a creole language called Kristang in many parts of Asia (from the word cristão, "Christian"). The language continued to be popular in parts of Asia until the 19th century. Some Portuguese-speaking Christian communities in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Indonesia preserved their language even after they were isolated from Portugal.
The end of the Old Portuguese period was marked by the publication of the Cancioneiro Geral by Garcia de Resende, in 1516. The early times of Modern Portuguese, which spans a period from the 16th century to the present day, were characterized by an increase in the number of learned words borrowed from Classical Latin and Classical Greek since the Renaissance, which greatly enriched the lexicon.
A distinctive feature of Portuguese is that it preserved the stressed vowels of Vulgar Latin, which became diphthongs in other Romance languages; cf. Fr. pierre, Sp. piedra, It. pietra, Ro. piatrÄ, Port. pedra ("stone"), from Lat. petram; or Sp. fuego, It. fuoco, Fr. feu, Ro. foc, Port. fogo, from Lat. focus ("fire"). Another characteristic of early Portuguese was the loss of intervocalic l and n, sometimes followed by the merger of the two surrounding vowels, or by the insertion of an epenthetic vowel between them: cf. Lat. salire ("to leave"), tenere ("to have"), catenam ("chain"), Sp. salir, tener, cadena, Port. sair, ter, cadeia.
When the elided consonant was n, it often nasalized the preceding vowel: cf. Lat. manum ("hand"), ranam ("frog"), bonum ("good"), Port. mão, rãa, bõo (now mão, rã, bom). This process was the source of most of the nasal diphthongs which are typical of Portuguese. In particular, the Latin endings -anem, -anum and -onem became -ão in most cases, cf. Lat. canem ("dog"), germanum ("brother"), rationem ("reason") with Modern Port. cão, irmão, razão, and their plurals -anes, -anos, -ones normally became -ães, -ãos, -ões, cf. cães, irmãos, razões.
Library of the Mafra National Palace, Portugal.
Most of the lexicon of Portuguese is derived from Latin. Nevertheless, because of the Moorish occupation of the Iberian Peninsula during the Middle Ages, and the participation of Portugal in the Age of Discovery, it has adopted loanwords from all over the world.
Very few Portuguese words can be traced to the pre-Roman inhabitants of Portugal, which included the Gallaeci, Lusitanians, Celtici and Cynetes. The Phoenicians and Carthaginians, briefly present, also left some scarce traces. Some notable examples are abóbora "pumpkin" and bezerro "year-old calf", from the nearby Celtiberian language (probably through the Celtici); cerveja "beer", from Celtic; and cachorro "dog", from Basque.
In the 5th century, the Iberian Peninsula (the Roman Hispania) was conquered by the Germanic Suebi and Visigoths. As they adopted the Roman civilization and language, however, these people contributed only a few words to the lexicon, mostly related to warfare â such as espora "spur", estaca "stake", and guerra "war", from Gothic *spaúra, *stakka, and *wirro, respectively. The influence also exists in toponymic and patronymic surnames borne by Visigoth sovereigns and their descendants, and it dwells on placenames such has Ermesinde, Esposende and Resende where sinde and sende are derived from the Germanic "sinths" (military expedition) and in the case of Resende, the prefix re comes from Germanic "reths" (council).
Between the 9th and 13th centuries, Portuguese acquired about 800 words from Arabic by influence of Moorish Iberia. They are often recognizable by the initial Arabic article a(l)-, and include many common words such as aldeia "village" from اÙضÙعة aldaya, alface "lettuce" from اÙخس alkhass, armazém "warehouse" from اÙÙ
خز٠almahazan, and azeite "olive oil" from اÙزÙت azzait. From Arabic came also the grammatically peculiar word oxalá إ٠شاء اÙÙÙ "hopefully". The Mozambican currency name metical was derived from the word Ù
تÙا٠mitqÄl, a unit of weight. The word Mozambique itself is from the Arabic name of sultan Muça Alebique (Musa Alibiki).
Starting in the 15th century, the Portuguese maritime explorations led to the introduction of many loanwords from Asian languages. For instance, catana "cutlass" from Japanese katana and chá "tea" from Chinese 'chá'.
From South America came batata "potato", from Taino; ananás and abacaxi, from Tupi-Guarani naná and Tupi ibá cati, respectively (two species of pineapple), and tucano "toucan" from Guarani tucan. See List of Brazil state name etymologies, for some more examples.
From the 16th to the 19th centuries, because of the role of Portugal as intermediary in the Atlantic slave trade, and the establishment of large Portuguese colonies in Angola, Mozambique, and Brazil, Portuguese got several words of African and Amerind origin, especially names for most of the animals and plants found in those territories. While those terms are mostly used in the former colonies, many became current in European Portuguese as well. From Kimbundu, for example, came kifumate â cafuné "head caress", kusula â caçula "youngest child", marimbondo "tropical wasp", and kubungula â bungular "to dance like a wizard".
Finally, it has received a steady influx of loanwords from other European languages. For example, melena "hair lock", fiambre "wet-cured ham" (in contrast with presunto "dry-cured ham" from Latin prae-exsuctus "dehydrated"), and castelhano "Castilian", from Spanish; colchete/crochê "bracket"/"crochet", paletó "jacket", batom "lipstick", and filé/filete "steak"/"slice" respectively, from French crochet, paletot, bâton, filet; macarrão "pasta", piloto "pilot", carroça "carriage", and barraca "barrack", from Italian maccherone, pilota, carrozza, baracca; and bife "steak", futebol, revólver, estoque, folclore, time from English beef,
football, revolver, stock, folklore, and team.
Portuguese belongs to the West Iberian branch of the Romance languages, and it has special ties with the following members of this group:
* Galician and Fala, its closest relatives. See below.
* Spanish, the major language closest to Portuguese. (See also Differences between Spanish and Portuguese.)
* Mirandese and Leonese, two other West Iberian languages spoken in Portugal.
* Judeo-Portuguese and Judeo-Spanish, languages spoken by Sephardic Jews, and which remained close to Portuguese and Spanish.
Despite the obvious lexical and grammatical similarities between Portuguese and other Romance languages, it is not mutually intelligible with them. Apart from Galician, Portuguese speakers will usually need some formal study of basic grammar and vocabulary, before attaining a reasonable level of comprehension of those languages, and vice versa. Native speakers of Portuguese do tend to understand standard Spanish which is spoken clearly, but the reverse is generally not true unless formal education is involved.
The closest language to Portuguese is Galician, spoken in the autonomous community of Galicia (northwestern Spain). The two were at one time a single language, known today as Galician-Portuguese, but since the political separation of Portugal from Galicia they have diverged somewhat, especially in pronunciation and vocabulary. Nevertheless, the core vocabulary and grammar of Galician are still noticeably closer to Portuguese than to those of Spanish. In particular, like Portuguese, it uses the future subjunctive, the personal infinitive, and the synthetic pluperfect (see the section on the grammar of Portuguese, below). Mutual intelligibility (estimated at 85% by R. A. Hall, Jr., 1989) Ethnologue is good between Galicians and northern Portuguese, but poorer between Galicians and speakers from central Portugal.
The Fala language is another descendant of Galician-Portuguese, spoken by a small number of people in the Spanish towns of Valverde del Fresno, Eljas and San MartÃn de Trevejo (autonomous community of Extremadura, near the border with Portugal).
Portuguese has provided loanwords to many languages, such as Indonesian, Manado Malay, Sri Lankan Tamil and Sinhalese (see Sri Lanka Indo-Portuguese), Malay, Bengali, English, Hindi, Konkani, Marathi, Tetum, Xitsonga, Papiamentu, Japanese, Lanc-Patuá (spoken in northern Brazil) and Sranan Tongo (spoken in Suriname). It left a strong influence on the lÃngua brasÃlica, a Tupi-Guarani language which was the most widely spoken in Brazil until the 18th century, and on the language spoken around Sikka in Flores Island, Indonesia. In nearby Larantuka, Portuguese is used for prayers in Holy Week rituals.
The Japanese-Portuguese dictionary Nippo Jisho (1603) was the first dictionary of Japanese in a European language, a product of Jesuit missionary activity in Japan. Building on the work of earlier Portuguese missionaries, the Dictionarium Anamiticum, Lusitanum et Latinum (Annamite-Portuguese-Latin dictionary) of Alexandre de Rhodes (1651) introduced the modern orthography of Vietnamese, which is based on the orthography of 17th-century Portuguese. The Romanization of Chinese was also influenced by the Portuguese language (among others), particularly regarding Chinese surnames; one example is Mei. During 1583-88 Italian Jesuits Michele Ruggieri and Matteo Ricci created a Portuguese-Chinese dictionary - the first ever European-Chinese dictionary. Yves Camus, "Jesuits' Journeys in Chinese Studies" "Dicionário Português-Chinês : Pu Han ci dian : Portuguese-Chinese dictionary", by Michele Ruggieri, Matteo Ricci; edited by John W. Witek. Published 2001, Biblioteca Nacional. ISBN 9725652983. Partial preview available on Google Books
See also List of English words of Portuguese origin, Loan words in Indonesian, Japanese words of Portuguese origin, Borrowed words in Malay, Sinhala words of Portuguese origin, Loan words from Portuguese in Sri Lankan Tamil.
Beginning in the 16th century, the extensive contacts between Portuguese travelers and settlers, African slaves, and local populations led to the appearance of many pidgins with varying amounts of Portuguese influence. As each of these pidgins became the mother tongue of succeeding generations, they evolved into fully fledged creole languages, which remained in use in many parts of Asia and Africa until the 18th century. Some Portuguese-based or Portuguese-influenced creoles are still spoken today, by over 3 million people worldwide, especially people of partial Portuguese ancestry.
There is a growing number of people in the Portuguese-speaking media and the internet who are presenting the case to the CPLP and other organizations to run a debate in the Lusophone community with the purpose of bringing forward a petition to make Portuguese an official language of the United Nations.
In October 2005, during the international Convention of the Elos Club International that took place in Tavira, Portugal, ONU: Petição para tornar português lÃngua oficial a petition was written and unanimously approved whose text can be found on the internet with the title Petição Para Tornar Oficial o Idioma Português na ONU. Romulo Alexandre Soares, president of the Brazil-Portugal Chamber highlights that the positioning of Brazil in the international arena as one of the emergent powers of the 21st century, the size of its population, and the presence of the language around the world provides legitimacy and justifies a petition to the UN to make the Portuguese language an official language of the UN. Português pode ser lÃngua oficial na ONU
Several factors detract from this campaign. The current official languages of the UN are either 1) official/dominant in many countries (English, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, and French) or 2) have several hundreds of millions of speakers (Chinese). English, Spanish, Russian and Arabic fulfill both criteria. Portuguese is a global language in that it is the official tongue of several sovereign countries on four continents. It also has over 200 million speakers. However, it exhibits some noticeable differences when compared to the current 6 UN official languages. For example, English, French, Arabic and Spanish are each official languages of multiple states and of over half of the world's countries. In contrast, four out of every five speakers of the Portuguese-speaking world live in just one country: Brazil. In addition to Brazil, Portuguese is the official language in only 7 other sovereign states; however, English is official in 53 states, French in 29 states, Arabic in 25 states, and Spanish in 20 states.
More significantly, in each part of the world with a Portuguese-speaking country, this language is overshadowed by other powerful languages that are already official languages of the UN. For example, in the Americas, the 190 million Portuguese-speaking Brazilians are overshadowed by the most spoken languages in the Western Hemisphere: Spanish (~360 million speakers) and English (~340 million speakers). Portuguese is overshadowed to an even greater extent in Europe, the continent in which four of the six UN languages originated (English, French, Spanish, and Russian). In the European context, Portuguese is not even among the ten most spoken languages on the continent, with a number of speakers comparable to those of Czech and Bulgarian. In Africa, Portuguese is eclipsed as a continental lingua franca by English and French in countries that surround Cape Verde, São Tomé and PrÃncipe, Guinea-Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique. Finally in Asia, a continent with several languages that have hundreds of millions of speakers, the only sovereign state with Portuguese as an official language is East Timor, which has only a million people. While Brazilian migration has brought 300,000 fluent Portuguese speakers to Japan, Portuguese does not enjoy any official status whatsoever in that country. Therefore, while Portuguese will gain increasing importance as Brazil continues its development as a major economy, it will likely face the same hurdles that prevented Japanese and German (both languages of major global economies with millions of speakers) from becoming both international languages and official ones of the UN.
There is a maximum of 9 oral vowels and 19 consonants, though some varieties of the language have fewer phonemes (Brazilian Portuguese has 8 oral vowels). There are also five nasal vowels, which some linguists regard as allophones of the oral vowels, ten oral diphthongs, and five nasal diphthongs. In total, Brazilian Portuguese has 13 vowel phonemes. /ref> Handbook of the International Phonetic Association'' pg. 126-130; the reference applies to the entire section
Chart of monophthongs of the Portuguese of Lisbon
To the seven vowels of Vulgar Latin, European Portuguese has added two near central vowels, one of which tends to be elided in rapid speech, like the e caduc of French (represented as either , or , or ). The high vowels and the low vowels are four distinct phonemes, and they alternate in various forms of apophony. Like Catalan, Portuguese uses vowel quality to contrast stressed syllables with unstressed syllables: isolated vowels tend to be raised, and in some cases centralized, when unstressed. Nasal diphthongs occur mostly at the ends of words.
The consonant inventory of Portuguese is fairly conservative. The medieval affricates , , , merged with the fricatives , , , , respectively, but not with each other, and there were no other significant changes to the consonant phonemes since then. However, some notable dialectal variants and allophones have appeared, among which:
* In many regions of Brazil, and have the affricate allophones and , respectively, before and . (Quebec French has a similar phenomenon, with alveolar affricates instead of postalveolars. Japanese is another example).
* At the end of a syllable, the phoneme has the allophone in Brazilian Portuguese (L-vocalization).
* In many parts of Brazil and Angola, intervocalic is pronounced as a nasalized palatal approximant which nasalizes the preceding vowel, so that, for instance, is pronounced .
* In most of Brazil, the alveolar sibilants and occur in complementary distribution at the ends of syllables, depending on whether the consonant that follows is voiceless or voiced, as in English. But in most of Portugal and parts of Brazil, sibilants are postalveolar at the ends of syllables, before voiceless consonants, and before voiced consonants (in Judeo-Spanish, is often replaced with at the ends of syllables, too).
* There is considerable dialectal variation in the value of the rhotic phoneme . See Guttural R in Portuguese, for details.
;Excerpt from the Portuguese national epic Os LusÃadas, by author LuÃs de Camões (I, 33)
A notable aspect of the grammar of Portuguese is the verb. Morphologically, more verbal inflections from classical Latin have been preserved by Portuguese than by any other major Romance language. See Romance copula, for a detailed comparison. It has also some innovations not found in other Romance languages (except Galician and the Fala):
* The present perfect tense has an iterative sense unique to Galician-Portuguese language group. It denotes an action or a series of actions which began in the past and are expected to keep repeating in the future. For instance, the sentence Tenho tentado falar com ela would be translated to "I have been trying to talk to her", not "I have tried to talk to her". On the other hand, the correct translation of the question "Have you heard the latest news?" is not *Tem ouvido a última notÃcia?, but Ouviu a última notÃcia?, since no repetition is implied. Squartini, Mario (1998) Verbal Periphrases in Romance â Aspect, Actionality, and Grammaticalization ISBN 3-11-016160-5
* The future subjunctive tense, which was developed by medieval West Iberian Romance, but has now fallen into disuse in Spanish and Galician, is still used in vernacular Portuguese. It appears in dependent clauses that denote a condition which must be fulfilled in the future, so that the independent clause will occur. English normally employs the present tense under the same circumstances:
:Se eu for eleito presidente, mudarei a lei.
:If I am elected president, I will change the law.
:Quando fores mais velho, vais entender.
:When you are older, you will understand.
* The personal infinitive: infinitives can inflect according to their subject in person and number, often showing who is expected to perform a certain action; cf. Ã melhor voltares "It is better [for you] to go back," Ã melhor voltarmos "It is better [for us] to go back." Perhaps for this reason, infinitive clauses replace subjunctive clauses more often in Portuguese than in other Romance languages.
Portuguese is written with 23 or 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, making use of five diacritics to denote stress, vowel height, contraction, nasalization, and other sound changes (acute accent, grave accent, circumflex accent, tilde, and cedilla). Accented characters and digraphs are not counted as separate letters for collation purposes.
* Portuguese literature
* Portuguese poetry
* List of Portuguese language poets
* Brazilian literature
* List of Brazilian poets
* Lusophone
* Geographic distribution of Portuguese
* List of countries where Portuguese is an official language
* Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP)
* Instituto Camões
* International Portuguese Language Institute
* Museum of the Portuguese Language
* Portuguese-based creole languages
* Portuñol
* Portuguese in the United States
* List of English words of Portuguese origin
* Spelling reforms of Portuguese
* História da Lingua Portuguesa Instituto Camões
* A LÃngua Portuguesa in Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil (...)
* Poesia e Prosa Medievais, by Maria Ema Tarracha Ferreira, Ulisseia 1998, 3rd ed., ISBN 978-972-568-124-4.
* Bases Temáticas â LÃngua Portuguesa in Instituto Camões
* Portuguese Literature in The Catholic Encyclopedia
* International Phonetic Association (1999) Handbook of the International Phonetic Association ISBN 0-521-63751-1
* Mateus, Maria Helena & d'Andrade, Ernesto (2000) The Phonology of Portuguese ISBN 0-19-823581-X (Excerpt available at Google Books)
* Bergström, Magnus & Reis, Neves Prontuário Ortográfico Editorial NotÃcias, 2004.
* A pronúncia do português europeu - European Portuguese Pronunciation
* Dialects of Portuguese at the Instituto Camões
* Audio samples of the dialects of Portugal
* Audio samples of the dialects from outside Europe
* Antônio Houaiss (2000), Dicionário Houaiss da LÃngua Portuguesa (228,500 entries).
* Aurélio Buarque de Holanda Ferreira, Novo Dicionário da LÃngua Portuguesa (1809pp)
* English-Portuguese-Chinese Dictionary (Freeware, for Windows/Linux/Mac)
* Lindley Cintra, LuÃs F. Nova Proposta de Classificação dos Dialectos Galego-Portugueses (PDF) Boletim de Filologia, Lisboa, Centro de Estudos Filológicos, 1971.
*Swadesh list in English and Portuguese
* English Portuguese Translation Dictionary for English Portuguese translations
* Learn Portuguese BBC
* Portuguese Language Notes BBC
* AULP - Associação das Universidades de LÃngua Portuguesa Portuguese Language Universities Association.
* Portuguese in East Timor an interview with Dr. Geoffrey Hull.
* Portuguese Dictionary with gender and type of words.
* ABL - Academia Brasileira de letras (em português) - (Brazilian Academy of Letters) (Portuguese)
* Brazilian Portuguese Free resources for Portuguese learners.
* EasyPortuguese Free Portuguese learning site with audio.
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Portuguese_language | What are the two main groups of Portuguese dialects? | Those of Brazil and those of the Old World | data/set5/a1 | Portuguese_language
Portuguese ( or lÃngua portuguesa) is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia and northern Portugal. It is derived from the Latin spoken by the romanized pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula (namely the Gallaeci, the Lusitanians, the Celtici and the Conii) around 2000 years ago. It spread worldwide in the 15th and 16th centuries as Portugal established a colonial and commercial empire (1415â1999) which spanned from Brazil in the Americas to Goa and other parts of India, Macau in China and Timor (north of Australia). It was used as the exclusive lingua franca on the island of Sri Lanka for almost 350 years. During that time, many creole languages based on Portuguese also appeared around the world, especially in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean.
Today it is one of the world's major languages, ranked seventh according to number of native speakers (between 205 and 230 million). It is the language of about half of South America's population, even though Brazil is the only Portuguese-speaking nation in the Americas. It is also a major lingua franca in Portugal's former colonial possessions in Africa. It is an official language in nine countries (see the table on the right), also being co-official with Cantonese Chinese in Macau and Tetum in East Timor. There are sizeable communities of Portuguese speakers in various regions of North America, notably in the United States (New Jersey, New England, California and south Florida) and in Ontario, Canada.
In various aspects, the system of sounds in Portuguese is more similar to the phonologies of Catalan or French than, say, those of Spanish or Italian. Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes once called Portuguese "the sweet language", /ref> Lope de Vega referred to it as "suave" 'Encyclopedia of Literature' Joseph T. Shipley; Philosophical Library, 1946. 1188 pgs. while Brazilian writer Olavo Bilac poetically described it as a última flor do Lácio, inculta e bela: "the last flower of Latium, wild and beautiful". Portuguese is also termed "the language of Camões", after one of Portugal's best known literary figures, LuÃs Vaz de Camões.
Countries and regions where Portuguese has official status.
Members of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries.
Today, Portuguese is the official language of Angola, Brazil (190.6 million), IBGE Official website Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Portugal (10.6 million), INE Official website São Tomé and PrÃncipe and Mozambique. CPLP Official website It is also one of the official languages of the special administrative region of Macau (with Chinese) and East Timor, (with Tetum). It is the language of most of the population in Portugal (100%) , Brazil (100%) , São Tomé and PrÃncipe (99.8%) and Angola (80%), and is the most widely spoken language in Mozambique (40%), though only 6.5% are native speakers. No data are available for Cape Verde, but almost all the population is bilingual, and the monolingual population speaks Cape Verdean Creole. See the main article Geographic distribution of Portuguese, for references.
Small Portuguese-speaking communities subsist in former overseas colonies of Portugal such as Macau, where it is spoken by 7% of the population, and East Timor (13.6%).
Uruguay gave Portuguese an equal status to Spanish in its educational system at the north border with Brazil. In the rest of the country, it is taught as an obligatory subject beginning in the 6th grade. Uruguay recently adopted Portuguese language in its education system as an obligatory subject /ref>
It is also spoken by substantial immigrant communities, though not official, in Andorra, Australia, The Portuguese-Speaking Community in Australia France, Luxembourg, Jersey (with a statistically significant Portuguese-speaking community of approximately 10,000 people), Paraguay, Namibia, South Africa, Switzerland, Venezuela, Japan JAPÃO: IMIGRANTES BRASILEIROS POPULARIZAM LÃNGUA PORTUGUESA and the U.S. states of California, Connecticut, Where America's Other Languages Are Spoken Florida, Widely spoken but 'minor'? Portuguese seeks respect Massachusetts, New Jersey, Hispanic Reading Room of the U.S. Library of Congress website, Twentieth-Century Arrivals from Portugal Settle in Newark, New Jersey, New York Brazucas (Brazilians living in New York) and Rhode Island. Hispanic Reading Room of the U.S. Library of Congress website, Whaling, Fishing, and Industrial Employment in Southeastern New England
In some parts of India, such as Goa Portuguese Language in Goa and Daman and Diu, The Portuguese Experience: The Case of Goa, Daman and Diu Portuguese is still spoken. There are also significant populations of Portuguese speakers in Canada (mainly concentrated in and around Toronto), Multicultural Canada Bermuda World InfoZone: Bermuda and the Netherlands Antilles.
Portuguese is an official language of several international organizations. The Community of Portuguese Language Countries (with the Portuguese acronym CPLP) consists of the eight independent countries that have Portuguese as an official language. It is also an official language of the European Union, accounting for 3% of its population, EUROPA website Languages in the EU Mercosul, the Organization of American States, the Organization of Ibero-American States, the Union of South American Nations, and the African Union (one of the working languages) and one of the official languages of other organizations. The Portuguese language is gaining popularity in Africa, Asia, and South America as a second language for study.
Estação da Luz, home of the Museum of the Portuguese Language, in São Paulo, Brazil.
Portuguese and Spanish are the fastest-growing European languages (with the exception of English, being the world lingua franca) , and, according to estimates by UNESCO, the Portuguese language has the highest potential for growth as an international language in southern Africa and South America. The Portuguese-speaking African countries are expected to have a combined population of 83 million by 2050. In total, the Portuguese-speaking countries will have 335 million people by the same year. Since 1991, when Brazil signed into the economic market of Mercosul with other South American nations, such as Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay, there has been an increase in interest in the study of Portuguese in those South American countries. The demographic weight of Brazil in the continent will continue to strengthen the presence of the language in the region. Although in the early 21st century, after Macau was ceded to China in 1999, the use of Portuguese was in decline in Asia, it is becoming a language of opportunity there; mostly because of East Timor's boost in the number of speakers in the last five years but also because of increased Chinese diplomatic and financial ties with Portuguese-speaking countries.
In July 2007, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema announced his government's decision to establish Portuguese as Equatorial Guinea's third official language, to meet the requirements to apply for full membership of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries. This upgrading from its current Associate Observer condition would result in Equatorial Guinea being able to access several professional and academic exchange programs and the facilitation of cross-border circulation of citizens. Its application is currently being assessed by other CPLP members. "Obiang convierte al portugués en tercer idioma oficial para entrar en la Comunidad lusófona de Naciones", Terra. 13-07-2007
In March 1994 the Bosque de Portugal (Portugal's Woods) was founded in the Brazilian city of Curitiba. The park houses the Portuguese Language Memorial, which honors the Portuguese immigrants and the countries that adopted the Portuguese language. Originally there were seven nations represented with pillars, but the independence of East Timor brought yet another pillar for that nation in 2007.
In March 2006, the Museum of the Portuguese Language, an interactive museum about the Portuguese language, was founded in São Paulo, Brazil, the city with the greatest number of Portuguese speakers in the world.
Portuguese is a pluricentric language with two main groups of dialects, those of Brazil and those of the Old World. For historical reasons, the dialects of Africa and Asia are generally closer to those of Portugal than the Brazilian dialects, although in some aspects of their phonetics, especially the pronunciation of unstressed vowels, they resemble Brazilian Portuguese more than European Portuguese. They have not been studied as widely as European and Brazilian Portuguese.
Audio samples of some dialects of Portuguese are available below. From Audio samples of the dialects of Portuguese at the Instituto Camões website. There are some differences between the areas but these are the best approximations possible. For example, the caipira dialect has some differences from the one of Minas Gerais, but in general it is very close. A good example of Brazilian Portuguese may be found in the capital city, BrasÃlia, because of the generalized population from all parts of the country.
Portuguese dialects of Angola
# Benguelense â Benguela province.
# 11px Luandense â Luanda province.
# Sulista â South of Angola.
Dialects of Portuguese in Brazil
# Caipira â States of São Paulo (countryside; the city of São Paulo and the eastern areas of the state have their own accent, called paulistano); southern Minas Gerais, northern Paraná, Goiás and Mato Grosso do Sul.
# Cearense â Ceará.
# Baiano â Bahia.
# 11px Fluminense â Variants spoken in the states of Rio de Janeiro (excluding the city of Rio de Janeiro and its adjacent metropolitan areas, which have their own dialect, called carioca).
# Gaúcho â Rio Grande do Sul. (There are many distinct accents in Rio Grande do Sul, mainly due to the heavy influx of European immigrants of diverse origins, those which have settled several colonies throughout the state.)
# Mineiro â Minas Gerais (not prevalent in the Triângulo Mineiro, southern and southeastern Minas Gerais and also excluding the city of Belo Horizonte, which has its own accent.).
# 11px Nordestino â northeastern states of Brazil (Pernambuco, ParaÃba and Rio Grande do Norte have a particular way of speaking). Note: the speaker of this sound file is from Rio, and he is talking about his experience with Nordestino and Nortista accents.
# Nortista â Amazon Basin states.
# Paulistano â Variants spoken around São Paulo city and the eastern areas of São Paulo state.
# Sertanejo â States of Goiás and Mato Grosso (the city of Cuiabá has a particular way of speaking).
# Sulista â Variants spoken in the areas between the northern regions of Rio Grande do Sul and southern regions of São Paulo state. (The cities of Curitiba, Florianópolis, and Itapetininga have fairly distinct accents as well.)
# Carioca â Variants spoken in Rio de Janeiro City and Niteroi
Dialects of Portuguese in Portugal
# 11px Açoriano (Azorean) â Azores.
# 11px Alentejano â Alentejo
# 11px Algarvio â Algarve (there is a particular dialect in a small part of western Algarve).
# 11px Alto-Minhoto â North of Braga (hinterland).
# 11px Baixo-Beirão; Alto-Alentejano â Central Portugal (hinterland).
# 11px Beirão â Central Portugal.
# 11px Estremenho â Regions of Coimbra and Lisbon (the Lisbon dialect has some peculiar features not shared with the one of Coimbra).
# 11px Madeirense (Madeiran) â Madeira.
# 11px Nortenho â Regions of Braga and Porto.
# 11px Transmontano â Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro.
* Cape Verde â 11px Português cabo-verdiano (Cape Verdean Portuguese)
* Daman and Diu, India â Damaense.
* East Timor â 11px Timorense (East Timorese)
* Goa, India â Goês.
* Guinea-Bissau â 11px Guineense (Guinean Portuguese).
* Macau, China â 11px Macaense (Macanese)
* Mozambique â 11px Moçambicano (Mozambican)
* São Tomé and PrÃncipe â 11px Santomense
* Uruguay â Dialectos Portugueses del Uruguay (DPU).
Differences between dialects are mostly of accent and vocabulary, but between the Brazilian dialects and other dialects, especially in their most colloquial forms, there can also be some grammatical differences. The Portuguese-based creoles spoken in various parts of Africa, Asia, and the Americas are independent languages which should not be confused with Portuguese itself.
Baroque Library of the Coimbra University, Portugal.
Arriving in the Iberian Peninsula in 216 BC, the Romans brought with them the Latin language, from which all Romance languages descend. The language was spread by arriving Roman soldiers, settlers, and merchants, who built Roman cities mostly near the settlements of previous civilizations.
Between 409 and 711 AD, as the Roman Empire collapsed in Western Europe, the Iberian Peninsula was conquered by Germanic peoples (Migration Period). The occupiers, mainly Suebi and Visigoths, quickly adopted late Roman culture and the Vulgar Latin dialects of the peninsula. After the Moorish invasion of 711, Arabic became the administrative language in the conquered regions, but most of the population continued to speak a form of Romance commonly known as Mozarabic. The influence exerted by Arabic on the Romance dialects spoken in the Christian kingdoms of the north was small, affecting mainly their lexicon.
The earliest surviving records of a distinctively Portuguese language are administrative documents of the 9th century, still interspersed with many Latin phrases. Today this phase is known as Proto-Portuguese (between the 9th and the 12th centuries). In the first period of Old Portuguese â Galician-Portuguese Period (from the 12th to the 14th century) â the language gradually came into general use. For some time, it was the language of preference for lyric poetry in Christian Hispania, much as Occitan was the language of the poetry of the troubadours. Portugal became an independent kingdom from the Kingdom of Leon in 1139, under king Afonso I of Portugal. In 1290, king Denis of Portugal created the first Portuguese university in Lisbon (the Estudos Gerais, later moved to Coimbra) and decreed that Portuguese, then simply called the "common language" should be known as the Portuguese language and used officially.
In the second period of Old Portuguese, from the 14th to the 16th centuries, with the Portuguese discoveries, the language was taken to many regions of Asia, Africa and the Americas (nowadays, the great majority of Portuguese speakers live in Brazil, in South America). By the 16th century, it had become a lingua franca in Asia and Africa, used not only for colonial administration and trade but also for communication between local officials and Europeans of all nationalities. Its spread was helped by mixed marriages between Portuguese and local people, and by its association with Roman Catholic missionary efforts, which led to the formation of a creole language called Kristang in many parts of Asia (from the word cristão, "Christian"). The language continued to be popular in parts of Asia until the 19th century. Some Portuguese-speaking Christian communities in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Indonesia preserved their language even after they were isolated from Portugal.
The end of the Old Portuguese period was marked by the publication of the Cancioneiro Geral by Garcia de Resende, in 1516. The early times of Modern Portuguese, which spans a period from the 16th century to the present day, were characterized by an increase in the number of learned words borrowed from Classical Latin and Classical Greek since the Renaissance, which greatly enriched the lexicon.
A distinctive feature of Portuguese is that it preserved the stressed vowels of Vulgar Latin, which became diphthongs in other Romance languages; cf. Fr. pierre, Sp. piedra, It. pietra, Ro. piatrÄ, Port. pedra ("stone"), from Lat. petram; or Sp. fuego, It. fuoco, Fr. feu, Ro. foc, Port. fogo, from Lat. focus ("fire"). Another characteristic of early Portuguese was the loss of intervocalic l and n, sometimes followed by the merger of the two surrounding vowels, or by the insertion of an epenthetic vowel between them: cf. Lat. salire ("to leave"), tenere ("to have"), catenam ("chain"), Sp. salir, tener, cadena, Port. sair, ter, cadeia.
When the elided consonant was n, it often nasalized the preceding vowel: cf. Lat. manum ("hand"), ranam ("frog"), bonum ("good"), Port. mão, rãa, bõo (now mão, rã, bom). This process was the source of most of the nasal diphthongs which are typical of Portuguese. In particular, the Latin endings -anem, -anum and -onem became -ão in most cases, cf. Lat. canem ("dog"), germanum ("brother"), rationem ("reason") with Modern Port. cão, irmão, razão, and their plurals -anes, -anos, -ones normally became -ães, -ãos, -ões, cf. cães, irmãos, razões.
Library of the Mafra National Palace, Portugal.
Most of the lexicon of Portuguese is derived from Latin. Nevertheless, because of the Moorish occupation of the Iberian Peninsula during the Middle Ages, and the participation of Portugal in the Age of Discovery, it has adopted loanwords from all over the world.
Very few Portuguese words can be traced to the pre-Roman inhabitants of Portugal, which included the Gallaeci, Lusitanians, Celtici and Cynetes. The Phoenicians and Carthaginians, briefly present, also left some scarce traces. Some notable examples are abóbora "pumpkin" and bezerro "year-old calf", from the nearby Celtiberian language (probably through the Celtici); cerveja "beer", from Celtic; and cachorro "dog", from Basque.
In the 5th century, the Iberian Peninsula (the Roman Hispania) was conquered by the Germanic Suebi and Visigoths. As they adopted the Roman civilization and language, however, these people contributed only a few words to the lexicon, mostly related to warfare â such as espora "spur", estaca "stake", and guerra "war", from Gothic *spaúra, *stakka, and *wirro, respectively. The influence also exists in toponymic and patronymic surnames borne by Visigoth sovereigns and their descendants, and it dwells on placenames such has Ermesinde, Esposende and Resende where sinde and sende are derived from the Germanic "sinths" (military expedition) and in the case of Resende, the prefix re comes from Germanic "reths" (council).
Between the 9th and 13th centuries, Portuguese acquired about 800 words from Arabic by influence of Moorish Iberia. They are often recognizable by the initial Arabic article a(l)-, and include many common words such as aldeia "village" from اÙضÙعة aldaya, alface "lettuce" from اÙخس alkhass, armazém "warehouse" from اÙÙ
خز٠almahazan, and azeite "olive oil" from اÙزÙت azzait. From Arabic came also the grammatically peculiar word oxalá إ٠شاء اÙÙÙ "hopefully". The Mozambican currency name metical was derived from the word Ù
تÙا٠mitqÄl, a unit of weight. The word Mozambique itself is from the Arabic name of sultan Muça Alebique (Musa Alibiki).
Starting in the 15th century, the Portuguese maritime explorations led to the introduction of many loanwords from Asian languages. For instance, catana "cutlass" from Japanese katana and chá "tea" from Chinese 'chá'.
From South America came batata "potato", from Taino; ananás and abacaxi, from Tupi-Guarani naná and Tupi ibá cati, respectively (two species of pineapple), and tucano "toucan" from Guarani tucan. See List of Brazil state name etymologies, for some more examples.
From the 16th to the 19th centuries, because of the role of Portugal as intermediary in the Atlantic slave trade, and the establishment of large Portuguese colonies in Angola, Mozambique, and Brazil, Portuguese got several words of African and Amerind origin, especially names for most of the animals and plants found in those territories. While those terms are mostly used in the former colonies, many became current in European Portuguese as well. From Kimbundu, for example, came kifumate â cafuné "head caress", kusula â caçula "youngest child", marimbondo "tropical wasp", and kubungula â bungular "to dance like a wizard".
Finally, it has received a steady influx of loanwords from other European languages. For example, melena "hair lock", fiambre "wet-cured ham" (in contrast with presunto "dry-cured ham" from Latin prae-exsuctus "dehydrated"), and castelhano "Castilian", from Spanish; colchete/crochê "bracket"/"crochet", paletó "jacket", batom "lipstick", and filé/filete "steak"/"slice" respectively, from French crochet, paletot, bâton, filet; macarrão "pasta", piloto "pilot", carroça "carriage", and barraca "barrack", from Italian maccherone, pilota, carrozza, baracca; and bife "steak", futebol, revólver, estoque, folclore, time from English beef,
football, revolver, stock, folklore, and team.
Portuguese belongs to the West Iberian branch of the Romance languages, and it has special ties with the following members of this group:
* Galician and Fala, its closest relatives. See below.
* Spanish, the major language closest to Portuguese. (See also Differences between Spanish and Portuguese.)
* Mirandese and Leonese, two other West Iberian languages spoken in Portugal.
* Judeo-Portuguese and Judeo-Spanish, languages spoken by Sephardic Jews, and which remained close to Portuguese and Spanish.
Despite the obvious lexical and grammatical similarities between Portuguese and other Romance languages, it is not mutually intelligible with them. Apart from Galician, Portuguese speakers will usually need some formal study of basic grammar and vocabulary, before attaining a reasonable level of comprehension of those languages, and vice versa. Native speakers of Portuguese do tend to understand standard Spanish which is spoken clearly, but the reverse is generally not true unless formal education is involved.
The closest language to Portuguese is Galician, spoken in the autonomous community of Galicia (northwestern Spain). The two were at one time a single language, known today as Galician-Portuguese, but since the political separation of Portugal from Galicia they have diverged somewhat, especially in pronunciation and vocabulary. Nevertheless, the core vocabulary and grammar of Galician are still noticeably closer to Portuguese than to those of Spanish. In particular, like Portuguese, it uses the future subjunctive, the personal infinitive, and the synthetic pluperfect (see the section on the grammar of Portuguese, below). Mutual intelligibility (estimated at 85% by R. A. Hall, Jr., 1989) Ethnologue is good between Galicians and northern Portuguese, but poorer between Galicians and speakers from central Portugal.
The Fala language is another descendant of Galician-Portuguese, spoken by a small number of people in the Spanish towns of Valverde del Fresno, Eljas and San MartÃn de Trevejo (autonomous community of Extremadura, near the border with Portugal).
Portuguese has provided loanwords to many languages, such as Indonesian, Manado Malay, Sri Lankan Tamil and Sinhalese (see Sri Lanka Indo-Portuguese), Malay, Bengali, English, Hindi, Konkani, Marathi, Tetum, Xitsonga, Papiamentu, Japanese, Lanc-Patuá (spoken in northern Brazil) and Sranan Tongo (spoken in Suriname). It left a strong influence on the lÃngua brasÃlica, a Tupi-Guarani language which was the most widely spoken in Brazil until the 18th century, and on the language spoken around Sikka in Flores Island, Indonesia. In nearby Larantuka, Portuguese is used for prayers in Holy Week rituals.
The Japanese-Portuguese dictionary Nippo Jisho (1603) was the first dictionary of Japanese in a European language, a product of Jesuit missionary activity in Japan. Building on the work of earlier Portuguese missionaries, the Dictionarium Anamiticum, Lusitanum et Latinum (Annamite-Portuguese-Latin dictionary) of Alexandre de Rhodes (1651) introduced the modern orthography of Vietnamese, which is based on the orthography of 17th-century Portuguese. The Romanization of Chinese was also influenced by the Portuguese language (among others), particularly regarding Chinese surnames; one example is Mei. During 1583-88 Italian Jesuits Michele Ruggieri and Matteo Ricci created a Portuguese-Chinese dictionary - the first ever European-Chinese dictionary. Yves Camus, "Jesuits' Journeys in Chinese Studies" "Dicionário Português-Chinês : Pu Han ci dian : Portuguese-Chinese dictionary", by Michele Ruggieri, Matteo Ricci; edited by John W. Witek. Published 2001, Biblioteca Nacional. ISBN 9725652983. Partial preview available on Google Books
See also List of English words of Portuguese origin, Loan words in Indonesian, Japanese words of Portuguese origin, Borrowed words in Malay, Sinhala words of Portuguese origin, Loan words from Portuguese in Sri Lankan Tamil.
Beginning in the 16th century, the extensive contacts between Portuguese travelers and settlers, African slaves, and local populations led to the appearance of many pidgins with varying amounts of Portuguese influence. As each of these pidgins became the mother tongue of succeeding generations, they evolved into fully fledged creole languages, which remained in use in many parts of Asia and Africa until the 18th century. Some Portuguese-based or Portuguese-influenced creoles are still spoken today, by over 3 million people worldwide, especially people of partial Portuguese ancestry.
There is a growing number of people in the Portuguese-speaking media and the internet who are presenting the case to the CPLP and other organizations to run a debate in the Lusophone community with the purpose of bringing forward a petition to make Portuguese an official language of the United Nations.
In October 2005, during the international Convention of the Elos Club International that took place in Tavira, Portugal, ONU: Petição para tornar português lÃngua oficial a petition was written and unanimously approved whose text can be found on the internet with the title Petição Para Tornar Oficial o Idioma Português na ONU. Romulo Alexandre Soares, president of the Brazil-Portugal Chamber highlights that the positioning of Brazil in the international arena as one of the emergent powers of the 21st century, the size of its population, and the presence of the language around the world provides legitimacy and justifies a petition to the UN to make the Portuguese language an official language of the UN. Português pode ser lÃngua oficial na ONU
Several factors detract from this campaign. The current official languages of the UN are either 1) official/dominant in many countries (English, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, and French) or 2) have several hundreds of millions of speakers (Chinese). English, Spanish, Russian and Arabic fulfill both criteria. Portuguese is a global language in that it is the official tongue of several sovereign countries on four continents. It also has over 200 million speakers. However, it exhibits some noticeable differences when compared to the current 6 UN official languages. For example, English, French, Arabic and Spanish are each official languages of multiple states and of over half of the world's countries. In contrast, four out of every five speakers of the Portuguese-speaking world live in just one country: Brazil. In addition to Brazil, Portuguese is the official language in only 7 other sovereign states; however, English is official in 53 states, French in 29 states, Arabic in 25 states, and Spanish in 20 states.
More significantly, in each part of the world with a Portuguese-speaking country, this language is overshadowed by other powerful languages that are already official languages of the UN. For example, in the Americas, the 190 million Portuguese-speaking Brazilians are overshadowed by the most spoken languages in the Western Hemisphere: Spanish (~360 million speakers) and English (~340 million speakers). Portuguese is overshadowed to an even greater extent in Europe, the continent in which four of the six UN languages originated (English, French, Spanish, and Russian). In the European context, Portuguese is not even among the ten most spoken languages on the continent, with a number of speakers comparable to those of Czech and Bulgarian. In Africa, Portuguese is eclipsed as a continental lingua franca by English and French in countries that surround Cape Verde, São Tomé and PrÃncipe, Guinea-Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique. Finally in Asia, a continent with several languages that have hundreds of millions of speakers, the only sovereign state with Portuguese as an official language is East Timor, which has only a million people. While Brazilian migration has brought 300,000 fluent Portuguese speakers to Japan, Portuguese does not enjoy any official status whatsoever in that country. Therefore, while Portuguese will gain increasing importance as Brazil continues its development as a major economy, it will likely face the same hurdles that prevented Japanese and German (both languages of major global economies with millions of speakers) from becoming both international languages and official ones of the UN.
There is a maximum of 9 oral vowels and 19 consonants, though some varieties of the language have fewer phonemes (Brazilian Portuguese has 8 oral vowels). There are also five nasal vowels, which some linguists regard as allophones of the oral vowels, ten oral diphthongs, and five nasal diphthongs. In total, Brazilian Portuguese has 13 vowel phonemes. /ref> Handbook of the International Phonetic Association'' pg. 126-130; the reference applies to the entire section
Chart of monophthongs of the Portuguese of Lisbon
To the seven vowels of Vulgar Latin, European Portuguese has added two near central vowels, one of which tends to be elided in rapid speech, like the e caduc of French (represented as either , or , or ). The high vowels and the low vowels are four distinct phonemes, and they alternate in various forms of apophony. Like Catalan, Portuguese uses vowel quality to contrast stressed syllables with unstressed syllables: isolated vowels tend to be raised, and in some cases centralized, when unstressed. Nasal diphthongs occur mostly at the ends of words.
The consonant inventory of Portuguese is fairly conservative. The medieval affricates , , , merged with the fricatives , , , , respectively, but not with each other, and there were no other significant changes to the consonant phonemes since then. However, some notable dialectal variants and allophones have appeared, among which:
* In many regions of Brazil, and have the affricate allophones and , respectively, before and . (Quebec French has a similar phenomenon, with alveolar affricates instead of postalveolars. Japanese is another example).
* At the end of a syllable, the phoneme has the allophone in Brazilian Portuguese (L-vocalization).
* In many parts of Brazil and Angola, intervocalic is pronounced as a nasalized palatal approximant which nasalizes the preceding vowel, so that, for instance, is pronounced .
* In most of Brazil, the alveolar sibilants and occur in complementary distribution at the ends of syllables, depending on whether the consonant that follows is voiceless or voiced, as in English. But in most of Portugal and parts of Brazil, sibilants are postalveolar at the ends of syllables, before voiceless consonants, and before voiced consonants (in Judeo-Spanish, is often replaced with at the ends of syllables, too).
* There is considerable dialectal variation in the value of the rhotic phoneme . See Guttural R in Portuguese, for details.
;Excerpt from the Portuguese national epic Os LusÃadas, by author LuÃs de Camões (I, 33)
A notable aspect of the grammar of Portuguese is the verb. Morphologically, more verbal inflections from classical Latin have been preserved by Portuguese than by any other major Romance language. See Romance copula, for a detailed comparison. It has also some innovations not found in other Romance languages (except Galician and the Fala):
* The present perfect tense has an iterative sense unique to Galician-Portuguese language group. It denotes an action or a series of actions which began in the past and are expected to keep repeating in the future. For instance, the sentence Tenho tentado falar com ela would be translated to "I have been trying to talk to her", not "I have tried to talk to her". On the other hand, the correct translation of the question "Have you heard the latest news?" is not *Tem ouvido a última notÃcia?, but Ouviu a última notÃcia?, since no repetition is implied. Squartini, Mario (1998) Verbal Periphrases in Romance â Aspect, Actionality, and Grammaticalization ISBN 3-11-016160-5
* The future subjunctive tense, which was developed by medieval West Iberian Romance, but has now fallen into disuse in Spanish and Galician, is still used in vernacular Portuguese. It appears in dependent clauses that denote a condition which must be fulfilled in the future, so that the independent clause will occur. English normally employs the present tense under the same circumstances:
:Se eu for eleito presidente, mudarei a lei.
:If I am elected president, I will change the law.
:Quando fores mais velho, vais entender.
:When you are older, you will understand.
* The personal infinitive: infinitives can inflect according to their subject in person and number, often showing who is expected to perform a certain action; cf. Ã melhor voltares "It is better [for you] to go back," Ã melhor voltarmos "It is better [for us] to go back." Perhaps for this reason, infinitive clauses replace subjunctive clauses more often in Portuguese than in other Romance languages.
Portuguese is written with 23 or 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, making use of five diacritics to denote stress, vowel height, contraction, nasalization, and other sound changes (acute accent, grave accent, circumflex accent, tilde, and cedilla). Accented characters and digraphs are not counted as separate letters for collation purposes.
* Portuguese literature
* Portuguese poetry
* List of Portuguese language poets
* Brazilian literature
* List of Brazilian poets
* Lusophone
* Geographic distribution of Portuguese
* List of countries where Portuguese is an official language
* Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP)
* Instituto Camões
* International Portuguese Language Institute
* Museum of the Portuguese Language
* Portuguese-based creole languages
* Portuñol
* Portuguese in the United States
* List of English words of Portuguese origin
* Spelling reforms of Portuguese
* História da Lingua Portuguesa Instituto Camões
* A LÃngua Portuguesa in Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil (...)
* Poesia e Prosa Medievais, by Maria Ema Tarracha Ferreira, Ulisseia 1998, 3rd ed., ISBN 978-972-568-124-4.
* Bases Temáticas â LÃngua Portuguesa in Instituto Camões
* Portuguese Literature in The Catholic Encyclopedia
* International Phonetic Association (1999) Handbook of the International Phonetic Association ISBN 0-521-63751-1
* Mateus, Maria Helena & d'Andrade, Ernesto (2000) The Phonology of Portuguese ISBN 0-19-823581-X (Excerpt available at Google Books)
* Bergström, Magnus & Reis, Neves Prontuário Ortográfico Editorial NotÃcias, 2004.
* A pronúncia do português europeu - European Portuguese Pronunciation
* Dialects of Portuguese at the Instituto Camões
* Audio samples of the dialects of Portugal
* Audio samples of the dialects from outside Europe
* Antônio Houaiss (2000), Dicionário Houaiss da LÃngua Portuguesa (228,500 entries).
* Aurélio Buarque de Holanda Ferreira, Novo Dicionário da LÃngua Portuguesa (1809pp)
* English-Portuguese-Chinese Dictionary (Freeware, for Windows/Linux/Mac)
* Lindley Cintra, LuÃs F. Nova Proposta de Classificação dos Dialectos Galego-Portugueses (PDF) Boletim de Filologia, Lisboa, Centro de Estudos Filológicos, 1971.
*Swadesh list in English and Portuguese
* English Portuguese Translation Dictionary for English Portuguese translations
* Learn Portuguese BBC
* Portuguese Language Notes BBC
* AULP - Associação das Universidades de LÃngua Portuguesa Portuguese Language Universities Association.
* Portuguese in East Timor an interview with Dr. Geoffrey Hull.
* Portuguese Dictionary with gender and type of words.
* ABL - Academia Brasileira de letras (em português) - (Brazilian Academy of Letters) (Portuguese)
* Brazilian Portuguese Free resources for Portuguese learners.
* EasyPortuguese Free Portuguese learning site with audio.
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Portuguese_language | What are the two main groups of Portuguese dialects? | The two main groups of dialects are Brazil and the Old World. | data/set5/a1 | Portuguese_language
Portuguese ( or lÃngua portuguesa) is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia and northern Portugal. It is derived from the Latin spoken by the romanized pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula (namely the Gallaeci, the Lusitanians, the Celtici and the Conii) around 2000 years ago. It spread worldwide in the 15th and 16th centuries as Portugal established a colonial and commercial empire (1415â1999) which spanned from Brazil in the Americas to Goa and other parts of India, Macau in China and Timor (north of Australia). It was used as the exclusive lingua franca on the island of Sri Lanka for almost 350 years. During that time, many creole languages based on Portuguese also appeared around the world, especially in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean.
Today it is one of the world's major languages, ranked seventh according to number of native speakers (between 205 and 230 million). It is the language of about half of South America's population, even though Brazil is the only Portuguese-speaking nation in the Americas. It is also a major lingua franca in Portugal's former colonial possessions in Africa. It is an official language in nine countries (see the table on the right), also being co-official with Cantonese Chinese in Macau and Tetum in East Timor. There are sizeable communities of Portuguese speakers in various regions of North America, notably in the United States (New Jersey, New England, California and south Florida) and in Ontario, Canada.
In various aspects, the system of sounds in Portuguese is more similar to the phonologies of Catalan or French than, say, those of Spanish or Italian. Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes once called Portuguese "the sweet language", /ref> Lope de Vega referred to it as "suave" 'Encyclopedia of Literature' Joseph T. Shipley; Philosophical Library, 1946. 1188 pgs. while Brazilian writer Olavo Bilac poetically described it as a última flor do Lácio, inculta e bela: "the last flower of Latium, wild and beautiful". Portuguese is also termed "the language of Camões", after one of Portugal's best known literary figures, LuÃs Vaz de Camões.
Countries and regions where Portuguese has official status.
Members of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries.
Today, Portuguese is the official language of Angola, Brazil (190.6 million), IBGE Official website Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Portugal (10.6 million), INE Official website São Tomé and PrÃncipe and Mozambique. CPLP Official website It is also one of the official languages of the special administrative region of Macau (with Chinese) and East Timor, (with Tetum). It is the language of most of the population in Portugal (100%) , Brazil (100%) , São Tomé and PrÃncipe (99.8%) and Angola (80%), and is the most widely spoken language in Mozambique (40%), though only 6.5% are native speakers. No data are available for Cape Verde, but almost all the population is bilingual, and the monolingual population speaks Cape Verdean Creole. See the main article Geographic distribution of Portuguese, for references.
Small Portuguese-speaking communities subsist in former overseas colonies of Portugal such as Macau, where it is spoken by 7% of the population, and East Timor (13.6%).
Uruguay gave Portuguese an equal status to Spanish in its educational system at the north border with Brazil. In the rest of the country, it is taught as an obligatory subject beginning in the 6th grade. Uruguay recently adopted Portuguese language in its education system as an obligatory subject /ref>
It is also spoken by substantial immigrant communities, though not official, in Andorra, Australia, The Portuguese-Speaking Community in Australia France, Luxembourg, Jersey (with a statistically significant Portuguese-speaking community of approximately 10,000 people), Paraguay, Namibia, South Africa, Switzerland, Venezuela, Japan JAPÃO: IMIGRANTES BRASILEIROS POPULARIZAM LÃNGUA PORTUGUESA and the U.S. states of California, Connecticut, Where America's Other Languages Are Spoken Florida, Widely spoken but 'minor'? Portuguese seeks respect Massachusetts, New Jersey, Hispanic Reading Room of the U.S. Library of Congress website, Twentieth-Century Arrivals from Portugal Settle in Newark, New Jersey, New York Brazucas (Brazilians living in New York) and Rhode Island. Hispanic Reading Room of the U.S. Library of Congress website, Whaling, Fishing, and Industrial Employment in Southeastern New England
In some parts of India, such as Goa Portuguese Language in Goa and Daman and Diu, The Portuguese Experience: The Case of Goa, Daman and Diu Portuguese is still spoken. There are also significant populations of Portuguese speakers in Canada (mainly concentrated in and around Toronto), Multicultural Canada Bermuda World InfoZone: Bermuda and the Netherlands Antilles.
Portuguese is an official language of several international organizations. The Community of Portuguese Language Countries (with the Portuguese acronym CPLP) consists of the eight independent countries that have Portuguese as an official language. It is also an official language of the European Union, accounting for 3% of its population, EUROPA website Languages in the EU Mercosul, the Organization of American States, the Organization of Ibero-American States, the Union of South American Nations, and the African Union (one of the working languages) and one of the official languages of other organizations. The Portuguese language is gaining popularity in Africa, Asia, and South America as a second language for study.
Estação da Luz, home of the Museum of the Portuguese Language, in São Paulo, Brazil.
Portuguese and Spanish are the fastest-growing European languages (with the exception of English, being the world lingua franca) , and, according to estimates by UNESCO, the Portuguese language has the highest potential for growth as an international language in southern Africa and South America. The Portuguese-speaking African countries are expected to have a combined population of 83 million by 2050. In total, the Portuguese-speaking countries will have 335 million people by the same year. Since 1991, when Brazil signed into the economic market of Mercosul with other South American nations, such as Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay, there has been an increase in interest in the study of Portuguese in those South American countries. The demographic weight of Brazil in the continent will continue to strengthen the presence of the language in the region. Although in the early 21st century, after Macau was ceded to China in 1999, the use of Portuguese was in decline in Asia, it is becoming a language of opportunity there; mostly because of East Timor's boost in the number of speakers in the last five years but also because of increased Chinese diplomatic and financial ties with Portuguese-speaking countries.
In July 2007, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema announced his government's decision to establish Portuguese as Equatorial Guinea's third official language, to meet the requirements to apply for full membership of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries. This upgrading from its current Associate Observer condition would result in Equatorial Guinea being able to access several professional and academic exchange programs and the facilitation of cross-border circulation of citizens. Its application is currently being assessed by other CPLP members. "Obiang convierte al portugués en tercer idioma oficial para entrar en la Comunidad lusófona de Naciones", Terra. 13-07-2007
In March 1994 the Bosque de Portugal (Portugal's Woods) was founded in the Brazilian city of Curitiba. The park houses the Portuguese Language Memorial, which honors the Portuguese immigrants and the countries that adopted the Portuguese language. Originally there were seven nations represented with pillars, but the independence of East Timor brought yet another pillar for that nation in 2007.
In March 2006, the Museum of the Portuguese Language, an interactive museum about the Portuguese language, was founded in São Paulo, Brazil, the city with the greatest number of Portuguese speakers in the world.
Portuguese is a pluricentric language with two main groups of dialects, those of Brazil and those of the Old World. For historical reasons, the dialects of Africa and Asia are generally closer to those of Portugal than the Brazilian dialects, although in some aspects of their phonetics, especially the pronunciation of unstressed vowels, they resemble Brazilian Portuguese more than European Portuguese. They have not been studied as widely as European and Brazilian Portuguese.
Audio samples of some dialects of Portuguese are available below. From Audio samples of the dialects of Portuguese at the Instituto Camões website. There are some differences between the areas but these are the best approximations possible. For example, the caipira dialect has some differences from the one of Minas Gerais, but in general it is very close. A good example of Brazilian Portuguese may be found in the capital city, BrasÃlia, because of the generalized population from all parts of the country.
Portuguese dialects of Angola
# Benguelense â Benguela province.
# 11px Luandense â Luanda province.
# Sulista â South of Angola.
Dialects of Portuguese in Brazil
# Caipira â States of São Paulo (countryside; the city of São Paulo and the eastern areas of the state have their own accent, called paulistano); southern Minas Gerais, northern Paraná, Goiás and Mato Grosso do Sul.
# Cearense â Ceará.
# Baiano â Bahia.
# 11px Fluminense â Variants spoken in the states of Rio de Janeiro (excluding the city of Rio de Janeiro and its adjacent metropolitan areas, which have their own dialect, called carioca).
# Gaúcho â Rio Grande do Sul. (There are many distinct accents in Rio Grande do Sul, mainly due to the heavy influx of European immigrants of diverse origins, those which have settled several colonies throughout the state.)
# Mineiro â Minas Gerais (not prevalent in the Triângulo Mineiro, southern and southeastern Minas Gerais and also excluding the city of Belo Horizonte, which has its own accent.).
# 11px Nordestino â northeastern states of Brazil (Pernambuco, ParaÃba and Rio Grande do Norte have a particular way of speaking). Note: the speaker of this sound file is from Rio, and he is talking about his experience with Nordestino and Nortista accents.
# Nortista â Amazon Basin states.
# Paulistano â Variants spoken around São Paulo city and the eastern areas of São Paulo state.
# Sertanejo â States of Goiás and Mato Grosso (the city of Cuiabá has a particular way of speaking).
# Sulista â Variants spoken in the areas between the northern regions of Rio Grande do Sul and southern regions of São Paulo state. (The cities of Curitiba, Florianópolis, and Itapetininga have fairly distinct accents as well.)
# Carioca â Variants spoken in Rio de Janeiro City and Niteroi
Dialects of Portuguese in Portugal
# 11px Açoriano (Azorean) â Azores.
# 11px Alentejano â Alentejo
# 11px Algarvio â Algarve (there is a particular dialect in a small part of western Algarve).
# 11px Alto-Minhoto â North of Braga (hinterland).
# 11px Baixo-Beirão; Alto-Alentejano â Central Portugal (hinterland).
# 11px Beirão â Central Portugal.
# 11px Estremenho â Regions of Coimbra and Lisbon (the Lisbon dialect has some peculiar features not shared with the one of Coimbra).
# 11px Madeirense (Madeiran) â Madeira.
# 11px Nortenho â Regions of Braga and Porto.
# 11px Transmontano â Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro.
* Cape Verde â 11px Português cabo-verdiano (Cape Verdean Portuguese)
* Daman and Diu, India â Damaense.
* East Timor â 11px Timorense (East Timorese)
* Goa, India â Goês.
* Guinea-Bissau â 11px Guineense (Guinean Portuguese).
* Macau, China â 11px Macaense (Macanese)
* Mozambique â 11px Moçambicano (Mozambican)
* São Tomé and PrÃncipe â 11px Santomense
* Uruguay â Dialectos Portugueses del Uruguay (DPU).
Differences between dialects are mostly of accent and vocabulary, but between the Brazilian dialects and other dialects, especially in their most colloquial forms, there can also be some grammatical differences. The Portuguese-based creoles spoken in various parts of Africa, Asia, and the Americas are independent languages which should not be confused with Portuguese itself.
Baroque Library of the Coimbra University, Portugal.
Arriving in the Iberian Peninsula in 216 BC, the Romans brought with them the Latin language, from which all Romance languages descend. The language was spread by arriving Roman soldiers, settlers, and merchants, who built Roman cities mostly near the settlements of previous civilizations.
Between 409 and 711 AD, as the Roman Empire collapsed in Western Europe, the Iberian Peninsula was conquered by Germanic peoples (Migration Period). The occupiers, mainly Suebi and Visigoths, quickly adopted late Roman culture and the Vulgar Latin dialects of the peninsula. After the Moorish invasion of 711, Arabic became the administrative language in the conquered regions, but most of the population continued to speak a form of Romance commonly known as Mozarabic. The influence exerted by Arabic on the Romance dialects spoken in the Christian kingdoms of the north was small, affecting mainly their lexicon.
The earliest surviving records of a distinctively Portuguese language are administrative documents of the 9th century, still interspersed with many Latin phrases. Today this phase is known as Proto-Portuguese (between the 9th and the 12th centuries). In the first period of Old Portuguese â Galician-Portuguese Period (from the 12th to the 14th century) â the language gradually came into general use. For some time, it was the language of preference for lyric poetry in Christian Hispania, much as Occitan was the language of the poetry of the troubadours. Portugal became an independent kingdom from the Kingdom of Leon in 1139, under king Afonso I of Portugal. In 1290, king Denis of Portugal created the first Portuguese university in Lisbon (the Estudos Gerais, later moved to Coimbra) and decreed that Portuguese, then simply called the "common language" should be known as the Portuguese language and used officially.
In the second period of Old Portuguese, from the 14th to the 16th centuries, with the Portuguese discoveries, the language was taken to many regions of Asia, Africa and the Americas (nowadays, the great majority of Portuguese speakers live in Brazil, in South America). By the 16th century, it had become a lingua franca in Asia and Africa, used not only for colonial administration and trade but also for communication between local officials and Europeans of all nationalities. Its spread was helped by mixed marriages between Portuguese and local people, and by its association with Roman Catholic missionary efforts, which led to the formation of a creole language called Kristang in many parts of Asia (from the word cristão, "Christian"). The language continued to be popular in parts of Asia until the 19th century. Some Portuguese-speaking Christian communities in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Indonesia preserved their language even after they were isolated from Portugal.
The end of the Old Portuguese period was marked by the publication of the Cancioneiro Geral by Garcia de Resende, in 1516. The early times of Modern Portuguese, which spans a period from the 16th century to the present day, were characterized by an increase in the number of learned words borrowed from Classical Latin and Classical Greek since the Renaissance, which greatly enriched the lexicon.
A distinctive feature of Portuguese is that it preserved the stressed vowels of Vulgar Latin, which became diphthongs in other Romance languages; cf. Fr. pierre, Sp. piedra, It. pietra, Ro. piatrÄ, Port. pedra ("stone"), from Lat. petram; or Sp. fuego, It. fuoco, Fr. feu, Ro. foc, Port. fogo, from Lat. focus ("fire"). Another characteristic of early Portuguese was the loss of intervocalic l and n, sometimes followed by the merger of the two surrounding vowels, or by the insertion of an epenthetic vowel between them: cf. Lat. salire ("to leave"), tenere ("to have"), catenam ("chain"), Sp. salir, tener, cadena, Port. sair, ter, cadeia.
When the elided consonant was n, it often nasalized the preceding vowel: cf. Lat. manum ("hand"), ranam ("frog"), bonum ("good"), Port. mão, rãa, bõo (now mão, rã, bom). This process was the source of most of the nasal diphthongs which are typical of Portuguese. In particular, the Latin endings -anem, -anum and -onem became -ão in most cases, cf. Lat. canem ("dog"), germanum ("brother"), rationem ("reason") with Modern Port. cão, irmão, razão, and their plurals -anes, -anos, -ones normally became -ães, -ãos, -ões, cf. cães, irmãos, razões.
Library of the Mafra National Palace, Portugal.
Most of the lexicon of Portuguese is derived from Latin. Nevertheless, because of the Moorish occupation of the Iberian Peninsula during the Middle Ages, and the participation of Portugal in the Age of Discovery, it has adopted loanwords from all over the world.
Very few Portuguese words can be traced to the pre-Roman inhabitants of Portugal, which included the Gallaeci, Lusitanians, Celtici and Cynetes. The Phoenicians and Carthaginians, briefly present, also left some scarce traces. Some notable examples are abóbora "pumpkin" and bezerro "year-old calf", from the nearby Celtiberian language (probably through the Celtici); cerveja "beer", from Celtic; and cachorro "dog", from Basque.
In the 5th century, the Iberian Peninsula (the Roman Hispania) was conquered by the Germanic Suebi and Visigoths. As they adopted the Roman civilization and language, however, these people contributed only a few words to the lexicon, mostly related to warfare â such as espora "spur", estaca "stake", and guerra "war", from Gothic *spaúra, *stakka, and *wirro, respectively. The influence also exists in toponymic and patronymic surnames borne by Visigoth sovereigns and their descendants, and it dwells on placenames such has Ermesinde, Esposende and Resende where sinde and sende are derived from the Germanic "sinths" (military expedition) and in the case of Resende, the prefix re comes from Germanic "reths" (council).
Between the 9th and 13th centuries, Portuguese acquired about 800 words from Arabic by influence of Moorish Iberia. They are often recognizable by the initial Arabic article a(l)-, and include many common words such as aldeia "village" from اÙضÙعة aldaya, alface "lettuce" from اÙخس alkhass, armazém "warehouse" from اÙÙ
خز٠almahazan, and azeite "olive oil" from اÙزÙت azzait. From Arabic came also the grammatically peculiar word oxalá إ٠شاء اÙÙÙ "hopefully". The Mozambican currency name metical was derived from the word Ù
تÙا٠mitqÄl, a unit of weight. The word Mozambique itself is from the Arabic name of sultan Muça Alebique (Musa Alibiki).
Starting in the 15th century, the Portuguese maritime explorations led to the introduction of many loanwords from Asian languages. For instance, catana "cutlass" from Japanese katana and chá "tea" from Chinese 'chá'.
From South America came batata "potato", from Taino; ananás and abacaxi, from Tupi-Guarani naná and Tupi ibá cati, respectively (two species of pineapple), and tucano "toucan" from Guarani tucan. See List of Brazil state name etymologies, for some more examples.
From the 16th to the 19th centuries, because of the role of Portugal as intermediary in the Atlantic slave trade, and the establishment of large Portuguese colonies in Angola, Mozambique, and Brazil, Portuguese got several words of African and Amerind origin, especially names for most of the animals and plants found in those territories. While those terms are mostly used in the former colonies, many became current in European Portuguese as well. From Kimbundu, for example, came kifumate â cafuné "head caress", kusula â caçula "youngest child", marimbondo "tropical wasp", and kubungula â bungular "to dance like a wizard".
Finally, it has received a steady influx of loanwords from other European languages. For example, melena "hair lock", fiambre "wet-cured ham" (in contrast with presunto "dry-cured ham" from Latin prae-exsuctus "dehydrated"), and castelhano "Castilian", from Spanish; colchete/crochê "bracket"/"crochet", paletó "jacket", batom "lipstick", and filé/filete "steak"/"slice" respectively, from French crochet, paletot, bâton, filet; macarrão "pasta", piloto "pilot", carroça "carriage", and barraca "barrack", from Italian maccherone, pilota, carrozza, baracca; and bife "steak", futebol, revólver, estoque, folclore, time from English beef,
football, revolver, stock, folklore, and team.
Portuguese belongs to the West Iberian branch of the Romance languages, and it has special ties with the following members of this group:
* Galician and Fala, its closest relatives. See below.
* Spanish, the major language closest to Portuguese. (See also Differences between Spanish and Portuguese.)
* Mirandese and Leonese, two other West Iberian languages spoken in Portugal.
* Judeo-Portuguese and Judeo-Spanish, languages spoken by Sephardic Jews, and which remained close to Portuguese and Spanish.
Despite the obvious lexical and grammatical similarities between Portuguese and other Romance languages, it is not mutually intelligible with them. Apart from Galician, Portuguese speakers will usually need some formal study of basic grammar and vocabulary, before attaining a reasonable level of comprehension of those languages, and vice versa. Native speakers of Portuguese do tend to understand standard Spanish which is spoken clearly, but the reverse is generally not true unless formal education is involved.
The closest language to Portuguese is Galician, spoken in the autonomous community of Galicia (northwestern Spain). The two were at one time a single language, known today as Galician-Portuguese, but since the political separation of Portugal from Galicia they have diverged somewhat, especially in pronunciation and vocabulary. Nevertheless, the core vocabulary and grammar of Galician are still noticeably closer to Portuguese than to those of Spanish. In particular, like Portuguese, it uses the future subjunctive, the personal infinitive, and the synthetic pluperfect (see the section on the grammar of Portuguese, below). Mutual intelligibility (estimated at 85% by R. A. Hall, Jr., 1989) Ethnologue is good between Galicians and northern Portuguese, but poorer between Galicians and speakers from central Portugal.
The Fala language is another descendant of Galician-Portuguese, spoken by a small number of people in the Spanish towns of Valverde del Fresno, Eljas and San MartÃn de Trevejo (autonomous community of Extremadura, near the border with Portugal).
Portuguese has provided loanwords to many languages, such as Indonesian, Manado Malay, Sri Lankan Tamil and Sinhalese (see Sri Lanka Indo-Portuguese), Malay, Bengali, English, Hindi, Konkani, Marathi, Tetum, Xitsonga, Papiamentu, Japanese, Lanc-Patuá (spoken in northern Brazil) and Sranan Tongo (spoken in Suriname). It left a strong influence on the lÃngua brasÃlica, a Tupi-Guarani language which was the most widely spoken in Brazil until the 18th century, and on the language spoken around Sikka in Flores Island, Indonesia. In nearby Larantuka, Portuguese is used for prayers in Holy Week rituals.
The Japanese-Portuguese dictionary Nippo Jisho (1603) was the first dictionary of Japanese in a European language, a product of Jesuit missionary activity in Japan. Building on the work of earlier Portuguese missionaries, the Dictionarium Anamiticum, Lusitanum et Latinum (Annamite-Portuguese-Latin dictionary) of Alexandre de Rhodes (1651) introduced the modern orthography of Vietnamese, which is based on the orthography of 17th-century Portuguese. The Romanization of Chinese was also influenced by the Portuguese language (among others), particularly regarding Chinese surnames; one example is Mei. During 1583-88 Italian Jesuits Michele Ruggieri and Matteo Ricci created a Portuguese-Chinese dictionary - the first ever European-Chinese dictionary. Yves Camus, "Jesuits' Journeys in Chinese Studies" "Dicionário Português-Chinês : Pu Han ci dian : Portuguese-Chinese dictionary", by Michele Ruggieri, Matteo Ricci; edited by John W. Witek. Published 2001, Biblioteca Nacional. ISBN 9725652983. Partial preview available on Google Books
See also List of English words of Portuguese origin, Loan words in Indonesian, Japanese words of Portuguese origin, Borrowed words in Malay, Sinhala words of Portuguese origin, Loan words from Portuguese in Sri Lankan Tamil.
Beginning in the 16th century, the extensive contacts between Portuguese travelers and settlers, African slaves, and local populations led to the appearance of many pidgins with varying amounts of Portuguese influence. As each of these pidgins became the mother tongue of succeeding generations, they evolved into fully fledged creole languages, which remained in use in many parts of Asia and Africa until the 18th century. Some Portuguese-based or Portuguese-influenced creoles are still spoken today, by over 3 million people worldwide, especially people of partial Portuguese ancestry.
There is a growing number of people in the Portuguese-speaking media and the internet who are presenting the case to the CPLP and other organizations to run a debate in the Lusophone community with the purpose of bringing forward a petition to make Portuguese an official language of the United Nations.
In October 2005, during the international Convention of the Elos Club International that took place in Tavira, Portugal, ONU: Petição para tornar português lÃngua oficial a petition was written and unanimously approved whose text can be found on the internet with the title Petição Para Tornar Oficial o Idioma Português na ONU. Romulo Alexandre Soares, president of the Brazil-Portugal Chamber highlights that the positioning of Brazil in the international arena as one of the emergent powers of the 21st century, the size of its population, and the presence of the language around the world provides legitimacy and justifies a petition to the UN to make the Portuguese language an official language of the UN. Português pode ser lÃngua oficial na ONU
Several factors detract from this campaign. The current official languages of the UN are either 1) official/dominant in many countries (English, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, and French) or 2) have several hundreds of millions of speakers (Chinese). English, Spanish, Russian and Arabic fulfill both criteria. Portuguese is a global language in that it is the official tongue of several sovereign countries on four continents. It also has over 200 million speakers. However, it exhibits some noticeable differences when compared to the current 6 UN official languages. For example, English, French, Arabic and Spanish are each official languages of multiple states and of over half of the world's countries. In contrast, four out of every five speakers of the Portuguese-speaking world live in just one country: Brazil. In addition to Brazil, Portuguese is the official language in only 7 other sovereign states; however, English is official in 53 states, French in 29 states, Arabic in 25 states, and Spanish in 20 states.
More significantly, in each part of the world with a Portuguese-speaking country, this language is overshadowed by other powerful languages that are already official languages of the UN. For example, in the Americas, the 190 million Portuguese-speaking Brazilians are overshadowed by the most spoken languages in the Western Hemisphere: Spanish (~360 million speakers) and English (~340 million speakers). Portuguese is overshadowed to an even greater extent in Europe, the continent in which four of the six UN languages originated (English, French, Spanish, and Russian). In the European context, Portuguese is not even among the ten most spoken languages on the continent, with a number of speakers comparable to those of Czech and Bulgarian. In Africa, Portuguese is eclipsed as a continental lingua franca by English and French in countries that surround Cape Verde, São Tomé and PrÃncipe, Guinea-Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique. Finally in Asia, a continent with several languages that have hundreds of millions of speakers, the only sovereign state with Portuguese as an official language is East Timor, which has only a million people. While Brazilian migration has brought 300,000 fluent Portuguese speakers to Japan, Portuguese does not enjoy any official status whatsoever in that country. Therefore, while Portuguese will gain increasing importance as Brazil continues its development as a major economy, it will likely face the same hurdles that prevented Japanese and German (both languages of major global economies with millions of speakers) from becoming both international languages and official ones of the UN.
There is a maximum of 9 oral vowels and 19 consonants, though some varieties of the language have fewer phonemes (Brazilian Portuguese has 8 oral vowels). There are also five nasal vowels, which some linguists regard as allophones of the oral vowels, ten oral diphthongs, and five nasal diphthongs. In total, Brazilian Portuguese has 13 vowel phonemes. /ref> Handbook of the International Phonetic Association'' pg. 126-130; the reference applies to the entire section
Chart of monophthongs of the Portuguese of Lisbon
To the seven vowels of Vulgar Latin, European Portuguese has added two near central vowels, one of which tends to be elided in rapid speech, like the e caduc of French (represented as either , or , or ). The high vowels and the low vowels are four distinct phonemes, and they alternate in various forms of apophony. Like Catalan, Portuguese uses vowel quality to contrast stressed syllables with unstressed syllables: isolated vowels tend to be raised, and in some cases centralized, when unstressed. Nasal diphthongs occur mostly at the ends of words.
The consonant inventory of Portuguese is fairly conservative. The medieval affricates , , , merged with the fricatives , , , , respectively, but not with each other, and there were no other significant changes to the consonant phonemes since then. However, some notable dialectal variants and allophones have appeared, among which:
* In many regions of Brazil, and have the affricate allophones and , respectively, before and . (Quebec French has a similar phenomenon, with alveolar affricates instead of postalveolars. Japanese is another example).
* At the end of a syllable, the phoneme has the allophone in Brazilian Portuguese (L-vocalization).
* In many parts of Brazil and Angola, intervocalic is pronounced as a nasalized palatal approximant which nasalizes the preceding vowel, so that, for instance, is pronounced .
* In most of Brazil, the alveolar sibilants and occur in complementary distribution at the ends of syllables, depending on whether the consonant that follows is voiceless or voiced, as in English. But in most of Portugal and parts of Brazil, sibilants are postalveolar at the ends of syllables, before voiceless consonants, and before voiced consonants (in Judeo-Spanish, is often replaced with at the ends of syllables, too).
* There is considerable dialectal variation in the value of the rhotic phoneme . See Guttural R in Portuguese, for details.
;Excerpt from the Portuguese national epic Os LusÃadas, by author LuÃs de Camões (I, 33)
A notable aspect of the grammar of Portuguese is the verb. Morphologically, more verbal inflections from classical Latin have been preserved by Portuguese than by any other major Romance language. See Romance copula, for a detailed comparison. It has also some innovations not found in other Romance languages (except Galician and the Fala):
* The present perfect tense has an iterative sense unique to Galician-Portuguese language group. It denotes an action or a series of actions which began in the past and are expected to keep repeating in the future. For instance, the sentence Tenho tentado falar com ela would be translated to "I have been trying to talk to her", not "I have tried to talk to her". On the other hand, the correct translation of the question "Have you heard the latest news?" is not *Tem ouvido a última notÃcia?, but Ouviu a última notÃcia?, since no repetition is implied. Squartini, Mario (1998) Verbal Periphrases in Romance â Aspect, Actionality, and Grammaticalization ISBN 3-11-016160-5
* The future subjunctive tense, which was developed by medieval West Iberian Romance, but has now fallen into disuse in Spanish and Galician, is still used in vernacular Portuguese. It appears in dependent clauses that denote a condition which must be fulfilled in the future, so that the independent clause will occur. English normally employs the present tense under the same circumstances:
:Se eu for eleito presidente, mudarei a lei.
:If I am elected president, I will change the law.
:Quando fores mais velho, vais entender.
:When you are older, you will understand.
* The personal infinitive: infinitives can inflect according to their subject in person and number, often showing who is expected to perform a certain action; cf. Ã melhor voltares "It is better [for you] to go back," Ã melhor voltarmos "It is better [for us] to go back." Perhaps for this reason, infinitive clauses replace subjunctive clauses more often in Portuguese than in other Romance languages.
Portuguese is written with 23 or 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, making use of five diacritics to denote stress, vowel height, contraction, nasalization, and other sound changes (acute accent, grave accent, circumflex accent, tilde, and cedilla). Accented characters and digraphs are not counted as separate letters for collation purposes.
* Portuguese literature
* Portuguese poetry
* List of Portuguese language poets
* Brazilian literature
* List of Brazilian poets
* Lusophone
* Geographic distribution of Portuguese
* List of countries where Portuguese is an official language
* Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP)
* Instituto Camões
* International Portuguese Language Institute
* Museum of the Portuguese Language
* Portuguese-based creole languages
* Portuñol
* Portuguese in the United States
* List of English words of Portuguese origin
* Spelling reforms of Portuguese
* História da Lingua Portuguesa Instituto Camões
* A LÃngua Portuguesa in Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil (...)
* Poesia e Prosa Medievais, by Maria Ema Tarracha Ferreira, Ulisseia 1998, 3rd ed., ISBN 978-972-568-124-4.
* Bases Temáticas â LÃngua Portuguesa in Instituto Camões
* Portuguese Literature in The Catholic Encyclopedia
* International Phonetic Association (1999) Handbook of the International Phonetic Association ISBN 0-521-63751-1
* Mateus, Maria Helena & d'Andrade, Ernesto (2000) The Phonology of Portuguese ISBN 0-19-823581-X (Excerpt available at Google Books)
* Bergström, Magnus & Reis, Neves Prontuário Ortográfico Editorial NotÃcias, 2004.
* A pronúncia do português europeu - European Portuguese Pronunciation
* Dialects of Portuguese at the Instituto Camões
* Audio samples of the dialects of Portugal
* Audio samples of the dialects from outside Europe
* Antônio Houaiss (2000), Dicionário Houaiss da LÃngua Portuguesa (228,500 entries).
* Aurélio Buarque de Holanda Ferreira, Novo Dicionário da LÃngua Portuguesa (1809pp)
* English-Portuguese-Chinese Dictionary (Freeware, for Windows/Linux/Mac)
* Lindley Cintra, LuÃs F. Nova Proposta de Classificação dos Dialectos Galego-Portugueses (PDF) Boletim de Filologia, Lisboa, Centro de Estudos Filológicos, 1971.
*Swadesh list in English and Portuguese
* English Portuguese Translation Dictionary for English Portuguese translations
* Learn Portuguese BBC
* Portuguese Language Notes BBC
* AULP - Associação das Universidades de LÃngua Portuguesa Portuguese Language Universities Association.
* Portuguese in East Timor an interview with Dr. Geoffrey Hull.
* Portuguese Dictionary with gender and type of words.
* ABL - Academia Brasileira de letras (em português) - (Brazilian Academy of Letters) (Portuguese)
* Brazilian Portuguese Free resources for Portuguese learners.
* EasyPortuguese Free Portuguese learning site with audio.
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Portuguese_language | What event marked the end of the Old Portuguese period? | The publication of the Cancioneiro Geral by Garcia de Resende in 1516 | data/set5/a1 | Portuguese_language
Portuguese ( or lÃngua portuguesa) is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia and northern Portugal. It is derived from the Latin spoken by the romanized pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula (namely the Gallaeci, the Lusitanians, the Celtici and the Conii) around 2000 years ago. It spread worldwide in the 15th and 16th centuries as Portugal established a colonial and commercial empire (1415â1999) which spanned from Brazil in the Americas to Goa and other parts of India, Macau in China and Timor (north of Australia). It was used as the exclusive lingua franca on the island of Sri Lanka for almost 350 years. During that time, many creole languages based on Portuguese also appeared around the world, especially in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean.
Today it is one of the world's major languages, ranked seventh according to number of native speakers (between 205 and 230 million). It is the language of about half of South America's population, even though Brazil is the only Portuguese-speaking nation in the Americas. It is also a major lingua franca in Portugal's former colonial possessions in Africa. It is an official language in nine countries (see the table on the right), also being co-official with Cantonese Chinese in Macau and Tetum in East Timor. There are sizeable communities of Portuguese speakers in various regions of North America, notably in the United States (New Jersey, New England, California and south Florida) and in Ontario, Canada.
In various aspects, the system of sounds in Portuguese is more similar to the phonologies of Catalan or French than, say, those of Spanish or Italian. Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes once called Portuguese "the sweet language", /ref> Lope de Vega referred to it as "suave" 'Encyclopedia of Literature' Joseph T. Shipley; Philosophical Library, 1946. 1188 pgs. while Brazilian writer Olavo Bilac poetically described it as a última flor do Lácio, inculta e bela: "the last flower of Latium, wild and beautiful". Portuguese is also termed "the language of Camões", after one of Portugal's best known literary figures, LuÃs Vaz de Camões.
Countries and regions where Portuguese has official status.
Members of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries.
Today, Portuguese is the official language of Angola, Brazil (190.6 million), IBGE Official website Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Portugal (10.6 million), INE Official website São Tomé and PrÃncipe and Mozambique. CPLP Official website It is also one of the official languages of the special administrative region of Macau (with Chinese) and East Timor, (with Tetum). It is the language of most of the population in Portugal (100%) , Brazil (100%) , São Tomé and PrÃncipe (99.8%) and Angola (80%), and is the most widely spoken language in Mozambique (40%), though only 6.5% are native speakers. No data are available for Cape Verde, but almost all the population is bilingual, and the monolingual population speaks Cape Verdean Creole. See the main article Geographic distribution of Portuguese, for references.
Small Portuguese-speaking communities subsist in former overseas colonies of Portugal such as Macau, where it is spoken by 7% of the population, and East Timor (13.6%).
Uruguay gave Portuguese an equal status to Spanish in its educational system at the north border with Brazil. In the rest of the country, it is taught as an obligatory subject beginning in the 6th grade. Uruguay recently adopted Portuguese language in its education system as an obligatory subject /ref>
It is also spoken by substantial immigrant communities, though not official, in Andorra, Australia, The Portuguese-Speaking Community in Australia France, Luxembourg, Jersey (with a statistically significant Portuguese-speaking community of approximately 10,000 people), Paraguay, Namibia, South Africa, Switzerland, Venezuela, Japan JAPÃO: IMIGRANTES BRASILEIROS POPULARIZAM LÃNGUA PORTUGUESA and the U.S. states of California, Connecticut, Where America's Other Languages Are Spoken Florida, Widely spoken but 'minor'? Portuguese seeks respect Massachusetts, New Jersey, Hispanic Reading Room of the U.S. Library of Congress website, Twentieth-Century Arrivals from Portugal Settle in Newark, New Jersey, New York Brazucas (Brazilians living in New York) and Rhode Island. Hispanic Reading Room of the U.S. Library of Congress website, Whaling, Fishing, and Industrial Employment in Southeastern New England
In some parts of India, such as Goa Portuguese Language in Goa and Daman and Diu, The Portuguese Experience: The Case of Goa, Daman and Diu Portuguese is still spoken. There are also significant populations of Portuguese speakers in Canada (mainly concentrated in and around Toronto), Multicultural Canada Bermuda World InfoZone: Bermuda and the Netherlands Antilles.
Portuguese is an official language of several international organizations. The Community of Portuguese Language Countries (with the Portuguese acronym CPLP) consists of the eight independent countries that have Portuguese as an official language. It is also an official language of the European Union, accounting for 3% of its population, EUROPA website Languages in the EU Mercosul, the Organization of American States, the Organization of Ibero-American States, the Union of South American Nations, and the African Union (one of the working languages) and one of the official languages of other organizations. The Portuguese language is gaining popularity in Africa, Asia, and South America as a second language for study.
Estação da Luz, home of the Museum of the Portuguese Language, in São Paulo, Brazil.
Portuguese and Spanish are the fastest-growing European languages (with the exception of English, being the world lingua franca) , and, according to estimates by UNESCO, the Portuguese language has the highest potential for growth as an international language in southern Africa and South America. The Portuguese-speaking African countries are expected to have a combined population of 83 million by 2050. In total, the Portuguese-speaking countries will have 335 million people by the same year. Since 1991, when Brazil signed into the economic market of Mercosul with other South American nations, such as Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay, there has been an increase in interest in the study of Portuguese in those South American countries. The demographic weight of Brazil in the continent will continue to strengthen the presence of the language in the region. Although in the early 21st century, after Macau was ceded to China in 1999, the use of Portuguese was in decline in Asia, it is becoming a language of opportunity there; mostly because of East Timor's boost in the number of speakers in the last five years but also because of increased Chinese diplomatic and financial ties with Portuguese-speaking countries.
In July 2007, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema announced his government's decision to establish Portuguese as Equatorial Guinea's third official language, to meet the requirements to apply for full membership of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries. This upgrading from its current Associate Observer condition would result in Equatorial Guinea being able to access several professional and academic exchange programs and the facilitation of cross-border circulation of citizens. Its application is currently being assessed by other CPLP members. "Obiang convierte al portugués en tercer idioma oficial para entrar en la Comunidad lusófona de Naciones", Terra. 13-07-2007
In March 1994 the Bosque de Portugal (Portugal's Woods) was founded in the Brazilian city of Curitiba. The park houses the Portuguese Language Memorial, which honors the Portuguese immigrants and the countries that adopted the Portuguese language. Originally there were seven nations represented with pillars, but the independence of East Timor brought yet another pillar for that nation in 2007.
In March 2006, the Museum of the Portuguese Language, an interactive museum about the Portuguese language, was founded in São Paulo, Brazil, the city with the greatest number of Portuguese speakers in the world.
Portuguese is a pluricentric language with two main groups of dialects, those of Brazil and those of the Old World. For historical reasons, the dialects of Africa and Asia are generally closer to those of Portugal than the Brazilian dialects, although in some aspects of their phonetics, especially the pronunciation of unstressed vowels, they resemble Brazilian Portuguese more than European Portuguese. They have not been studied as widely as European and Brazilian Portuguese.
Audio samples of some dialects of Portuguese are available below. From Audio samples of the dialects of Portuguese at the Instituto Camões website. There are some differences between the areas but these are the best approximations possible. For example, the caipira dialect has some differences from the one of Minas Gerais, but in general it is very close. A good example of Brazilian Portuguese may be found in the capital city, BrasÃlia, because of the generalized population from all parts of the country.
Portuguese dialects of Angola
# Benguelense â Benguela province.
# 11px Luandense â Luanda province.
# Sulista â South of Angola.
Dialects of Portuguese in Brazil
# Caipira â States of São Paulo (countryside; the city of São Paulo and the eastern areas of the state have their own accent, called paulistano); southern Minas Gerais, northern Paraná, Goiás and Mato Grosso do Sul.
# Cearense â Ceará.
# Baiano â Bahia.
# 11px Fluminense â Variants spoken in the states of Rio de Janeiro (excluding the city of Rio de Janeiro and its adjacent metropolitan areas, which have their own dialect, called carioca).
# Gaúcho â Rio Grande do Sul. (There are many distinct accents in Rio Grande do Sul, mainly due to the heavy influx of European immigrants of diverse origins, those which have settled several colonies throughout the state.)
# Mineiro â Minas Gerais (not prevalent in the Triângulo Mineiro, southern and southeastern Minas Gerais and also excluding the city of Belo Horizonte, which has its own accent.).
# 11px Nordestino â northeastern states of Brazil (Pernambuco, ParaÃba and Rio Grande do Norte have a particular way of speaking). Note: the speaker of this sound file is from Rio, and he is talking about his experience with Nordestino and Nortista accents.
# Nortista â Amazon Basin states.
# Paulistano â Variants spoken around São Paulo city and the eastern areas of São Paulo state.
# Sertanejo â States of Goiás and Mato Grosso (the city of Cuiabá has a particular way of speaking).
# Sulista â Variants spoken in the areas between the northern regions of Rio Grande do Sul and southern regions of São Paulo state. (The cities of Curitiba, Florianópolis, and Itapetininga have fairly distinct accents as well.)
# Carioca â Variants spoken in Rio de Janeiro City and Niteroi
Dialects of Portuguese in Portugal
# 11px Açoriano (Azorean) â Azores.
# 11px Alentejano â Alentejo
# 11px Algarvio â Algarve (there is a particular dialect in a small part of western Algarve).
# 11px Alto-Minhoto â North of Braga (hinterland).
# 11px Baixo-Beirão; Alto-Alentejano â Central Portugal (hinterland).
# 11px Beirão â Central Portugal.
# 11px Estremenho â Regions of Coimbra and Lisbon (the Lisbon dialect has some peculiar features not shared with the one of Coimbra).
# 11px Madeirense (Madeiran) â Madeira.
# 11px Nortenho â Regions of Braga and Porto.
# 11px Transmontano â Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro.
* Cape Verde â 11px Português cabo-verdiano (Cape Verdean Portuguese)
* Daman and Diu, India â Damaense.
* East Timor â 11px Timorense (East Timorese)
* Goa, India â Goês.
* Guinea-Bissau â 11px Guineense (Guinean Portuguese).
* Macau, China â 11px Macaense (Macanese)
* Mozambique â 11px Moçambicano (Mozambican)
* São Tomé and PrÃncipe â 11px Santomense
* Uruguay â Dialectos Portugueses del Uruguay (DPU).
Differences between dialects are mostly of accent and vocabulary, but between the Brazilian dialects and other dialects, especially in their most colloquial forms, there can also be some grammatical differences. The Portuguese-based creoles spoken in various parts of Africa, Asia, and the Americas are independent languages which should not be confused with Portuguese itself.
Baroque Library of the Coimbra University, Portugal.
Arriving in the Iberian Peninsula in 216 BC, the Romans brought with them the Latin language, from which all Romance languages descend. The language was spread by arriving Roman soldiers, settlers, and merchants, who built Roman cities mostly near the settlements of previous civilizations.
Between 409 and 711 AD, as the Roman Empire collapsed in Western Europe, the Iberian Peninsula was conquered by Germanic peoples (Migration Period). The occupiers, mainly Suebi and Visigoths, quickly adopted late Roman culture and the Vulgar Latin dialects of the peninsula. After the Moorish invasion of 711, Arabic became the administrative language in the conquered regions, but most of the population continued to speak a form of Romance commonly known as Mozarabic. The influence exerted by Arabic on the Romance dialects spoken in the Christian kingdoms of the north was small, affecting mainly their lexicon.
The earliest surviving records of a distinctively Portuguese language are administrative documents of the 9th century, still interspersed with many Latin phrases. Today this phase is known as Proto-Portuguese (between the 9th and the 12th centuries). In the first period of Old Portuguese â Galician-Portuguese Period (from the 12th to the 14th century) â the language gradually came into general use. For some time, it was the language of preference for lyric poetry in Christian Hispania, much as Occitan was the language of the poetry of the troubadours. Portugal became an independent kingdom from the Kingdom of Leon in 1139, under king Afonso I of Portugal. In 1290, king Denis of Portugal created the first Portuguese university in Lisbon (the Estudos Gerais, later moved to Coimbra) and decreed that Portuguese, then simply called the "common language" should be known as the Portuguese language and used officially.
In the second period of Old Portuguese, from the 14th to the 16th centuries, with the Portuguese discoveries, the language was taken to many regions of Asia, Africa and the Americas (nowadays, the great majority of Portuguese speakers live in Brazil, in South America). By the 16th century, it had become a lingua franca in Asia and Africa, used not only for colonial administration and trade but also for communication between local officials and Europeans of all nationalities. Its spread was helped by mixed marriages between Portuguese and local people, and by its association with Roman Catholic missionary efforts, which led to the formation of a creole language called Kristang in many parts of Asia (from the word cristão, "Christian"). The language continued to be popular in parts of Asia until the 19th century. Some Portuguese-speaking Christian communities in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Indonesia preserved their language even after they were isolated from Portugal.
The end of the Old Portuguese period was marked by the publication of the Cancioneiro Geral by Garcia de Resende, in 1516. The early times of Modern Portuguese, which spans a period from the 16th century to the present day, were characterized by an increase in the number of learned words borrowed from Classical Latin and Classical Greek since the Renaissance, which greatly enriched the lexicon.
A distinctive feature of Portuguese is that it preserved the stressed vowels of Vulgar Latin, which became diphthongs in other Romance languages; cf. Fr. pierre, Sp. piedra, It. pietra, Ro. piatrÄ, Port. pedra ("stone"), from Lat. petram; or Sp. fuego, It. fuoco, Fr. feu, Ro. foc, Port. fogo, from Lat. focus ("fire"). Another characteristic of early Portuguese was the loss of intervocalic l and n, sometimes followed by the merger of the two surrounding vowels, or by the insertion of an epenthetic vowel between them: cf. Lat. salire ("to leave"), tenere ("to have"), catenam ("chain"), Sp. salir, tener, cadena, Port. sair, ter, cadeia.
When the elided consonant was n, it often nasalized the preceding vowel: cf. Lat. manum ("hand"), ranam ("frog"), bonum ("good"), Port. mão, rãa, bõo (now mão, rã, bom). This process was the source of most of the nasal diphthongs which are typical of Portuguese. In particular, the Latin endings -anem, -anum and -onem became -ão in most cases, cf. Lat. canem ("dog"), germanum ("brother"), rationem ("reason") with Modern Port. cão, irmão, razão, and their plurals -anes, -anos, -ones normally became -ães, -ãos, -ões, cf. cães, irmãos, razões.
Library of the Mafra National Palace, Portugal.
Most of the lexicon of Portuguese is derived from Latin. Nevertheless, because of the Moorish occupation of the Iberian Peninsula during the Middle Ages, and the participation of Portugal in the Age of Discovery, it has adopted loanwords from all over the world.
Very few Portuguese words can be traced to the pre-Roman inhabitants of Portugal, which included the Gallaeci, Lusitanians, Celtici and Cynetes. The Phoenicians and Carthaginians, briefly present, also left some scarce traces. Some notable examples are abóbora "pumpkin" and bezerro "year-old calf", from the nearby Celtiberian language (probably through the Celtici); cerveja "beer", from Celtic; and cachorro "dog", from Basque.
In the 5th century, the Iberian Peninsula (the Roman Hispania) was conquered by the Germanic Suebi and Visigoths. As they adopted the Roman civilization and language, however, these people contributed only a few words to the lexicon, mostly related to warfare â such as espora "spur", estaca "stake", and guerra "war", from Gothic *spaúra, *stakka, and *wirro, respectively. The influence also exists in toponymic and patronymic surnames borne by Visigoth sovereigns and their descendants, and it dwells on placenames such has Ermesinde, Esposende and Resende where sinde and sende are derived from the Germanic "sinths" (military expedition) and in the case of Resende, the prefix re comes from Germanic "reths" (council).
Between the 9th and 13th centuries, Portuguese acquired about 800 words from Arabic by influence of Moorish Iberia. They are often recognizable by the initial Arabic article a(l)-, and include many common words such as aldeia "village" from اÙضÙعة aldaya, alface "lettuce" from اÙخس alkhass, armazém "warehouse" from اÙÙ
خز٠almahazan, and azeite "olive oil" from اÙزÙت azzait. From Arabic came also the grammatically peculiar word oxalá إ٠شاء اÙÙÙ "hopefully". The Mozambican currency name metical was derived from the word Ù
تÙا٠mitqÄl, a unit of weight. The word Mozambique itself is from the Arabic name of sultan Muça Alebique (Musa Alibiki).
Starting in the 15th century, the Portuguese maritime explorations led to the introduction of many loanwords from Asian languages. For instance, catana "cutlass" from Japanese katana and chá "tea" from Chinese 'chá'.
From South America came batata "potato", from Taino; ananás and abacaxi, from Tupi-Guarani naná and Tupi ibá cati, respectively (two species of pineapple), and tucano "toucan" from Guarani tucan. See List of Brazil state name etymologies, for some more examples.
From the 16th to the 19th centuries, because of the role of Portugal as intermediary in the Atlantic slave trade, and the establishment of large Portuguese colonies in Angola, Mozambique, and Brazil, Portuguese got several words of African and Amerind origin, especially names for most of the animals and plants found in those territories. While those terms are mostly used in the former colonies, many became current in European Portuguese as well. From Kimbundu, for example, came kifumate â cafuné "head caress", kusula â caçula "youngest child", marimbondo "tropical wasp", and kubungula â bungular "to dance like a wizard".
Finally, it has received a steady influx of loanwords from other European languages. For example, melena "hair lock", fiambre "wet-cured ham" (in contrast with presunto "dry-cured ham" from Latin prae-exsuctus "dehydrated"), and castelhano "Castilian", from Spanish; colchete/crochê "bracket"/"crochet", paletó "jacket", batom "lipstick", and filé/filete "steak"/"slice" respectively, from French crochet, paletot, bâton, filet; macarrão "pasta", piloto "pilot", carroça "carriage", and barraca "barrack", from Italian maccherone, pilota, carrozza, baracca; and bife "steak", futebol, revólver, estoque, folclore, time from English beef,
football, revolver, stock, folklore, and team.
Portuguese belongs to the West Iberian branch of the Romance languages, and it has special ties with the following members of this group:
* Galician and Fala, its closest relatives. See below.
* Spanish, the major language closest to Portuguese. (See also Differences between Spanish and Portuguese.)
* Mirandese and Leonese, two other West Iberian languages spoken in Portugal.
* Judeo-Portuguese and Judeo-Spanish, languages spoken by Sephardic Jews, and which remained close to Portuguese and Spanish.
Despite the obvious lexical and grammatical similarities between Portuguese and other Romance languages, it is not mutually intelligible with them. Apart from Galician, Portuguese speakers will usually need some formal study of basic grammar and vocabulary, before attaining a reasonable level of comprehension of those languages, and vice versa. Native speakers of Portuguese do tend to understand standard Spanish which is spoken clearly, but the reverse is generally not true unless formal education is involved.
The closest language to Portuguese is Galician, spoken in the autonomous community of Galicia (northwestern Spain). The two were at one time a single language, known today as Galician-Portuguese, but since the political separation of Portugal from Galicia they have diverged somewhat, especially in pronunciation and vocabulary. Nevertheless, the core vocabulary and grammar of Galician are still noticeably closer to Portuguese than to those of Spanish. In particular, like Portuguese, it uses the future subjunctive, the personal infinitive, and the synthetic pluperfect (see the section on the grammar of Portuguese, below). Mutual intelligibility (estimated at 85% by R. A. Hall, Jr., 1989) Ethnologue is good between Galicians and northern Portuguese, but poorer between Galicians and speakers from central Portugal.
The Fala language is another descendant of Galician-Portuguese, spoken by a small number of people in the Spanish towns of Valverde del Fresno, Eljas and San MartÃn de Trevejo (autonomous community of Extremadura, near the border with Portugal).
Portuguese has provided loanwords to many languages, such as Indonesian, Manado Malay, Sri Lankan Tamil and Sinhalese (see Sri Lanka Indo-Portuguese), Malay, Bengali, English, Hindi, Konkani, Marathi, Tetum, Xitsonga, Papiamentu, Japanese, Lanc-Patuá (spoken in northern Brazil) and Sranan Tongo (spoken in Suriname). It left a strong influence on the lÃngua brasÃlica, a Tupi-Guarani language which was the most widely spoken in Brazil until the 18th century, and on the language spoken around Sikka in Flores Island, Indonesia. In nearby Larantuka, Portuguese is used for prayers in Holy Week rituals.
The Japanese-Portuguese dictionary Nippo Jisho (1603) was the first dictionary of Japanese in a European language, a product of Jesuit missionary activity in Japan. Building on the work of earlier Portuguese missionaries, the Dictionarium Anamiticum, Lusitanum et Latinum (Annamite-Portuguese-Latin dictionary) of Alexandre de Rhodes (1651) introduced the modern orthography of Vietnamese, which is based on the orthography of 17th-century Portuguese. The Romanization of Chinese was also influenced by the Portuguese language (among others), particularly regarding Chinese surnames; one example is Mei. During 1583-88 Italian Jesuits Michele Ruggieri and Matteo Ricci created a Portuguese-Chinese dictionary - the first ever European-Chinese dictionary. Yves Camus, "Jesuits' Journeys in Chinese Studies" "Dicionário Português-Chinês : Pu Han ci dian : Portuguese-Chinese dictionary", by Michele Ruggieri, Matteo Ricci; edited by John W. Witek. Published 2001, Biblioteca Nacional. ISBN 9725652983. Partial preview available on Google Books
See also List of English words of Portuguese origin, Loan words in Indonesian, Japanese words of Portuguese origin, Borrowed words in Malay, Sinhala words of Portuguese origin, Loan words from Portuguese in Sri Lankan Tamil.
Beginning in the 16th century, the extensive contacts between Portuguese travelers and settlers, African slaves, and local populations led to the appearance of many pidgins with varying amounts of Portuguese influence. As each of these pidgins became the mother tongue of succeeding generations, they evolved into fully fledged creole languages, which remained in use in many parts of Asia and Africa until the 18th century. Some Portuguese-based or Portuguese-influenced creoles are still spoken today, by over 3 million people worldwide, especially people of partial Portuguese ancestry.
There is a growing number of people in the Portuguese-speaking media and the internet who are presenting the case to the CPLP and other organizations to run a debate in the Lusophone community with the purpose of bringing forward a petition to make Portuguese an official language of the United Nations.
In October 2005, during the international Convention of the Elos Club International that took place in Tavira, Portugal, ONU: Petição para tornar português lÃngua oficial a petition was written and unanimously approved whose text can be found on the internet with the title Petição Para Tornar Oficial o Idioma Português na ONU. Romulo Alexandre Soares, president of the Brazil-Portugal Chamber highlights that the positioning of Brazil in the international arena as one of the emergent powers of the 21st century, the size of its population, and the presence of the language around the world provides legitimacy and justifies a petition to the UN to make the Portuguese language an official language of the UN. Português pode ser lÃngua oficial na ONU
Several factors detract from this campaign. The current official languages of the UN are either 1) official/dominant in many countries (English, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, and French) or 2) have several hundreds of millions of speakers (Chinese). English, Spanish, Russian and Arabic fulfill both criteria. Portuguese is a global language in that it is the official tongue of several sovereign countries on four continents. It also has over 200 million speakers. However, it exhibits some noticeable differences when compared to the current 6 UN official languages. For example, English, French, Arabic and Spanish are each official languages of multiple states and of over half of the world's countries. In contrast, four out of every five speakers of the Portuguese-speaking world live in just one country: Brazil. In addition to Brazil, Portuguese is the official language in only 7 other sovereign states; however, English is official in 53 states, French in 29 states, Arabic in 25 states, and Spanish in 20 states.
More significantly, in each part of the world with a Portuguese-speaking country, this language is overshadowed by other powerful languages that are already official languages of the UN. For example, in the Americas, the 190 million Portuguese-speaking Brazilians are overshadowed by the most spoken languages in the Western Hemisphere: Spanish (~360 million speakers) and English (~340 million speakers). Portuguese is overshadowed to an even greater extent in Europe, the continent in which four of the six UN languages originated (English, French, Spanish, and Russian). In the European context, Portuguese is not even among the ten most spoken languages on the continent, with a number of speakers comparable to those of Czech and Bulgarian. In Africa, Portuguese is eclipsed as a continental lingua franca by English and French in countries that surround Cape Verde, São Tomé and PrÃncipe, Guinea-Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique. Finally in Asia, a continent with several languages that have hundreds of millions of speakers, the only sovereign state with Portuguese as an official language is East Timor, which has only a million people. While Brazilian migration has brought 300,000 fluent Portuguese speakers to Japan, Portuguese does not enjoy any official status whatsoever in that country. Therefore, while Portuguese will gain increasing importance as Brazil continues its development as a major economy, it will likely face the same hurdles that prevented Japanese and German (both languages of major global economies with millions of speakers) from becoming both international languages and official ones of the UN.
There is a maximum of 9 oral vowels and 19 consonants, though some varieties of the language have fewer phonemes (Brazilian Portuguese has 8 oral vowels). There are also five nasal vowels, which some linguists regard as allophones of the oral vowels, ten oral diphthongs, and five nasal diphthongs. In total, Brazilian Portuguese has 13 vowel phonemes. /ref> Handbook of the International Phonetic Association'' pg. 126-130; the reference applies to the entire section
Chart of monophthongs of the Portuguese of Lisbon
To the seven vowels of Vulgar Latin, European Portuguese has added two near central vowels, one of which tends to be elided in rapid speech, like the e caduc of French (represented as either , or , or ). The high vowels and the low vowels are four distinct phonemes, and they alternate in various forms of apophony. Like Catalan, Portuguese uses vowel quality to contrast stressed syllables with unstressed syllables: isolated vowels tend to be raised, and in some cases centralized, when unstressed. Nasal diphthongs occur mostly at the ends of words.
The consonant inventory of Portuguese is fairly conservative. The medieval affricates , , , merged with the fricatives , , , , respectively, but not with each other, and there were no other significant changes to the consonant phonemes since then. However, some notable dialectal variants and allophones have appeared, among which:
* In many regions of Brazil, and have the affricate allophones and , respectively, before and . (Quebec French has a similar phenomenon, with alveolar affricates instead of postalveolars. Japanese is another example).
* At the end of a syllable, the phoneme has the allophone in Brazilian Portuguese (L-vocalization).
* In many parts of Brazil and Angola, intervocalic is pronounced as a nasalized palatal approximant which nasalizes the preceding vowel, so that, for instance, is pronounced .
* In most of Brazil, the alveolar sibilants and occur in complementary distribution at the ends of syllables, depending on whether the consonant that follows is voiceless or voiced, as in English. But in most of Portugal and parts of Brazil, sibilants are postalveolar at the ends of syllables, before voiceless consonants, and before voiced consonants (in Judeo-Spanish, is often replaced with at the ends of syllables, too).
* There is considerable dialectal variation in the value of the rhotic phoneme . See Guttural R in Portuguese, for details.
;Excerpt from the Portuguese national epic Os LusÃadas, by author LuÃs de Camões (I, 33)
A notable aspect of the grammar of Portuguese is the verb. Morphologically, more verbal inflections from classical Latin have been preserved by Portuguese than by any other major Romance language. See Romance copula, for a detailed comparison. It has also some innovations not found in other Romance languages (except Galician and the Fala):
* The present perfect tense has an iterative sense unique to Galician-Portuguese language group. It denotes an action or a series of actions which began in the past and are expected to keep repeating in the future. For instance, the sentence Tenho tentado falar com ela would be translated to "I have been trying to talk to her", not "I have tried to talk to her". On the other hand, the correct translation of the question "Have you heard the latest news?" is not *Tem ouvido a última notÃcia?, but Ouviu a última notÃcia?, since no repetition is implied. Squartini, Mario (1998) Verbal Periphrases in Romance â Aspect, Actionality, and Grammaticalization ISBN 3-11-016160-5
* The future subjunctive tense, which was developed by medieval West Iberian Romance, but has now fallen into disuse in Spanish and Galician, is still used in vernacular Portuguese. It appears in dependent clauses that denote a condition which must be fulfilled in the future, so that the independent clause will occur. English normally employs the present tense under the same circumstances:
:Se eu for eleito presidente, mudarei a lei.
:If I am elected president, I will change the law.
:Quando fores mais velho, vais entender.
:When you are older, you will understand.
* The personal infinitive: infinitives can inflect according to their subject in person and number, often showing who is expected to perform a certain action; cf. Ã melhor voltares "It is better [for you] to go back," Ã melhor voltarmos "It is better [for us] to go back." Perhaps for this reason, infinitive clauses replace subjunctive clauses more often in Portuguese than in other Romance languages.
Portuguese is written with 23 or 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, making use of five diacritics to denote stress, vowel height, contraction, nasalization, and other sound changes (acute accent, grave accent, circumflex accent, tilde, and cedilla). Accented characters and digraphs are not counted as separate letters for collation purposes.
* Portuguese literature
* Portuguese poetry
* List of Portuguese language poets
* Brazilian literature
* List of Brazilian poets
* Lusophone
* Geographic distribution of Portuguese
* List of countries where Portuguese is an official language
* Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP)
* Instituto Camões
* International Portuguese Language Institute
* Museum of the Portuguese Language
* Portuguese-based creole languages
* Portuñol
* Portuguese in the United States
* List of English words of Portuguese origin
* Spelling reforms of Portuguese
* História da Lingua Portuguesa Instituto Camões
* A LÃngua Portuguesa in Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil (...)
* Poesia e Prosa Medievais, by Maria Ema Tarracha Ferreira, Ulisseia 1998, 3rd ed., ISBN 978-972-568-124-4.
* Bases Temáticas â LÃngua Portuguesa in Instituto Camões
* Portuguese Literature in The Catholic Encyclopedia
* International Phonetic Association (1999) Handbook of the International Phonetic Association ISBN 0-521-63751-1
* Mateus, Maria Helena & d'Andrade, Ernesto (2000) The Phonology of Portuguese ISBN 0-19-823581-X (Excerpt available at Google Books)
* Bergström, Magnus & Reis, Neves Prontuário Ortográfico Editorial NotÃcias, 2004.
* A pronúncia do português europeu - European Portuguese Pronunciation
* Dialects of Portuguese at the Instituto Camões
* Audio samples of the dialects of Portugal
* Audio samples of the dialects from outside Europe
* Antônio Houaiss (2000), Dicionário Houaiss da LÃngua Portuguesa (228,500 entries).
* Aurélio Buarque de Holanda Ferreira, Novo Dicionário da LÃngua Portuguesa (1809pp)
* English-Portuguese-Chinese Dictionary (Freeware, for Windows/Linux/Mac)
* Lindley Cintra, LuÃs F. Nova Proposta de Classificação dos Dialectos Galego-Portugueses (PDF) Boletim de Filologia, Lisboa, Centro de Estudos Filológicos, 1971.
*Swadesh list in English and Portuguese
* English Portuguese Translation Dictionary for English Portuguese translations
* Learn Portuguese BBC
* Portuguese Language Notes BBC
* AULP - Associação das Universidades de LÃngua Portuguesa Portuguese Language Universities Association.
* Portuguese in East Timor an interview with Dr. Geoffrey Hull.
* Portuguese Dictionary with gender and type of words.
* ABL - Academia Brasileira de letras (em português) - (Brazilian Academy of Letters) (Portuguese)
* Brazilian Portuguese Free resources for Portuguese learners.
* EasyPortuguese Free Portuguese learning site with audio.
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Portuguese_language | What event marked the end of the Old Portuguese period? | The end of the Old Portuguese period was marked by the publication of the Cancioneiro Geral by Garcia de Resende. | data/set5/a1 | Portuguese_language
Portuguese ( or lÃngua portuguesa) is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia and northern Portugal. It is derived from the Latin spoken by the romanized pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula (namely the Gallaeci, the Lusitanians, the Celtici and the Conii) around 2000 years ago. It spread worldwide in the 15th and 16th centuries as Portugal established a colonial and commercial empire (1415â1999) which spanned from Brazil in the Americas to Goa and other parts of India, Macau in China and Timor (north of Australia). It was used as the exclusive lingua franca on the island of Sri Lanka for almost 350 years. During that time, many creole languages based on Portuguese also appeared around the world, especially in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean.
Today it is one of the world's major languages, ranked seventh according to number of native speakers (between 205 and 230 million). It is the language of about half of South America's population, even though Brazil is the only Portuguese-speaking nation in the Americas. It is also a major lingua franca in Portugal's former colonial possessions in Africa. It is an official language in nine countries (see the table on the right), also being co-official with Cantonese Chinese in Macau and Tetum in East Timor. There are sizeable communities of Portuguese speakers in various regions of North America, notably in the United States (New Jersey, New England, California and south Florida) and in Ontario, Canada.
In various aspects, the system of sounds in Portuguese is more similar to the phonologies of Catalan or French than, say, those of Spanish or Italian. Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes once called Portuguese "the sweet language", /ref> Lope de Vega referred to it as "suave" 'Encyclopedia of Literature' Joseph T. Shipley; Philosophical Library, 1946. 1188 pgs. while Brazilian writer Olavo Bilac poetically described it as a última flor do Lácio, inculta e bela: "the last flower of Latium, wild and beautiful". Portuguese is also termed "the language of Camões", after one of Portugal's best known literary figures, LuÃs Vaz de Camões.
Countries and regions where Portuguese has official status.
Members of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries.
Today, Portuguese is the official language of Angola, Brazil (190.6 million), IBGE Official website Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Portugal (10.6 million), INE Official website São Tomé and PrÃncipe and Mozambique. CPLP Official website It is also one of the official languages of the special administrative region of Macau (with Chinese) and East Timor, (with Tetum). It is the language of most of the population in Portugal (100%) , Brazil (100%) , São Tomé and PrÃncipe (99.8%) and Angola (80%), and is the most widely spoken language in Mozambique (40%), though only 6.5% are native speakers. No data are available for Cape Verde, but almost all the population is bilingual, and the monolingual population speaks Cape Verdean Creole. See the main article Geographic distribution of Portuguese, for references.
Small Portuguese-speaking communities subsist in former overseas colonies of Portugal such as Macau, where it is spoken by 7% of the population, and East Timor (13.6%).
Uruguay gave Portuguese an equal status to Spanish in its educational system at the north border with Brazil. In the rest of the country, it is taught as an obligatory subject beginning in the 6th grade. Uruguay recently adopted Portuguese language in its education system as an obligatory subject /ref>
It is also spoken by substantial immigrant communities, though not official, in Andorra, Australia, The Portuguese-Speaking Community in Australia France, Luxembourg, Jersey (with a statistically significant Portuguese-speaking community of approximately 10,000 people), Paraguay, Namibia, South Africa, Switzerland, Venezuela, Japan JAPÃO: IMIGRANTES BRASILEIROS POPULARIZAM LÃNGUA PORTUGUESA and the U.S. states of California, Connecticut, Where America's Other Languages Are Spoken Florida, Widely spoken but 'minor'? Portuguese seeks respect Massachusetts, New Jersey, Hispanic Reading Room of the U.S. Library of Congress website, Twentieth-Century Arrivals from Portugal Settle in Newark, New Jersey, New York Brazucas (Brazilians living in New York) and Rhode Island. Hispanic Reading Room of the U.S. Library of Congress website, Whaling, Fishing, and Industrial Employment in Southeastern New England
In some parts of India, such as Goa Portuguese Language in Goa and Daman and Diu, The Portuguese Experience: The Case of Goa, Daman and Diu Portuguese is still spoken. There are also significant populations of Portuguese speakers in Canada (mainly concentrated in and around Toronto), Multicultural Canada Bermuda World InfoZone: Bermuda and the Netherlands Antilles.
Portuguese is an official language of several international organizations. The Community of Portuguese Language Countries (with the Portuguese acronym CPLP) consists of the eight independent countries that have Portuguese as an official language. It is also an official language of the European Union, accounting for 3% of its population, EUROPA website Languages in the EU Mercosul, the Organization of American States, the Organization of Ibero-American States, the Union of South American Nations, and the African Union (one of the working languages) and one of the official languages of other organizations. The Portuguese language is gaining popularity in Africa, Asia, and South America as a second language for study.
Estação da Luz, home of the Museum of the Portuguese Language, in São Paulo, Brazil.
Portuguese and Spanish are the fastest-growing European languages (with the exception of English, being the world lingua franca) , and, according to estimates by UNESCO, the Portuguese language has the highest potential for growth as an international language in southern Africa and South America. The Portuguese-speaking African countries are expected to have a combined population of 83 million by 2050. In total, the Portuguese-speaking countries will have 335 million people by the same year. Since 1991, when Brazil signed into the economic market of Mercosul with other South American nations, such as Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay, there has been an increase in interest in the study of Portuguese in those South American countries. The demographic weight of Brazil in the continent will continue to strengthen the presence of the language in the region. Although in the early 21st century, after Macau was ceded to China in 1999, the use of Portuguese was in decline in Asia, it is becoming a language of opportunity there; mostly because of East Timor's boost in the number of speakers in the last five years but also because of increased Chinese diplomatic and financial ties with Portuguese-speaking countries.
In July 2007, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema announced his government's decision to establish Portuguese as Equatorial Guinea's third official language, to meet the requirements to apply for full membership of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries. This upgrading from its current Associate Observer condition would result in Equatorial Guinea being able to access several professional and academic exchange programs and the facilitation of cross-border circulation of citizens. Its application is currently being assessed by other CPLP members. "Obiang convierte al portugués en tercer idioma oficial para entrar en la Comunidad lusófona de Naciones", Terra. 13-07-2007
In March 1994 the Bosque de Portugal (Portugal's Woods) was founded in the Brazilian city of Curitiba. The park houses the Portuguese Language Memorial, which honors the Portuguese immigrants and the countries that adopted the Portuguese language. Originally there were seven nations represented with pillars, but the independence of East Timor brought yet another pillar for that nation in 2007.
In March 2006, the Museum of the Portuguese Language, an interactive museum about the Portuguese language, was founded in São Paulo, Brazil, the city with the greatest number of Portuguese speakers in the world.
Portuguese is a pluricentric language with two main groups of dialects, those of Brazil and those of the Old World. For historical reasons, the dialects of Africa and Asia are generally closer to those of Portugal than the Brazilian dialects, although in some aspects of their phonetics, especially the pronunciation of unstressed vowels, they resemble Brazilian Portuguese more than European Portuguese. They have not been studied as widely as European and Brazilian Portuguese.
Audio samples of some dialects of Portuguese are available below. From Audio samples of the dialects of Portuguese at the Instituto Camões website. There are some differences between the areas but these are the best approximations possible. For example, the caipira dialect has some differences from the one of Minas Gerais, but in general it is very close. A good example of Brazilian Portuguese may be found in the capital city, BrasÃlia, because of the generalized population from all parts of the country.
Portuguese dialects of Angola
# Benguelense â Benguela province.
# 11px Luandense â Luanda province.
# Sulista â South of Angola.
Dialects of Portuguese in Brazil
# Caipira â States of São Paulo (countryside; the city of São Paulo and the eastern areas of the state have their own accent, called paulistano); southern Minas Gerais, northern Paraná, Goiás and Mato Grosso do Sul.
# Cearense â Ceará.
# Baiano â Bahia.
# 11px Fluminense â Variants spoken in the states of Rio de Janeiro (excluding the city of Rio de Janeiro and its adjacent metropolitan areas, which have their own dialect, called carioca).
# Gaúcho â Rio Grande do Sul. (There are many distinct accents in Rio Grande do Sul, mainly due to the heavy influx of European immigrants of diverse origins, those which have settled several colonies throughout the state.)
# Mineiro â Minas Gerais (not prevalent in the Triângulo Mineiro, southern and southeastern Minas Gerais and also excluding the city of Belo Horizonte, which has its own accent.).
# 11px Nordestino â northeastern states of Brazil (Pernambuco, ParaÃba and Rio Grande do Norte have a particular way of speaking). Note: the speaker of this sound file is from Rio, and he is talking about his experience with Nordestino and Nortista accents.
# Nortista â Amazon Basin states.
# Paulistano â Variants spoken around São Paulo city and the eastern areas of São Paulo state.
# Sertanejo â States of Goiás and Mato Grosso (the city of Cuiabá has a particular way of speaking).
# Sulista â Variants spoken in the areas between the northern regions of Rio Grande do Sul and southern regions of São Paulo state. (The cities of Curitiba, Florianópolis, and Itapetininga have fairly distinct accents as well.)
# Carioca â Variants spoken in Rio de Janeiro City and Niteroi
Dialects of Portuguese in Portugal
# 11px Açoriano (Azorean) â Azores.
# 11px Alentejano â Alentejo
# 11px Algarvio â Algarve (there is a particular dialect in a small part of western Algarve).
# 11px Alto-Minhoto â North of Braga (hinterland).
# 11px Baixo-Beirão; Alto-Alentejano â Central Portugal (hinterland).
# 11px Beirão â Central Portugal.
# 11px Estremenho â Regions of Coimbra and Lisbon (the Lisbon dialect has some peculiar features not shared with the one of Coimbra).
# 11px Madeirense (Madeiran) â Madeira.
# 11px Nortenho â Regions of Braga and Porto.
# 11px Transmontano â Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro.
* Cape Verde â 11px Português cabo-verdiano (Cape Verdean Portuguese)
* Daman and Diu, India â Damaense.
* East Timor â 11px Timorense (East Timorese)
* Goa, India â Goês.
* Guinea-Bissau â 11px Guineense (Guinean Portuguese).
* Macau, China â 11px Macaense (Macanese)
* Mozambique â 11px Moçambicano (Mozambican)
* São Tomé and PrÃncipe â 11px Santomense
* Uruguay â Dialectos Portugueses del Uruguay (DPU).
Differences between dialects are mostly of accent and vocabulary, but between the Brazilian dialects and other dialects, especially in their most colloquial forms, there can also be some grammatical differences. The Portuguese-based creoles spoken in various parts of Africa, Asia, and the Americas are independent languages which should not be confused with Portuguese itself.
Baroque Library of the Coimbra University, Portugal.
Arriving in the Iberian Peninsula in 216 BC, the Romans brought with them the Latin language, from which all Romance languages descend. The language was spread by arriving Roman soldiers, settlers, and merchants, who built Roman cities mostly near the settlements of previous civilizations.
Between 409 and 711 AD, as the Roman Empire collapsed in Western Europe, the Iberian Peninsula was conquered by Germanic peoples (Migration Period). The occupiers, mainly Suebi and Visigoths, quickly adopted late Roman culture and the Vulgar Latin dialects of the peninsula. After the Moorish invasion of 711, Arabic became the administrative language in the conquered regions, but most of the population continued to speak a form of Romance commonly known as Mozarabic. The influence exerted by Arabic on the Romance dialects spoken in the Christian kingdoms of the north was small, affecting mainly their lexicon.
The earliest surviving records of a distinctively Portuguese language are administrative documents of the 9th century, still interspersed with many Latin phrases. Today this phase is known as Proto-Portuguese (between the 9th and the 12th centuries). In the first period of Old Portuguese â Galician-Portuguese Period (from the 12th to the 14th century) â the language gradually came into general use. For some time, it was the language of preference for lyric poetry in Christian Hispania, much as Occitan was the language of the poetry of the troubadours. Portugal became an independent kingdom from the Kingdom of Leon in 1139, under king Afonso I of Portugal. In 1290, king Denis of Portugal created the first Portuguese university in Lisbon (the Estudos Gerais, later moved to Coimbra) and decreed that Portuguese, then simply called the "common language" should be known as the Portuguese language and used officially.
In the second period of Old Portuguese, from the 14th to the 16th centuries, with the Portuguese discoveries, the language was taken to many regions of Asia, Africa and the Americas (nowadays, the great majority of Portuguese speakers live in Brazil, in South America). By the 16th century, it had become a lingua franca in Asia and Africa, used not only for colonial administration and trade but also for communication between local officials and Europeans of all nationalities. Its spread was helped by mixed marriages between Portuguese and local people, and by its association with Roman Catholic missionary efforts, which led to the formation of a creole language called Kristang in many parts of Asia (from the word cristão, "Christian"). The language continued to be popular in parts of Asia until the 19th century. Some Portuguese-speaking Christian communities in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Indonesia preserved their language even after they were isolated from Portugal.
The end of the Old Portuguese period was marked by the publication of the Cancioneiro Geral by Garcia de Resende, in 1516. The early times of Modern Portuguese, which spans a period from the 16th century to the present day, were characterized by an increase in the number of learned words borrowed from Classical Latin and Classical Greek since the Renaissance, which greatly enriched the lexicon.
A distinctive feature of Portuguese is that it preserved the stressed vowels of Vulgar Latin, which became diphthongs in other Romance languages; cf. Fr. pierre, Sp. piedra, It. pietra, Ro. piatrÄ, Port. pedra ("stone"), from Lat. petram; or Sp. fuego, It. fuoco, Fr. feu, Ro. foc, Port. fogo, from Lat. focus ("fire"). Another characteristic of early Portuguese was the loss of intervocalic l and n, sometimes followed by the merger of the two surrounding vowels, or by the insertion of an epenthetic vowel between them: cf. Lat. salire ("to leave"), tenere ("to have"), catenam ("chain"), Sp. salir, tener, cadena, Port. sair, ter, cadeia.
When the elided consonant was n, it often nasalized the preceding vowel: cf. Lat. manum ("hand"), ranam ("frog"), bonum ("good"), Port. mão, rãa, bõo (now mão, rã, bom). This process was the source of most of the nasal diphthongs which are typical of Portuguese. In particular, the Latin endings -anem, -anum and -onem became -ão in most cases, cf. Lat. canem ("dog"), germanum ("brother"), rationem ("reason") with Modern Port. cão, irmão, razão, and their plurals -anes, -anos, -ones normally became -ães, -ãos, -ões, cf. cães, irmãos, razões.
Library of the Mafra National Palace, Portugal.
Most of the lexicon of Portuguese is derived from Latin. Nevertheless, because of the Moorish occupation of the Iberian Peninsula during the Middle Ages, and the participation of Portugal in the Age of Discovery, it has adopted loanwords from all over the world.
Very few Portuguese words can be traced to the pre-Roman inhabitants of Portugal, which included the Gallaeci, Lusitanians, Celtici and Cynetes. The Phoenicians and Carthaginians, briefly present, also left some scarce traces. Some notable examples are abóbora "pumpkin" and bezerro "year-old calf", from the nearby Celtiberian language (probably through the Celtici); cerveja "beer", from Celtic; and cachorro "dog", from Basque.
In the 5th century, the Iberian Peninsula (the Roman Hispania) was conquered by the Germanic Suebi and Visigoths. As they adopted the Roman civilization and language, however, these people contributed only a few words to the lexicon, mostly related to warfare â such as espora "spur", estaca "stake", and guerra "war", from Gothic *spaúra, *stakka, and *wirro, respectively. The influence also exists in toponymic and patronymic surnames borne by Visigoth sovereigns and their descendants, and it dwells on placenames such has Ermesinde, Esposende and Resende where sinde and sende are derived from the Germanic "sinths" (military expedition) and in the case of Resende, the prefix re comes from Germanic "reths" (council).
Between the 9th and 13th centuries, Portuguese acquired about 800 words from Arabic by influence of Moorish Iberia. They are often recognizable by the initial Arabic article a(l)-, and include many common words such as aldeia "village" from اÙضÙعة aldaya, alface "lettuce" from اÙخس alkhass, armazém "warehouse" from اÙÙ
خز٠almahazan, and azeite "olive oil" from اÙزÙت azzait. From Arabic came also the grammatically peculiar word oxalá إ٠شاء اÙÙÙ "hopefully". The Mozambican currency name metical was derived from the word Ù
تÙا٠mitqÄl, a unit of weight. The word Mozambique itself is from the Arabic name of sultan Muça Alebique (Musa Alibiki).
Starting in the 15th century, the Portuguese maritime explorations led to the introduction of many loanwords from Asian languages. For instance, catana "cutlass" from Japanese katana and chá "tea" from Chinese 'chá'.
From South America came batata "potato", from Taino; ananás and abacaxi, from Tupi-Guarani naná and Tupi ibá cati, respectively (two species of pineapple), and tucano "toucan" from Guarani tucan. See List of Brazil state name etymologies, for some more examples.
From the 16th to the 19th centuries, because of the role of Portugal as intermediary in the Atlantic slave trade, and the establishment of large Portuguese colonies in Angola, Mozambique, and Brazil, Portuguese got several words of African and Amerind origin, especially names for most of the animals and plants found in those territories. While those terms are mostly used in the former colonies, many became current in European Portuguese as well. From Kimbundu, for example, came kifumate â cafuné "head caress", kusula â caçula "youngest child", marimbondo "tropical wasp", and kubungula â bungular "to dance like a wizard".
Finally, it has received a steady influx of loanwords from other European languages. For example, melena "hair lock", fiambre "wet-cured ham" (in contrast with presunto "dry-cured ham" from Latin prae-exsuctus "dehydrated"), and castelhano "Castilian", from Spanish; colchete/crochê "bracket"/"crochet", paletó "jacket", batom "lipstick", and filé/filete "steak"/"slice" respectively, from French crochet, paletot, bâton, filet; macarrão "pasta", piloto "pilot", carroça "carriage", and barraca "barrack", from Italian maccherone, pilota, carrozza, baracca; and bife "steak", futebol, revólver, estoque, folclore, time from English beef,
football, revolver, stock, folklore, and team.
Portuguese belongs to the West Iberian branch of the Romance languages, and it has special ties with the following members of this group:
* Galician and Fala, its closest relatives. See below.
* Spanish, the major language closest to Portuguese. (See also Differences between Spanish and Portuguese.)
* Mirandese and Leonese, two other West Iberian languages spoken in Portugal.
* Judeo-Portuguese and Judeo-Spanish, languages spoken by Sephardic Jews, and which remained close to Portuguese and Spanish.
Despite the obvious lexical and grammatical similarities between Portuguese and other Romance languages, it is not mutually intelligible with them. Apart from Galician, Portuguese speakers will usually need some formal study of basic grammar and vocabulary, before attaining a reasonable level of comprehension of those languages, and vice versa. Native speakers of Portuguese do tend to understand standard Spanish which is spoken clearly, but the reverse is generally not true unless formal education is involved.
The closest language to Portuguese is Galician, spoken in the autonomous community of Galicia (northwestern Spain). The two were at one time a single language, known today as Galician-Portuguese, but since the political separation of Portugal from Galicia they have diverged somewhat, especially in pronunciation and vocabulary. Nevertheless, the core vocabulary and grammar of Galician are still noticeably closer to Portuguese than to those of Spanish. In particular, like Portuguese, it uses the future subjunctive, the personal infinitive, and the synthetic pluperfect (see the section on the grammar of Portuguese, below). Mutual intelligibility (estimated at 85% by R. A. Hall, Jr., 1989) Ethnologue is good between Galicians and northern Portuguese, but poorer between Galicians and speakers from central Portugal.
The Fala language is another descendant of Galician-Portuguese, spoken by a small number of people in the Spanish towns of Valverde del Fresno, Eljas and San MartÃn de Trevejo (autonomous community of Extremadura, near the border with Portugal).
Portuguese has provided loanwords to many languages, such as Indonesian, Manado Malay, Sri Lankan Tamil and Sinhalese (see Sri Lanka Indo-Portuguese), Malay, Bengali, English, Hindi, Konkani, Marathi, Tetum, Xitsonga, Papiamentu, Japanese, Lanc-Patuá (spoken in northern Brazil) and Sranan Tongo (spoken in Suriname). It left a strong influence on the lÃngua brasÃlica, a Tupi-Guarani language which was the most widely spoken in Brazil until the 18th century, and on the language spoken around Sikka in Flores Island, Indonesia. In nearby Larantuka, Portuguese is used for prayers in Holy Week rituals.
The Japanese-Portuguese dictionary Nippo Jisho (1603) was the first dictionary of Japanese in a European language, a product of Jesuit missionary activity in Japan. Building on the work of earlier Portuguese missionaries, the Dictionarium Anamiticum, Lusitanum et Latinum (Annamite-Portuguese-Latin dictionary) of Alexandre de Rhodes (1651) introduced the modern orthography of Vietnamese, which is based on the orthography of 17th-century Portuguese. The Romanization of Chinese was also influenced by the Portuguese language (among others), particularly regarding Chinese surnames; one example is Mei. During 1583-88 Italian Jesuits Michele Ruggieri and Matteo Ricci created a Portuguese-Chinese dictionary - the first ever European-Chinese dictionary. Yves Camus, "Jesuits' Journeys in Chinese Studies" "Dicionário Português-Chinês : Pu Han ci dian : Portuguese-Chinese dictionary", by Michele Ruggieri, Matteo Ricci; edited by John W. Witek. Published 2001, Biblioteca Nacional. ISBN 9725652983. Partial preview available on Google Books
See also List of English words of Portuguese origin, Loan words in Indonesian, Japanese words of Portuguese origin, Borrowed words in Malay, Sinhala words of Portuguese origin, Loan words from Portuguese in Sri Lankan Tamil.
Beginning in the 16th century, the extensive contacts between Portuguese travelers and settlers, African slaves, and local populations led to the appearance of many pidgins with varying amounts of Portuguese influence. As each of these pidgins became the mother tongue of succeeding generations, they evolved into fully fledged creole languages, which remained in use in many parts of Asia and Africa until the 18th century. Some Portuguese-based or Portuguese-influenced creoles are still spoken today, by over 3 million people worldwide, especially people of partial Portuguese ancestry.
There is a growing number of people in the Portuguese-speaking media and the internet who are presenting the case to the CPLP and other organizations to run a debate in the Lusophone community with the purpose of bringing forward a petition to make Portuguese an official language of the United Nations.
In October 2005, during the international Convention of the Elos Club International that took place in Tavira, Portugal, ONU: Petição para tornar português lÃngua oficial a petition was written and unanimously approved whose text can be found on the internet with the title Petição Para Tornar Oficial o Idioma Português na ONU. Romulo Alexandre Soares, president of the Brazil-Portugal Chamber highlights that the positioning of Brazil in the international arena as one of the emergent powers of the 21st century, the size of its population, and the presence of the language around the world provides legitimacy and justifies a petition to the UN to make the Portuguese language an official language of the UN. Português pode ser lÃngua oficial na ONU
Several factors detract from this campaign. The current official languages of the UN are either 1) official/dominant in many countries (English, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, and French) or 2) have several hundreds of millions of speakers (Chinese). English, Spanish, Russian and Arabic fulfill both criteria. Portuguese is a global language in that it is the official tongue of several sovereign countries on four continents. It also has over 200 million speakers. However, it exhibits some noticeable differences when compared to the current 6 UN official languages. For example, English, French, Arabic and Spanish are each official languages of multiple states and of over half of the world's countries. In contrast, four out of every five speakers of the Portuguese-speaking world live in just one country: Brazil. In addition to Brazil, Portuguese is the official language in only 7 other sovereign states; however, English is official in 53 states, French in 29 states, Arabic in 25 states, and Spanish in 20 states.
More significantly, in each part of the world with a Portuguese-speaking country, this language is overshadowed by other powerful languages that are already official languages of the UN. For example, in the Americas, the 190 million Portuguese-speaking Brazilians are overshadowed by the most spoken languages in the Western Hemisphere: Spanish (~360 million speakers) and English (~340 million speakers). Portuguese is overshadowed to an even greater extent in Europe, the continent in which four of the six UN languages originated (English, French, Spanish, and Russian). In the European context, Portuguese is not even among the ten most spoken languages on the continent, with a number of speakers comparable to those of Czech and Bulgarian. In Africa, Portuguese is eclipsed as a continental lingua franca by English and French in countries that surround Cape Verde, São Tomé and PrÃncipe, Guinea-Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique. Finally in Asia, a continent with several languages that have hundreds of millions of speakers, the only sovereign state with Portuguese as an official language is East Timor, which has only a million people. While Brazilian migration has brought 300,000 fluent Portuguese speakers to Japan, Portuguese does not enjoy any official status whatsoever in that country. Therefore, while Portuguese will gain increasing importance as Brazil continues its development as a major economy, it will likely face the same hurdles that prevented Japanese and German (both languages of major global economies with millions of speakers) from becoming both international languages and official ones of the UN.
There is a maximum of 9 oral vowels and 19 consonants, though some varieties of the language have fewer phonemes (Brazilian Portuguese has 8 oral vowels). There are also five nasal vowels, which some linguists regard as allophones of the oral vowels, ten oral diphthongs, and five nasal diphthongs. In total, Brazilian Portuguese has 13 vowel phonemes. /ref> Handbook of the International Phonetic Association'' pg. 126-130; the reference applies to the entire section
Chart of monophthongs of the Portuguese of Lisbon
To the seven vowels of Vulgar Latin, European Portuguese has added two near central vowels, one of which tends to be elided in rapid speech, like the e caduc of French (represented as either , or , or ). The high vowels and the low vowels are four distinct phonemes, and they alternate in various forms of apophony. Like Catalan, Portuguese uses vowel quality to contrast stressed syllables with unstressed syllables: isolated vowels tend to be raised, and in some cases centralized, when unstressed. Nasal diphthongs occur mostly at the ends of words.
The consonant inventory of Portuguese is fairly conservative. The medieval affricates , , , merged with the fricatives , , , , respectively, but not with each other, and there were no other significant changes to the consonant phonemes since then. However, some notable dialectal variants and allophones have appeared, among which:
* In many regions of Brazil, and have the affricate allophones and , respectively, before and . (Quebec French has a similar phenomenon, with alveolar affricates instead of postalveolars. Japanese is another example).
* At the end of a syllable, the phoneme has the allophone in Brazilian Portuguese (L-vocalization).
* In many parts of Brazil and Angola, intervocalic is pronounced as a nasalized palatal approximant which nasalizes the preceding vowel, so that, for instance, is pronounced .
* In most of Brazil, the alveolar sibilants and occur in complementary distribution at the ends of syllables, depending on whether the consonant that follows is voiceless or voiced, as in English. But in most of Portugal and parts of Brazil, sibilants are postalveolar at the ends of syllables, before voiceless consonants, and before voiced consonants (in Judeo-Spanish, is often replaced with at the ends of syllables, too).
* There is considerable dialectal variation in the value of the rhotic phoneme . See Guttural R in Portuguese, for details.
;Excerpt from the Portuguese national epic Os LusÃadas, by author LuÃs de Camões (I, 33)
A notable aspect of the grammar of Portuguese is the verb. Morphologically, more verbal inflections from classical Latin have been preserved by Portuguese than by any other major Romance language. See Romance copula, for a detailed comparison. It has also some innovations not found in other Romance languages (except Galician and the Fala):
* The present perfect tense has an iterative sense unique to Galician-Portuguese language group. It denotes an action or a series of actions which began in the past and are expected to keep repeating in the future. For instance, the sentence Tenho tentado falar com ela would be translated to "I have been trying to talk to her", not "I have tried to talk to her". On the other hand, the correct translation of the question "Have you heard the latest news?" is not *Tem ouvido a última notÃcia?, but Ouviu a última notÃcia?, since no repetition is implied. Squartini, Mario (1998) Verbal Periphrases in Romance â Aspect, Actionality, and Grammaticalization ISBN 3-11-016160-5
* The future subjunctive tense, which was developed by medieval West Iberian Romance, but has now fallen into disuse in Spanish and Galician, is still used in vernacular Portuguese. It appears in dependent clauses that denote a condition which must be fulfilled in the future, so that the independent clause will occur. English normally employs the present tense under the same circumstances:
:Se eu for eleito presidente, mudarei a lei.
:If I am elected president, I will change the law.
:Quando fores mais velho, vais entender.
:When you are older, you will understand.
* The personal infinitive: infinitives can inflect according to their subject in person and number, often showing who is expected to perform a certain action; cf. Ã melhor voltares "It is better [for you] to go back," Ã melhor voltarmos "It is better [for us] to go back." Perhaps for this reason, infinitive clauses replace subjunctive clauses more often in Portuguese than in other Romance languages.
Portuguese is written with 23 or 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, making use of five diacritics to denote stress, vowel height, contraction, nasalization, and other sound changes (acute accent, grave accent, circumflex accent, tilde, and cedilla). Accented characters and digraphs are not counted as separate letters for collation purposes.
* Portuguese literature
* Portuguese poetry
* List of Portuguese language poets
* Brazilian literature
* List of Brazilian poets
* Lusophone
* Geographic distribution of Portuguese
* List of countries where Portuguese is an official language
* Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP)
* Instituto Camões
* International Portuguese Language Institute
* Museum of the Portuguese Language
* Portuguese-based creole languages
* Portuñol
* Portuguese in the United States
* List of English words of Portuguese origin
* Spelling reforms of Portuguese
* História da Lingua Portuguesa Instituto Camões
* A LÃngua Portuguesa in Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil (...)
* Poesia e Prosa Medievais, by Maria Ema Tarracha Ferreira, Ulisseia 1998, 3rd ed., ISBN 978-972-568-124-4.
* Bases Temáticas â LÃngua Portuguesa in Instituto Camões
* Portuguese Literature in The Catholic Encyclopedia
* International Phonetic Association (1999) Handbook of the International Phonetic Association ISBN 0-521-63751-1
* Mateus, Maria Helena & d'Andrade, Ernesto (2000) The Phonology of Portuguese ISBN 0-19-823581-X (Excerpt available at Google Books)
* Bergström, Magnus & Reis, Neves Prontuário Ortográfico Editorial NotÃcias, 2004.
* A pronúncia do português europeu - European Portuguese Pronunciation
* Dialects of Portuguese at the Instituto Camões
* Audio samples of the dialects of Portugal
* Audio samples of the dialects from outside Europe
* Antônio Houaiss (2000), Dicionário Houaiss da LÃngua Portuguesa (228,500 entries).
* Aurélio Buarque de Holanda Ferreira, Novo Dicionário da LÃngua Portuguesa (1809pp)
* English-Portuguese-Chinese Dictionary (Freeware, for Windows/Linux/Mac)
* Lindley Cintra, LuÃs F. Nova Proposta de Classificação dos Dialectos Galego-Portugueses (PDF) Boletim de Filologia, Lisboa, Centro de Estudos Filológicos, 1971.
*Swadesh list in English and Portuguese
* English Portuguese Translation Dictionary for English Portuguese translations
* Learn Portuguese BBC
* Portuguese Language Notes BBC
* AULP - Associação das Universidades de LÃngua Portuguesa Portuguese Language Universities Association.
* Portuguese in East Timor an interview with Dr. Geoffrey Hull.
* Portuguese Dictionary with gender and type of words.
* ABL - Academia Brasileira de letras (em português) - (Brazilian Academy of Letters) (Portuguese)
* Brazilian Portuguese Free resources for Portuguese learners.
* EasyPortuguese Free Portuguese learning site with audio.
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Portuguese_language | Which government established Portuguese as it's third official language in order to meet the requirements to apply for full membership in the CPLP? | Equatorial Guinea | data/set5/a1 | Portuguese_language
Portuguese ( or lÃngua portuguesa) is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia and northern Portugal. It is derived from the Latin spoken by the romanized pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula (namely the Gallaeci, the Lusitanians, the Celtici and the Conii) around 2000 years ago. It spread worldwide in the 15th and 16th centuries as Portugal established a colonial and commercial empire (1415â1999) which spanned from Brazil in the Americas to Goa and other parts of India, Macau in China and Timor (north of Australia). It was used as the exclusive lingua franca on the island of Sri Lanka for almost 350 years. During that time, many creole languages based on Portuguese also appeared around the world, especially in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean.
Today it is one of the world's major languages, ranked seventh according to number of native speakers (between 205 and 230 million). It is the language of about half of South America's population, even though Brazil is the only Portuguese-speaking nation in the Americas. It is also a major lingua franca in Portugal's former colonial possessions in Africa. It is an official language in nine countries (see the table on the right), also being co-official with Cantonese Chinese in Macau and Tetum in East Timor. There are sizeable communities of Portuguese speakers in various regions of North America, notably in the United States (New Jersey, New England, California and south Florida) and in Ontario, Canada.
In various aspects, the system of sounds in Portuguese is more similar to the phonologies of Catalan or French than, say, those of Spanish or Italian. Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes once called Portuguese "the sweet language", /ref> Lope de Vega referred to it as "suave" 'Encyclopedia of Literature' Joseph T. Shipley; Philosophical Library, 1946. 1188 pgs. while Brazilian writer Olavo Bilac poetically described it as a última flor do Lácio, inculta e bela: "the last flower of Latium, wild and beautiful". Portuguese is also termed "the language of Camões", after one of Portugal's best known literary figures, LuÃs Vaz de Camões.
Countries and regions where Portuguese has official status.
Members of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries.
Today, Portuguese is the official language of Angola, Brazil (190.6 million), IBGE Official website Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Portugal (10.6 million), INE Official website São Tomé and PrÃncipe and Mozambique. CPLP Official website It is also one of the official languages of the special administrative region of Macau (with Chinese) and East Timor, (with Tetum). It is the language of most of the population in Portugal (100%) , Brazil (100%) , São Tomé and PrÃncipe (99.8%) and Angola (80%), and is the most widely spoken language in Mozambique (40%), though only 6.5% are native speakers. No data are available for Cape Verde, but almost all the population is bilingual, and the monolingual population speaks Cape Verdean Creole. See the main article Geographic distribution of Portuguese, for references.
Small Portuguese-speaking communities subsist in former overseas colonies of Portugal such as Macau, where it is spoken by 7% of the population, and East Timor (13.6%).
Uruguay gave Portuguese an equal status to Spanish in its educational system at the north border with Brazil. In the rest of the country, it is taught as an obligatory subject beginning in the 6th grade. Uruguay recently adopted Portuguese language in its education system as an obligatory subject /ref>
It is also spoken by substantial immigrant communities, though not official, in Andorra, Australia, The Portuguese-Speaking Community in Australia France, Luxembourg, Jersey (with a statistically significant Portuguese-speaking community of approximately 10,000 people), Paraguay, Namibia, South Africa, Switzerland, Venezuela, Japan JAPÃO: IMIGRANTES BRASILEIROS POPULARIZAM LÃNGUA PORTUGUESA and the U.S. states of California, Connecticut, Where America's Other Languages Are Spoken Florida, Widely spoken but 'minor'? Portuguese seeks respect Massachusetts, New Jersey, Hispanic Reading Room of the U.S. Library of Congress website, Twentieth-Century Arrivals from Portugal Settle in Newark, New Jersey, New York Brazucas (Brazilians living in New York) and Rhode Island. Hispanic Reading Room of the U.S. Library of Congress website, Whaling, Fishing, and Industrial Employment in Southeastern New England
In some parts of India, such as Goa Portuguese Language in Goa and Daman and Diu, The Portuguese Experience: The Case of Goa, Daman and Diu Portuguese is still spoken. There are also significant populations of Portuguese speakers in Canada (mainly concentrated in and around Toronto), Multicultural Canada Bermuda World InfoZone: Bermuda and the Netherlands Antilles.
Portuguese is an official language of several international organizations. The Community of Portuguese Language Countries (with the Portuguese acronym CPLP) consists of the eight independent countries that have Portuguese as an official language. It is also an official language of the European Union, accounting for 3% of its population, EUROPA website Languages in the EU Mercosul, the Organization of American States, the Organization of Ibero-American States, the Union of South American Nations, and the African Union (one of the working languages) and one of the official languages of other organizations. The Portuguese language is gaining popularity in Africa, Asia, and South America as a second language for study.
Estação da Luz, home of the Museum of the Portuguese Language, in São Paulo, Brazil.
Portuguese and Spanish are the fastest-growing European languages (with the exception of English, being the world lingua franca) , and, according to estimates by UNESCO, the Portuguese language has the highest potential for growth as an international language in southern Africa and South America. The Portuguese-speaking African countries are expected to have a combined population of 83 million by 2050. In total, the Portuguese-speaking countries will have 335 million people by the same year. Since 1991, when Brazil signed into the economic market of Mercosul with other South American nations, such as Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay, there has been an increase in interest in the study of Portuguese in those South American countries. The demographic weight of Brazil in the continent will continue to strengthen the presence of the language in the region. Although in the early 21st century, after Macau was ceded to China in 1999, the use of Portuguese was in decline in Asia, it is becoming a language of opportunity there; mostly because of East Timor's boost in the number of speakers in the last five years but also because of increased Chinese diplomatic and financial ties with Portuguese-speaking countries.
In July 2007, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema announced his government's decision to establish Portuguese as Equatorial Guinea's third official language, to meet the requirements to apply for full membership of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries. This upgrading from its current Associate Observer condition would result in Equatorial Guinea being able to access several professional and academic exchange programs and the facilitation of cross-border circulation of citizens. Its application is currently being assessed by other CPLP members. "Obiang convierte al portugués en tercer idioma oficial para entrar en la Comunidad lusófona de Naciones", Terra. 13-07-2007
In March 1994 the Bosque de Portugal (Portugal's Woods) was founded in the Brazilian city of Curitiba. The park houses the Portuguese Language Memorial, which honors the Portuguese immigrants and the countries that adopted the Portuguese language. Originally there were seven nations represented with pillars, but the independence of East Timor brought yet another pillar for that nation in 2007.
In March 2006, the Museum of the Portuguese Language, an interactive museum about the Portuguese language, was founded in São Paulo, Brazil, the city with the greatest number of Portuguese speakers in the world.
Portuguese is a pluricentric language with two main groups of dialects, those of Brazil and those of the Old World. For historical reasons, the dialects of Africa and Asia are generally closer to those of Portugal than the Brazilian dialects, although in some aspects of their phonetics, especially the pronunciation of unstressed vowels, they resemble Brazilian Portuguese more than European Portuguese. They have not been studied as widely as European and Brazilian Portuguese.
Audio samples of some dialects of Portuguese are available below. From Audio samples of the dialects of Portuguese at the Instituto Camões website. There are some differences between the areas but these are the best approximations possible. For example, the caipira dialect has some differences from the one of Minas Gerais, but in general it is very close. A good example of Brazilian Portuguese may be found in the capital city, BrasÃlia, because of the generalized population from all parts of the country.
Portuguese dialects of Angola
# Benguelense â Benguela province.
# 11px Luandense â Luanda province.
# Sulista â South of Angola.
Dialects of Portuguese in Brazil
# Caipira â States of São Paulo (countryside; the city of São Paulo and the eastern areas of the state have their own accent, called paulistano); southern Minas Gerais, northern Paraná, Goiás and Mato Grosso do Sul.
# Cearense â Ceará.
# Baiano â Bahia.
# 11px Fluminense â Variants spoken in the states of Rio de Janeiro (excluding the city of Rio de Janeiro and its adjacent metropolitan areas, which have their own dialect, called carioca).
# Gaúcho â Rio Grande do Sul. (There are many distinct accents in Rio Grande do Sul, mainly due to the heavy influx of European immigrants of diverse origins, those which have settled several colonies throughout the state.)
# Mineiro â Minas Gerais (not prevalent in the Triângulo Mineiro, southern and southeastern Minas Gerais and also excluding the city of Belo Horizonte, which has its own accent.).
# 11px Nordestino â northeastern states of Brazil (Pernambuco, ParaÃba and Rio Grande do Norte have a particular way of speaking). Note: the speaker of this sound file is from Rio, and he is talking about his experience with Nordestino and Nortista accents.
# Nortista â Amazon Basin states.
# Paulistano â Variants spoken around São Paulo city and the eastern areas of São Paulo state.
# Sertanejo â States of Goiás and Mato Grosso (the city of Cuiabá has a particular way of speaking).
# Sulista â Variants spoken in the areas between the northern regions of Rio Grande do Sul and southern regions of São Paulo state. (The cities of Curitiba, Florianópolis, and Itapetininga have fairly distinct accents as well.)
# Carioca â Variants spoken in Rio de Janeiro City and Niteroi
Dialects of Portuguese in Portugal
# 11px Açoriano (Azorean) â Azores.
# 11px Alentejano â Alentejo
# 11px Algarvio â Algarve (there is a particular dialect in a small part of western Algarve).
# 11px Alto-Minhoto â North of Braga (hinterland).
# 11px Baixo-Beirão; Alto-Alentejano â Central Portugal (hinterland).
# 11px Beirão â Central Portugal.
# 11px Estremenho â Regions of Coimbra and Lisbon (the Lisbon dialect has some peculiar features not shared with the one of Coimbra).
# 11px Madeirense (Madeiran) â Madeira.
# 11px Nortenho â Regions of Braga and Porto.
# 11px Transmontano â Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro.
* Cape Verde â 11px Português cabo-verdiano (Cape Verdean Portuguese)
* Daman and Diu, India â Damaense.
* East Timor â 11px Timorense (East Timorese)
* Goa, India â Goês.
* Guinea-Bissau â 11px Guineense (Guinean Portuguese).
* Macau, China â 11px Macaense (Macanese)
* Mozambique â 11px Moçambicano (Mozambican)
* São Tomé and PrÃncipe â 11px Santomense
* Uruguay â Dialectos Portugueses del Uruguay (DPU).
Differences between dialects are mostly of accent and vocabulary, but between the Brazilian dialects and other dialects, especially in their most colloquial forms, there can also be some grammatical differences. The Portuguese-based creoles spoken in various parts of Africa, Asia, and the Americas are independent languages which should not be confused with Portuguese itself.
Baroque Library of the Coimbra University, Portugal.
Arriving in the Iberian Peninsula in 216 BC, the Romans brought with them the Latin language, from which all Romance languages descend. The language was spread by arriving Roman soldiers, settlers, and merchants, who built Roman cities mostly near the settlements of previous civilizations.
Between 409 and 711 AD, as the Roman Empire collapsed in Western Europe, the Iberian Peninsula was conquered by Germanic peoples (Migration Period). The occupiers, mainly Suebi and Visigoths, quickly adopted late Roman culture and the Vulgar Latin dialects of the peninsula. After the Moorish invasion of 711, Arabic became the administrative language in the conquered regions, but most of the population continued to speak a form of Romance commonly known as Mozarabic. The influence exerted by Arabic on the Romance dialects spoken in the Christian kingdoms of the north was small, affecting mainly their lexicon.
The earliest surviving records of a distinctively Portuguese language are administrative documents of the 9th century, still interspersed with many Latin phrases. Today this phase is known as Proto-Portuguese (between the 9th and the 12th centuries). In the first period of Old Portuguese â Galician-Portuguese Period (from the 12th to the 14th century) â the language gradually came into general use. For some time, it was the language of preference for lyric poetry in Christian Hispania, much as Occitan was the language of the poetry of the troubadours. Portugal became an independent kingdom from the Kingdom of Leon in 1139, under king Afonso I of Portugal. In 1290, king Denis of Portugal created the first Portuguese university in Lisbon (the Estudos Gerais, later moved to Coimbra) and decreed that Portuguese, then simply called the "common language" should be known as the Portuguese language and used officially.
In the second period of Old Portuguese, from the 14th to the 16th centuries, with the Portuguese discoveries, the language was taken to many regions of Asia, Africa and the Americas (nowadays, the great majority of Portuguese speakers live in Brazil, in South America). By the 16th century, it had become a lingua franca in Asia and Africa, used not only for colonial administration and trade but also for communication between local officials and Europeans of all nationalities. Its spread was helped by mixed marriages between Portuguese and local people, and by its association with Roman Catholic missionary efforts, which led to the formation of a creole language called Kristang in many parts of Asia (from the word cristão, "Christian"). The language continued to be popular in parts of Asia until the 19th century. Some Portuguese-speaking Christian communities in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Indonesia preserved their language even after they were isolated from Portugal.
The end of the Old Portuguese period was marked by the publication of the Cancioneiro Geral by Garcia de Resende, in 1516. The early times of Modern Portuguese, which spans a period from the 16th century to the present day, were characterized by an increase in the number of learned words borrowed from Classical Latin and Classical Greek since the Renaissance, which greatly enriched the lexicon.
A distinctive feature of Portuguese is that it preserved the stressed vowels of Vulgar Latin, which became diphthongs in other Romance languages; cf. Fr. pierre, Sp. piedra, It. pietra, Ro. piatrÄ, Port. pedra ("stone"), from Lat. petram; or Sp. fuego, It. fuoco, Fr. feu, Ro. foc, Port. fogo, from Lat. focus ("fire"). Another characteristic of early Portuguese was the loss of intervocalic l and n, sometimes followed by the merger of the two surrounding vowels, or by the insertion of an epenthetic vowel between them: cf. Lat. salire ("to leave"), tenere ("to have"), catenam ("chain"), Sp. salir, tener, cadena, Port. sair, ter, cadeia.
When the elided consonant was n, it often nasalized the preceding vowel: cf. Lat. manum ("hand"), ranam ("frog"), bonum ("good"), Port. mão, rãa, bõo (now mão, rã, bom). This process was the source of most of the nasal diphthongs which are typical of Portuguese. In particular, the Latin endings -anem, -anum and -onem became -ão in most cases, cf. Lat. canem ("dog"), germanum ("brother"), rationem ("reason") with Modern Port. cão, irmão, razão, and their plurals -anes, -anos, -ones normally became -ães, -ãos, -ões, cf. cães, irmãos, razões.
Library of the Mafra National Palace, Portugal.
Most of the lexicon of Portuguese is derived from Latin. Nevertheless, because of the Moorish occupation of the Iberian Peninsula during the Middle Ages, and the participation of Portugal in the Age of Discovery, it has adopted loanwords from all over the world.
Very few Portuguese words can be traced to the pre-Roman inhabitants of Portugal, which included the Gallaeci, Lusitanians, Celtici and Cynetes. The Phoenicians and Carthaginians, briefly present, also left some scarce traces. Some notable examples are abóbora "pumpkin" and bezerro "year-old calf", from the nearby Celtiberian language (probably through the Celtici); cerveja "beer", from Celtic; and cachorro "dog", from Basque.
In the 5th century, the Iberian Peninsula (the Roman Hispania) was conquered by the Germanic Suebi and Visigoths. As they adopted the Roman civilization and language, however, these people contributed only a few words to the lexicon, mostly related to warfare â such as espora "spur", estaca "stake", and guerra "war", from Gothic *spaúra, *stakka, and *wirro, respectively. The influence also exists in toponymic and patronymic surnames borne by Visigoth sovereigns and their descendants, and it dwells on placenames such has Ermesinde, Esposende and Resende where sinde and sende are derived from the Germanic "sinths" (military expedition) and in the case of Resende, the prefix re comes from Germanic "reths" (council).
Between the 9th and 13th centuries, Portuguese acquired about 800 words from Arabic by influence of Moorish Iberia. They are often recognizable by the initial Arabic article a(l)-, and include many common words such as aldeia "village" from اÙضÙعة aldaya, alface "lettuce" from اÙخس alkhass, armazém "warehouse" from اÙÙ
خز٠almahazan, and azeite "olive oil" from اÙزÙت azzait. From Arabic came also the grammatically peculiar word oxalá إ٠شاء اÙÙÙ "hopefully". The Mozambican currency name metical was derived from the word Ù
تÙا٠mitqÄl, a unit of weight. The word Mozambique itself is from the Arabic name of sultan Muça Alebique (Musa Alibiki).
Starting in the 15th century, the Portuguese maritime explorations led to the introduction of many loanwords from Asian languages. For instance, catana "cutlass" from Japanese katana and chá "tea" from Chinese 'chá'.
From South America came batata "potato", from Taino; ananás and abacaxi, from Tupi-Guarani naná and Tupi ibá cati, respectively (two species of pineapple), and tucano "toucan" from Guarani tucan. See List of Brazil state name etymologies, for some more examples.
From the 16th to the 19th centuries, because of the role of Portugal as intermediary in the Atlantic slave trade, and the establishment of large Portuguese colonies in Angola, Mozambique, and Brazil, Portuguese got several words of African and Amerind origin, especially names for most of the animals and plants found in those territories. While those terms are mostly used in the former colonies, many became current in European Portuguese as well. From Kimbundu, for example, came kifumate â cafuné "head caress", kusula â caçula "youngest child", marimbondo "tropical wasp", and kubungula â bungular "to dance like a wizard".
Finally, it has received a steady influx of loanwords from other European languages. For example, melena "hair lock", fiambre "wet-cured ham" (in contrast with presunto "dry-cured ham" from Latin prae-exsuctus "dehydrated"), and castelhano "Castilian", from Spanish; colchete/crochê "bracket"/"crochet", paletó "jacket", batom "lipstick", and filé/filete "steak"/"slice" respectively, from French crochet, paletot, bâton, filet; macarrão "pasta", piloto "pilot", carroça "carriage", and barraca "barrack", from Italian maccherone, pilota, carrozza, baracca; and bife "steak", futebol, revólver, estoque, folclore, time from English beef,
football, revolver, stock, folklore, and team.
Portuguese belongs to the West Iberian branch of the Romance languages, and it has special ties with the following members of this group:
* Galician and Fala, its closest relatives. See below.
* Spanish, the major language closest to Portuguese. (See also Differences between Spanish and Portuguese.)
* Mirandese and Leonese, two other West Iberian languages spoken in Portugal.
* Judeo-Portuguese and Judeo-Spanish, languages spoken by Sephardic Jews, and which remained close to Portuguese and Spanish.
Despite the obvious lexical and grammatical similarities between Portuguese and other Romance languages, it is not mutually intelligible with them. Apart from Galician, Portuguese speakers will usually need some formal study of basic grammar and vocabulary, before attaining a reasonable level of comprehension of those languages, and vice versa. Native speakers of Portuguese do tend to understand standard Spanish which is spoken clearly, but the reverse is generally not true unless formal education is involved.
The closest language to Portuguese is Galician, spoken in the autonomous community of Galicia (northwestern Spain). The two were at one time a single language, known today as Galician-Portuguese, but since the political separation of Portugal from Galicia they have diverged somewhat, especially in pronunciation and vocabulary. Nevertheless, the core vocabulary and grammar of Galician are still noticeably closer to Portuguese than to those of Spanish. In particular, like Portuguese, it uses the future subjunctive, the personal infinitive, and the synthetic pluperfect (see the section on the grammar of Portuguese, below). Mutual intelligibility (estimated at 85% by R. A. Hall, Jr., 1989) Ethnologue is good between Galicians and northern Portuguese, but poorer between Galicians and speakers from central Portugal.
The Fala language is another descendant of Galician-Portuguese, spoken by a small number of people in the Spanish towns of Valverde del Fresno, Eljas and San MartÃn de Trevejo (autonomous community of Extremadura, near the border with Portugal).
Portuguese has provided loanwords to many languages, such as Indonesian, Manado Malay, Sri Lankan Tamil and Sinhalese (see Sri Lanka Indo-Portuguese), Malay, Bengali, English, Hindi, Konkani, Marathi, Tetum, Xitsonga, Papiamentu, Japanese, Lanc-Patuá (spoken in northern Brazil) and Sranan Tongo (spoken in Suriname). It left a strong influence on the lÃngua brasÃlica, a Tupi-Guarani language which was the most widely spoken in Brazil until the 18th century, and on the language spoken around Sikka in Flores Island, Indonesia. In nearby Larantuka, Portuguese is used for prayers in Holy Week rituals.
The Japanese-Portuguese dictionary Nippo Jisho (1603) was the first dictionary of Japanese in a European language, a product of Jesuit missionary activity in Japan. Building on the work of earlier Portuguese missionaries, the Dictionarium Anamiticum, Lusitanum et Latinum (Annamite-Portuguese-Latin dictionary) of Alexandre de Rhodes (1651) introduced the modern orthography of Vietnamese, which is based on the orthography of 17th-century Portuguese. The Romanization of Chinese was also influenced by the Portuguese language (among others), particularly regarding Chinese surnames; one example is Mei. During 1583-88 Italian Jesuits Michele Ruggieri and Matteo Ricci created a Portuguese-Chinese dictionary - the first ever European-Chinese dictionary. Yves Camus, "Jesuits' Journeys in Chinese Studies" "Dicionário Português-Chinês : Pu Han ci dian : Portuguese-Chinese dictionary", by Michele Ruggieri, Matteo Ricci; edited by John W. Witek. Published 2001, Biblioteca Nacional. ISBN 9725652983. Partial preview available on Google Books
See also List of English words of Portuguese origin, Loan words in Indonesian, Japanese words of Portuguese origin, Borrowed words in Malay, Sinhala words of Portuguese origin, Loan words from Portuguese in Sri Lankan Tamil.
Beginning in the 16th century, the extensive contacts between Portuguese travelers and settlers, African slaves, and local populations led to the appearance of many pidgins with varying amounts of Portuguese influence. As each of these pidgins became the mother tongue of succeeding generations, they evolved into fully fledged creole languages, which remained in use in many parts of Asia and Africa until the 18th century. Some Portuguese-based or Portuguese-influenced creoles are still spoken today, by over 3 million people worldwide, especially people of partial Portuguese ancestry.
There is a growing number of people in the Portuguese-speaking media and the internet who are presenting the case to the CPLP and other organizations to run a debate in the Lusophone community with the purpose of bringing forward a petition to make Portuguese an official language of the United Nations.
In October 2005, during the international Convention of the Elos Club International that took place in Tavira, Portugal, ONU: Petição para tornar português lÃngua oficial a petition was written and unanimously approved whose text can be found on the internet with the title Petição Para Tornar Oficial o Idioma Português na ONU. Romulo Alexandre Soares, president of the Brazil-Portugal Chamber highlights that the positioning of Brazil in the international arena as one of the emergent powers of the 21st century, the size of its population, and the presence of the language around the world provides legitimacy and justifies a petition to the UN to make the Portuguese language an official language of the UN. Português pode ser lÃngua oficial na ONU
Several factors detract from this campaign. The current official languages of the UN are either 1) official/dominant in many countries (English, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, and French) or 2) have several hundreds of millions of speakers (Chinese). English, Spanish, Russian and Arabic fulfill both criteria. Portuguese is a global language in that it is the official tongue of several sovereign countries on four continents. It also has over 200 million speakers. However, it exhibits some noticeable differences when compared to the current 6 UN official languages. For example, English, French, Arabic and Spanish are each official languages of multiple states and of over half of the world's countries. In contrast, four out of every five speakers of the Portuguese-speaking world live in just one country: Brazil. In addition to Brazil, Portuguese is the official language in only 7 other sovereign states; however, English is official in 53 states, French in 29 states, Arabic in 25 states, and Spanish in 20 states.
More significantly, in each part of the world with a Portuguese-speaking country, this language is overshadowed by other powerful languages that are already official languages of the UN. For example, in the Americas, the 190 million Portuguese-speaking Brazilians are overshadowed by the most spoken languages in the Western Hemisphere: Spanish (~360 million speakers) and English (~340 million speakers). Portuguese is overshadowed to an even greater extent in Europe, the continent in which four of the six UN languages originated (English, French, Spanish, and Russian). In the European context, Portuguese is not even among the ten most spoken languages on the continent, with a number of speakers comparable to those of Czech and Bulgarian. In Africa, Portuguese is eclipsed as a continental lingua franca by English and French in countries that surround Cape Verde, São Tomé and PrÃncipe, Guinea-Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique. Finally in Asia, a continent with several languages that have hundreds of millions of speakers, the only sovereign state with Portuguese as an official language is East Timor, which has only a million people. While Brazilian migration has brought 300,000 fluent Portuguese speakers to Japan, Portuguese does not enjoy any official status whatsoever in that country. Therefore, while Portuguese will gain increasing importance as Brazil continues its development as a major economy, it will likely face the same hurdles that prevented Japanese and German (both languages of major global economies with millions of speakers) from becoming both international languages and official ones of the UN.
There is a maximum of 9 oral vowels and 19 consonants, though some varieties of the language have fewer phonemes (Brazilian Portuguese has 8 oral vowels). There are also five nasal vowels, which some linguists regard as allophones of the oral vowels, ten oral diphthongs, and five nasal diphthongs. In total, Brazilian Portuguese has 13 vowel phonemes. /ref> Handbook of the International Phonetic Association'' pg. 126-130; the reference applies to the entire section
Chart of monophthongs of the Portuguese of Lisbon
To the seven vowels of Vulgar Latin, European Portuguese has added two near central vowels, one of which tends to be elided in rapid speech, like the e caduc of French (represented as either , or , or ). The high vowels and the low vowels are four distinct phonemes, and they alternate in various forms of apophony. Like Catalan, Portuguese uses vowel quality to contrast stressed syllables with unstressed syllables: isolated vowels tend to be raised, and in some cases centralized, when unstressed. Nasal diphthongs occur mostly at the ends of words.
The consonant inventory of Portuguese is fairly conservative. The medieval affricates , , , merged with the fricatives , , , , respectively, but not with each other, and there were no other significant changes to the consonant phonemes since then. However, some notable dialectal variants and allophones have appeared, among which:
* In many regions of Brazil, and have the affricate allophones and , respectively, before and . (Quebec French has a similar phenomenon, with alveolar affricates instead of postalveolars. Japanese is another example).
* At the end of a syllable, the phoneme has the allophone in Brazilian Portuguese (L-vocalization).
* In many parts of Brazil and Angola, intervocalic is pronounced as a nasalized palatal approximant which nasalizes the preceding vowel, so that, for instance, is pronounced .
* In most of Brazil, the alveolar sibilants and occur in complementary distribution at the ends of syllables, depending on whether the consonant that follows is voiceless or voiced, as in English. But in most of Portugal and parts of Brazil, sibilants are postalveolar at the ends of syllables, before voiceless consonants, and before voiced consonants (in Judeo-Spanish, is often replaced with at the ends of syllables, too).
* There is considerable dialectal variation in the value of the rhotic phoneme . See Guttural R in Portuguese, for details.
;Excerpt from the Portuguese national epic Os LusÃadas, by author LuÃs de Camões (I, 33)
A notable aspect of the grammar of Portuguese is the verb. Morphologically, more verbal inflections from classical Latin have been preserved by Portuguese than by any other major Romance language. See Romance copula, for a detailed comparison. It has also some innovations not found in other Romance languages (except Galician and the Fala):
* The present perfect tense has an iterative sense unique to Galician-Portuguese language group. It denotes an action or a series of actions which began in the past and are expected to keep repeating in the future. For instance, the sentence Tenho tentado falar com ela would be translated to "I have been trying to talk to her", not "I have tried to talk to her". On the other hand, the correct translation of the question "Have you heard the latest news?" is not *Tem ouvido a última notÃcia?, but Ouviu a última notÃcia?, since no repetition is implied. Squartini, Mario (1998) Verbal Periphrases in Romance â Aspect, Actionality, and Grammaticalization ISBN 3-11-016160-5
* The future subjunctive tense, which was developed by medieval West Iberian Romance, but has now fallen into disuse in Spanish and Galician, is still used in vernacular Portuguese. It appears in dependent clauses that denote a condition which must be fulfilled in the future, so that the independent clause will occur. English normally employs the present tense under the same circumstances:
:Se eu for eleito presidente, mudarei a lei.
:If I am elected president, I will change the law.
:Quando fores mais velho, vais entender.
:When you are older, you will understand.
* The personal infinitive: infinitives can inflect according to their subject in person and number, often showing who is expected to perform a certain action; cf. Ã melhor voltares "It is better [for you] to go back," Ã melhor voltarmos "It is better [for us] to go back." Perhaps for this reason, infinitive clauses replace subjunctive clauses more often in Portuguese than in other Romance languages.
Portuguese is written with 23 or 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, making use of five diacritics to denote stress, vowel height, contraction, nasalization, and other sound changes (acute accent, grave accent, circumflex accent, tilde, and cedilla). Accented characters and digraphs are not counted as separate letters for collation purposes.
* Portuguese literature
* Portuguese poetry
* List of Portuguese language poets
* Brazilian literature
* List of Brazilian poets
* Lusophone
* Geographic distribution of Portuguese
* List of countries where Portuguese is an official language
* Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP)
* Instituto Camões
* International Portuguese Language Institute
* Museum of the Portuguese Language
* Portuguese-based creole languages
* Portuñol
* Portuguese in the United States
* List of English words of Portuguese origin
* Spelling reforms of Portuguese
* História da Lingua Portuguesa Instituto Camões
* A LÃngua Portuguesa in Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil (...)
* Poesia e Prosa Medievais, by Maria Ema Tarracha Ferreira, Ulisseia 1998, 3rd ed., ISBN 978-972-568-124-4.
* Bases Temáticas â LÃngua Portuguesa in Instituto Camões
* Portuguese Literature in The Catholic Encyclopedia
* International Phonetic Association (1999) Handbook of the International Phonetic Association ISBN 0-521-63751-1
* Mateus, Maria Helena & d'Andrade, Ernesto (2000) The Phonology of Portuguese ISBN 0-19-823581-X (Excerpt available at Google Books)
* Bergström, Magnus & Reis, Neves Prontuário Ortográfico Editorial NotÃcias, 2004.
* A pronúncia do português europeu - European Portuguese Pronunciation
* Dialects of Portuguese at the Instituto Camões
* Audio samples of the dialects of Portugal
* Audio samples of the dialects from outside Europe
* Antônio Houaiss (2000), Dicionário Houaiss da LÃngua Portuguesa (228,500 entries).
* Aurélio Buarque de Holanda Ferreira, Novo Dicionário da LÃngua Portuguesa (1809pp)
* English-Portuguese-Chinese Dictionary (Freeware, for Windows/Linux/Mac)
* Lindley Cintra, LuÃs F. Nova Proposta de Classificação dos Dialectos Galego-Portugueses (PDF) Boletim de Filologia, Lisboa, Centro de Estudos Filológicos, 1971.
*Swadesh list in English and Portuguese
* English Portuguese Translation Dictionary for English Portuguese translations
* Learn Portuguese BBC
* Portuguese Language Notes BBC
* AULP - Associação das Universidades de LÃngua Portuguesa Portuguese Language Universities Association.
* Portuguese in East Timor an interview with Dr. Geoffrey Hull.
* Portuguese Dictionary with gender and type of words.
* ABL - Academia Brasileira de letras (em português) - (Brazilian Academy of Letters) (Portuguese)
* Brazilian Portuguese Free resources for Portuguese learners.
* EasyPortuguese Free Portuguese learning site with audio.
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Portuguese_language | Which government established Portuguese as it's third official language in order to meet the requirements to apply for full membership in the CPLP? | The government of Equatorial Guinea established Portuguese as its third official language in order to meet the requirements to apply for full membership in the CPLP. | data/set5/a1 | Portuguese_language
Portuguese ( or lÃngua portuguesa) is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia and northern Portugal. It is derived from the Latin spoken by the romanized pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula (namely the Gallaeci, the Lusitanians, the Celtici and the Conii) around 2000 years ago. It spread worldwide in the 15th and 16th centuries as Portugal established a colonial and commercial empire (1415â1999) which spanned from Brazil in the Americas to Goa and other parts of India, Macau in China and Timor (north of Australia). It was used as the exclusive lingua franca on the island of Sri Lanka for almost 350 years. During that time, many creole languages based on Portuguese also appeared around the world, especially in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean.
Today it is one of the world's major languages, ranked seventh according to number of native speakers (between 205 and 230 million). It is the language of about half of South America's population, even though Brazil is the only Portuguese-speaking nation in the Americas. It is also a major lingua franca in Portugal's former colonial possessions in Africa. It is an official language in nine countries (see the table on the right), also being co-official with Cantonese Chinese in Macau and Tetum in East Timor. There are sizeable communities of Portuguese speakers in various regions of North America, notably in the United States (New Jersey, New England, California and south Florida) and in Ontario, Canada.
In various aspects, the system of sounds in Portuguese is more similar to the phonologies of Catalan or French than, say, those of Spanish or Italian. Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes once called Portuguese "the sweet language", /ref> Lope de Vega referred to it as "suave" 'Encyclopedia of Literature' Joseph T. Shipley; Philosophical Library, 1946. 1188 pgs. while Brazilian writer Olavo Bilac poetically described it as a última flor do Lácio, inculta e bela: "the last flower of Latium, wild and beautiful". Portuguese is also termed "the language of Camões", after one of Portugal's best known literary figures, LuÃs Vaz de Camões.
Countries and regions where Portuguese has official status.
Members of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries.
Today, Portuguese is the official language of Angola, Brazil (190.6 million), IBGE Official website Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Portugal (10.6 million), INE Official website São Tomé and PrÃncipe and Mozambique. CPLP Official website It is also one of the official languages of the special administrative region of Macau (with Chinese) and East Timor, (with Tetum). It is the language of most of the population in Portugal (100%) , Brazil (100%) , São Tomé and PrÃncipe (99.8%) and Angola (80%), and is the most widely spoken language in Mozambique (40%), though only 6.5% are native speakers. No data are available for Cape Verde, but almost all the population is bilingual, and the monolingual population speaks Cape Verdean Creole. See the main article Geographic distribution of Portuguese, for references.
Small Portuguese-speaking communities subsist in former overseas colonies of Portugal such as Macau, where it is spoken by 7% of the population, and East Timor (13.6%).
Uruguay gave Portuguese an equal status to Spanish in its educational system at the north border with Brazil. In the rest of the country, it is taught as an obligatory subject beginning in the 6th grade. Uruguay recently adopted Portuguese language in its education system as an obligatory subject /ref>
It is also spoken by substantial immigrant communities, though not official, in Andorra, Australia, The Portuguese-Speaking Community in Australia France, Luxembourg, Jersey (with a statistically significant Portuguese-speaking community of approximately 10,000 people), Paraguay, Namibia, South Africa, Switzerland, Venezuela, Japan JAPÃO: IMIGRANTES BRASILEIROS POPULARIZAM LÃNGUA PORTUGUESA and the U.S. states of California, Connecticut, Where America's Other Languages Are Spoken Florida, Widely spoken but 'minor'? Portuguese seeks respect Massachusetts, New Jersey, Hispanic Reading Room of the U.S. Library of Congress website, Twentieth-Century Arrivals from Portugal Settle in Newark, New Jersey, New York Brazucas (Brazilians living in New York) and Rhode Island. Hispanic Reading Room of the U.S. Library of Congress website, Whaling, Fishing, and Industrial Employment in Southeastern New England
In some parts of India, such as Goa Portuguese Language in Goa and Daman and Diu, The Portuguese Experience: The Case of Goa, Daman and Diu Portuguese is still spoken. There are also significant populations of Portuguese speakers in Canada (mainly concentrated in and around Toronto), Multicultural Canada Bermuda World InfoZone: Bermuda and the Netherlands Antilles.
Portuguese is an official language of several international organizations. The Community of Portuguese Language Countries (with the Portuguese acronym CPLP) consists of the eight independent countries that have Portuguese as an official language. It is also an official language of the European Union, accounting for 3% of its population, EUROPA website Languages in the EU Mercosul, the Organization of American States, the Organization of Ibero-American States, the Union of South American Nations, and the African Union (one of the working languages) and one of the official languages of other organizations. The Portuguese language is gaining popularity in Africa, Asia, and South America as a second language for study.
Estação da Luz, home of the Museum of the Portuguese Language, in São Paulo, Brazil.
Portuguese and Spanish are the fastest-growing European languages (with the exception of English, being the world lingua franca) , and, according to estimates by UNESCO, the Portuguese language has the highest potential for growth as an international language in southern Africa and South America. The Portuguese-speaking African countries are expected to have a combined population of 83 million by 2050. In total, the Portuguese-speaking countries will have 335 million people by the same year. Since 1991, when Brazil signed into the economic market of Mercosul with other South American nations, such as Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay, there has been an increase in interest in the study of Portuguese in those South American countries. The demographic weight of Brazil in the continent will continue to strengthen the presence of the language in the region. Although in the early 21st century, after Macau was ceded to China in 1999, the use of Portuguese was in decline in Asia, it is becoming a language of opportunity there; mostly because of East Timor's boost in the number of speakers in the last five years but also because of increased Chinese diplomatic and financial ties with Portuguese-speaking countries.
In July 2007, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema announced his government's decision to establish Portuguese as Equatorial Guinea's third official language, to meet the requirements to apply for full membership of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries. This upgrading from its current Associate Observer condition would result in Equatorial Guinea being able to access several professional and academic exchange programs and the facilitation of cross-border circulation of citizens. Its application is currently being assessed by other CPLP members. "Obiang convierte al portugués en tercer idioma oficial para entrar en la Comunidad lusófona de Naciones", Terra. 13-07-2007
In March 1994 the Bosque de Portugal (Portugal's Woods) was founded in the Brazilian city of Curitiba. The park houses the Portuguese Language Memorial, which honors the Portuguese immigrants and the countries that adopted the Portuguese language. Originally there were seven nations represented with pillars, but the independence of East Timor brought yet another pillar for that nation in 2007.
In March 2006, the Museum of the Portuguese Language, an interactive museum about the Portuguese language, was founded in São Paulo, Brazil, the city with the greatest number of Portuguese speakers in the world.
Portuguese is a pluricentric language with two main groups of dialects, those of Brazil and those of the Old World. For historical reasons, the dialects of Africa and Asia are generally closer to those of Portugal than the Brazilian dialects, although in some aspects of their phonetics, especially the pronunciation of unstressed vowels, they resemble Brazilian Portuguese more than European Portuguese. They have not been studied as widely as European and Brazilian Portuguese.
Audio samples of some dialects of Portuguese are available below. From Audio samples of the dialects of Portuguese at the Instituto Camões website. There are some differences between the areas but these are the best approximations possible. For example, the caipira dialect has some differences from the one of Minas Gerais, but in general it is very close. A good example of Brazilian Portuguese may be found in the capital city, BrasÃlia, because of the generalized population from all parts of the country.
Portuguese dialects of Angola
# Benguelense â Benguela province.
# 11px Luandense â Luanda province.
# Sulista â South of Angola.
Dialects of Portuguese in Brazil
# Caipira â States of São Paulo (countryside; the city of São Paulo and the eastern areas of the state have their own accent, called paulistano); southern Minas Gerais, northern Paraná, Goiás and Mato Grosso do Sul.
# Cearense â Ceará.
# Baiano â Bahia.
# 11px Fluminense â Variants spoken in the states of Rio de Janeiro (excluding the city of Rio de Janeiro and its adjacent metropolitan areas, which have their own dialect, called carioca).
# Gaúcho â Rio Grande do Sul. (There are many distinct accents in Rio Grande do Sul, mainly due to the heavy influx of European immigrants of diverse origins, those which have settled several colonies throughout the state.)
# Mineiro â Minas Gerais (not prevalent in the Triângulo Mineiro, southern and southeastern Minas Gerais and also excluding the city of Belo Horizonte, which has its own accent.).
# 11px Nordestino â northeastern states of Brazil (Pernambuco, ParaÃba and Rio Grande do Norte have a particular way of speaking). Note: the speaker of this sound file is from Rio, and he is talking about his experience with Nordestino and Nortista accents.
# Nortista â Amazon Basin states.
# Paulistano â Variants spoken around São Paulo city and the eastern areas of São Paulo state.
# Sertanejo â States of Goiás and Mato Grosso (the city of Cuiabá has a particular way of speaking).
# Sulista â Variants spoken in the areas between the northern regions of Rio Grande do Sul and southern regions of São Paulo state. (The cities of Curitiba, Florianópolis, and Itapetininga have fairly distinct accents as well.)
# Carioca â Variants spoken in Rio de Janeiro City and Niteroi
Dialects of Portuguese in Portugal
# 11px Açoriano (Azorean) â Azores.
# 11px Alentejano â Alentejo
# 11px Algarvio â Algarve (there is a particular dialect in a small part of western Algarve).
# 11px Alto-Minhoto â North of Braga (hinterland).
# 11px Baixo-Beirão; Alto-Alentejano â Central Portugal (hinterland).
# 11px Beirão â Central Portugal.
# 11px Estremenho â Regions of Coimbra and Lisbon (the Lisbon dialect has some peculiar features not shared with the one of Coimbra).
# 11px Madeirense (Madeiran) â Madeira.
# 11px Nortenho â Regions of Braga and Porto.
# 11px Transmontano â Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro.
* Cape Verde â 11px Português cabo-verdiano (Cape Verdean Portuguese)
* Daman and Diu, India â Damaense.
* East Timor â 11px Timorense (East Timorese)
* Goa, India â Goês.
* Guinea-Bissau â 11px Guineense (Guinean Portuguese).
* Macau, China â 11px Macaense (Macanese)
* Mozambique â 11px Moçambicano (Mozambican)
* São Tomé and PrÃncipe â 11px Santomense
* Uruguay â Dialectos Portugueses del Uruguay (DPU).
Differences between dialects are mostly of accent and vocabulary, but between the Brazilian dialects and other dialects, especially in their most colloquial forms, there can also be some grammatical differences. The Portuguese-based creoles spoken in various parts of Africa, Asia, and the Americas are independent languages which should not be confused with Portuguese itself.
Baroque Library of the Coimbra University, Portugal.
Arriving in the Iberian Peninsula in 216 BC, the Romans brought with them the Latin language, from which all Romance languages descend. The language was spread by arriving Roman soldiers, settlers, and merchants, who built Roman cities mostly near the settlements of previous civilizations.
Between 409 and 711 AD, as the Roman Empire collapsed in Western Europe, the Iberian Peninsula was conquered by Germanic peoples (Migration Period). The occupiers, mainly Suebi and Visigoths, quickly adopted late Roman culture and the Vulgar Latin dialects of the peninsula. After the Moorish invasion of 711, Arabic became the administrative language in the conquered regions, but most of the population continued to speak a form of Romance commonly known as Mozarabic. The influence exerted by Arabic on the Romance dialects spoken in the Christian kingdoms of the north was small, affecting mainly their lexicon.
The earliest surviving records of a distinctively Portuguese language are administrative documents of the 9th century, still interspersed with many Latin phrases. Today this phase is known as Proto-Portuguese (between the 9th and the 12th centuries). In the first period of Old Portuguese â Galician-Portuguese Period (from the 12th to the 14th century) â the language gradually came into general use. For some time, it was the language of preference for lyric poetry in Christian Hispania, much as Occitan was the language of the poetry of the troubadours. Portugal became an independent kingdom from the Kingdom of Leon in 1139, under king Afonso I of Portugal. In 1290, king Denis of Portugal created the first Portuguese university in Lisbon (the Estudos Gerais, later moved to Coimbra) and decreed that Portuguese, then simply called the "common language" should be known as the Portuguese language and used officially.
In the second period of Old Portuguese, from the 14th to the 16th centuries, with the Portuguese discoveries, the language was taken to many regions of Asia, Africa and the Americas (nowadays, the great majority of Portuguese speakers live in Brazil, in South America). By the 16th century, it had become a lingua franca in Asia and Africa, used not only for colonial administration and trade but also for communication between local officials and Europeans of all nationalities. Its spread was helped by mixed marriages between Portuguese and local people, and by its association with Roman Catholic missionary efforts, which led to the formation of a creole language called Kristang in many parts of Asia (from the word cristão, "Christian"). The language continued to be popular in parts of Asia until the 19th century. Some Portuguese-speaking Christian communities in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Indonesia preserved their language even after they were isolated from Portugal.
The end of the Old Portuguese period was marked by the publication of the Cancioneiro Geral by Garcia de Resende, in 1516. The early times of Modern Portuguese, which spans a period from the 16th century to the present day, were characterized by an increase in the number of learned words borrowed from Classical Latin and Classical Greek since the Renaissance, which greatly enriched the lexicon.
A distinctive feature of Portuguese is that it preserved the stressed vowels of Vulgar Latin, which became diphthongs in other Romance languages; cf. Fr. pierre, Sp. piedra, It. pietra, Ro. piatrÄ, Port. pedra ("stone"), from Lat. petram; or Sp. fuego, It. fuoco, Fr. feu, Ro. foc, Port. fogo, from Lat. focus ("fire"). Another characteristic of early Portuguese was the loss of intervocalic l and n, sometimes followed by the merger of the two surrounding vowels, or by the insertion of an epenthetic vowel between them: cf. Lat. salire ("to leave"), tenere ("to have"), catenam ("chain"), Sp. salir, tener, cadena, Port. sair, ter, cadeia.
When the elided consonant was n, it often nasalized the preceding vowel: cf. Lat. manum ("hand"), ranam ("frog"), bonum ("good"), Port. mão, rãa, bõo (now mão, rã, bom). This process was the source of most of the nasal diphthongs which are typical of Portuguese. In particular, the Latin endings -anem, -anum and -onem became -ão in most cases, cf. Lat. canem ("dog"), germanum ("brother"), rationem ("reason") with Modern Port. cão, irmão, razão, and their plurals -anes, -anos, -ones normally became -ães, -ãos, -ões, cf. cães, irmãos, razões.
Library of the Mafra National Palace, Portugal.
Most of the lexicon of Portuguese is derived from Latin. Nevertheless, because of the Moorish occupation of the Iberian Peninsula during the Middle Ages, and the participation of Portugal in the Age of Discovery, it has adopted loanwords from all over the world.
Very few Portuguese words can be traced to the pre-Roman inhabitants of Portugal, which included the Gallaeci, Lusitanians, Celtici and Cynetes. The Phoenicians and Carthaginians, briefly present, also left some scarce traces. Some notable examples are abóbora "pumpkin" and bezerro "year-old calf", from the nearby Celtiberian language (probably through the Celtici); cerveja "beer", from Celtic; and cachorro "dog", from Basque.
In the 5th century, the Iberian Peninsula (the Roman Hispania) was conquered by the Germanic Suebi and Visigoths. As they adopted the Roman civilization and language, however, these people contributed only a few words to the lexicon, mostly related to warfare â such as espora "spur", estaca "stake", and guerra "war", from Gothic *spaúra, *stakka, and *wirro, respectively. The influence also exists in toponymic and patronymic surnames borne by Visigoth sovereigns and their descendants, and it dwells on placenames such has Ermesinde, Esposende and Resende where sinde and sende are derived from the Germanic "sinths" (military expedition) and in the case of Resende, the prefix re comes from Germanic "reths" (council).
Between the 9th and 13th centuries, Portuguese acquired about 800 words from Arabic by influence of Moorish Iberia. They are often recognizable by the initial Arabic article a(l)-, and include many common words such as aldeia "village" from اÙضÙعة aldaya, alface "lettuce" from اÙخس alkhass, armazém "warehouse" from اÙÙ
خز٠almahazan, and azeite "olive oil" from اÙزÙت azzait. From Arabic came also the grammatically peculiar word oxalá إ٠شاء اÙÙÙ "hopefully". The Mozambican currency name metical was derived from the word Ù
تÙا٠mitqÄl, a unit of weight. The word Mozambique itself is from the Arabic name of sultan Muça Alebique (Musa Alibiki).
Starting in the 15th century, the Portuguese maritime explorations led to the introduction of many loanwords from Asian languages. For instance, catana "cutlass" from Japanese katana and chá "tea" from Chinese 'chá'.
From South America came batata "potato", from Taino; ananás and abacaxi, from Tupi-Guarani naná and Tupi ibá cati, respectively (two species of pineapple), and tucano "toucan" from Guarani tucan. See List of Brazil state name etymologies, for some more examples.
From the 16th to the 19th centuries, because of the role of Portugal as intermediary in the Atlantic slave trade, and the establishment of large Portuguese colonies in Angola, Mozambique, and Brazil, Portuguese got several words of African and Amerind origin, especially names for most of the animals and plants found in those territories. While those terms are mostly used in the former colonies, many became current in European Portuguese as well. From Kimbundu, for example, came kifumate â cafuné "head caress", kusula â caçula "youngest child", marimbondo "tropical wasp", and kubungula â bungular "to dance like a wizard".
Finally, it has received a steady influx of loanwords from other European languages. For example, melena "hair lock", fiambre "wet-cured ham" (in contrast with presunto "dry-cured ham" from Latin prae-exsuctus "dehydrated"), and castelhano "Castilian", from Spanish; colchete/crochê "bracket"/"crochet", paletó "jacket", batom "lipstick", and filé/filete "steak"/"slice" respectively, from French crochet, paletot, bâton, filet; macarrão "pasta", piloto "pilot", carroça "carriage", and barraca "barrack", from Italian maccherone, pilota, carrozza, baracca; and bife "steak", futebol, revólver, estoque, folclore, time from English beef,
football, revolver, stock, folklore, and team.
Portuguese belongs to the West Iberian branch of the Romance languages, and it has special ties with the following members of this group:
* Galician and Fala, its closest relatives. See below.
* Spanish, the major language closest to Portuguese. (See also Differences between Spanish and Portuguese.)
* Mirandese and Leonese, two other West Iberian languages spoken in Portugal.
* Judeo-Portuguese and Judeo-Spanish, languages spoken by Sephardic Jews, and which remained close to Portuguese and Spanish.
Despite the obvious lexical and grammatical similarities between Portuguese and other Romance languages, it is not mutually intelligible with them. Apart from Galician, Portuguese speakers will usually need some formal study of basic grammar and vocabulary, before attaining a reasonable level of comprehension of those languages, and vice versa. Native speakers of Portuguese do tend to understand standard Spanish which is spoken clearly, but the reverse is generally not true unless formal education is involved.
The closest language to Portuguese is Galician, spoken in the autonomous community of Galicia (northwestern Spain). The two were at one time a single language, known today as Galician-Portuguese, but since the political separation of Portugal from Galicia they have diverged somewhat, especially in pronunciation and vocabulary. Nevertheless, the core vocabulary and grammar of Galician are still noticeably closer to Portuguese than to those of Spanish. In particular, like Portuguese, it uses the future subjunctive, the personal infinitive, and the synthetic pluperfect (see the section on the grammar of Portuguese, below). Mutual intelligibility (estimated at 85% by R. A. Hall, Jr., 1989) Ethnologue is good between Galicians and northern Portuguese, but poorer between Galicians and speakers from central Portugal.
The Fala language is another descendant of Galician-Portuguese, spoken by a small number of people in the Spanish towns of Valverde del Fresno, Eljas and San MartÃn de Trevejo (autonomous community of Extremadura, near the border with Portugal).
Portuguese has provided loanwords to many languages, such as Indonesian, Manado Malay, Sri Lankan Tamil and Sinhalese (see Sri Lanka Indo-Portuguese), Malay, Bengali, English, Hindi, Konkani, Marathi, Tetum, Xitsonga, Papiamentu, Japanese, Lanc-Patuá (spoken in northern Brazil) and Sranan Tongo (spoken in Suriname). It left a strong influence on the lÃngua brasÃlica, a Tupi-Guarani language which was the most widely spoken in Brazil until the 18th century, and on the language spoken around Sikka in Flores Island, Indonesia. In nearby Larantuka, Portuguese is used for prayers in Holy Week rituals.
The Japanese-Portuguese dictionary Nippo Jisho (1603) was the first dictionary of Japanese in a European language, a product of Jesuit missionary activity in Japan. Building on the work of earlier Portuguese missionaries, the Dictionarium Anamiticum, Lusitanum et Latinum (Annamite-Portuguese-Latin dictionary) of Alexandre de Rhodes (1651) introduced the modern orthography of Vietnamese, which is based on the orthography of 17th-century Portuguese. The Romanization of Chinese was also influenced by the Portuguese language (among others), particularly regarding Chinese surnames; one example is Mei. During 1583-88 Italian Jesuits Michele Ruggieri and Matteo Ricci created a Portuguese-Chinese dictionary - the first ever European-Chinese dictionary. Yves Camus, "Jesuits' Journeys in Chinese Studies" "Dicionário Português-Chinês : Pu Han ci dian : Portuguese-Chinese dictionary", by Michele Ruggieri, Matteo Ricci; edited by John W. Witek. Published 2001, Biblioteca Nacional. ISBN 9725652983. Partial preview available on Google Books
See also List of English words of Portuguese origin, Loan words in Indonesian, Japanese words of Portuguese origin, Borrowed words in Malay, Sinhala words of Portuguese origin, Loan words from Portuguese in Sri Lankan Tamil.
Beginning in the 16th century, the extensive contacts between Portuguese travelers and settlers, African slaves, and local populations led to the appearance of many pidgins with varying amounts of Portuguese influence. As each of these pidgins became the mother tongue of succeeding generations, they evolved into fully fledged creole languages, which remained in use in many parts of Asia and Africa until the 18th century. Some Portuguese-based or Portuguese-influenced creoles are still spoken today, by over 3 million people worldwide, especially people of partial Portuguese ancestry.
There is a growing number of people in the Portuguese-speaking media and the internet who are presenting the case to the CPLP and other organizations to run a debate in the Lusophone community with the purpose of bringing forward a petition to make Portuguese an official language of the United Nations.
In October 2005, during the international Convention of the Elos Club International that took place in Tavira, Portugal, ONU: Petição para tornar português lÃngua oficial a petition was written and unanimously approved whose text can be found on the internet with the title Petição Para Tornar Oficial o Idioma Português na ONU. Romulo Alexandre Soares, president of the Brazil-Portugal Chamber highlights that the positioning of Brazil in the international arena as one of the emergent powers of the 21st century, the size of its population, and the presence of the language around the world provides legitimacy and justifies a petition to the UN to make the Portuguese language an official language of the UN. Português pode ser lÃngua oficial na ONU
Several factors detract from this campaign. The current official languages of the UN are either 1) official/dominant in many countries (English, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, and French) or 2) have several hundreds of millions of speakers (Chinese). English, Spanish, Russian and Arabic fulfill both criteria. Portuguese is a global language in that it is the official tongue of several sovereign countries on four continents. It also has over 200 million speakers. However, it exhibits some noticeable differences when compared to the current 6 UN official languages. For example, English, French, Arabic and Spanish are each official languages of multiple states and of over half of the world's countries. In contrast, four out of every five speakers of the Portuguese-speaking world live in just one country: Brazil. In addition to Brazil, Portuguese is the official language in only 7 other sovereign states; however, English is official in 53 states, French in 29 states, Arabic in 25 states, and Spanish in 20 states.
More significantly, in each part of the world with a Portuguese-speaking country, this language is overshadowed by other powerful languages that are already official languages of the UN. For example, in the Americas, the 190 million Portuguese-speaking Brazilians are overshadowed by the most spoken languages in the Western Hemisphere: Spanish (~360 million speakers) and English (~340 million speakers). Portuguese is overshadowed to an even greater extent in Europe, the continent in which four of the six UN languages originated (English, French, Spanish, and Russian). In the European context, Portuguese is not even among the ten most spoken languages on the continent, with a number of speakers comparable to those of Czech and Bulgarian. In Africa, Portuguese is eclipsed as a continental lingua franca by English and French in countries that surround Cape Verde, São Tomé and PrÃncipe, Guinea-Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique. Finally in Asia, a continent with several languages that have hundreds of millions of speakers, the only sovereign state with Portuguese as an official language is East Timor, which has only a million people. While Brazilian migration has brought 300,000 fluent Portuguese speakers to Japan, Portuguese does not enjoy any official status whatsoever in that country. Therefore, while Portuguese will gain increasing importance as Brazil continues its development as a major economy, it will likely face the same hurdles that prevented Japanese and German (both languages of major global economies with millions of speakers) from becoming both international languages and official ones of the UN.
There is a maximum of 9 oral vowels and 19 consonants, though some varieties of the language have fewer phonemes (Brazilian Portuguese has 8 oral vowels). There are also five nasal vowels, which some linguists regard as allophones of the oral vowels, ten oral diphthongs, and five nasal diphthongs. In total, Brazilian Portuguese has 13 vowel phonemes. /ref> Handbook of the International Phonetic Association'' pg. 126-130; the reference applies to the entire section
Chart of monophthongs of the Portuguese of Lisbon
To the seven vowels of Vulgar Latin, European Portuguese has added two near central vowels, one of which tends to be elided in rapid speech, like the e caduc of French (represented as either , or , or ). The high vowels and the low vowels are four distinct phonemes, and they alternate in various forms of apophony. Like Catalan, Portuguese uses vowel quality to contrast stressed syllables with unstressed syllables: isolated vowels tend to be raised, and in some cases centralized, when unstressed. Nasal diphthongs occur mostly at the ends of words.
The consonant inventory of Portuguese is fairly conservative. The medieval affricates , , , merged with the fricatives , , , , respectively, but not with each other, and there were no other significant changes to the consonant phonemes since then. However, some notable dialectal variants and allophones have appeared, among which:
* In many regions of Brazil, and have the affricate allophones and , respectively, before and . (Quebec French has a similar phenomenon, with alveolar affricates instead of postalveolars. Japanese is another example).
* At the end of a syllable, the phoneme has the allophone in Brazilian Portuguese (L-vocalization).
* In many parts of Brazil and Angola, intervocalic is pronounced as a nasalized palatal approximant which nasalizes the preceding vowel, so that, for instance, is pronounced .
* In most of Brazil, the alveolar sibilants and occur in complementary distribution at the ends of syllables, depending on whether the consonant that follows is voiceless or voiced, as in English. But in most of Portugal and parts of Brazil, sibilants are postalveolar at the ends of syllables, before voiceless consonants, and before voiced consonants (in Judeo-Spanish, is often replaced with at the ends of syllables, too).
* There is considerable dialectal variation in the value of the rhotic phoneme . See Guttural R in Portuguese, for details.
;Excerpt from the Portuguese national epic Os LusÃadas, by author LuÃs de Camões (I, 33)
A notable aspect of the grammar of Portuguese is the verb. Morphologically, more verbal inflections from classical Latin have been preserved by Portuguese than by any other major Romance language. See Romance copula, for a detailed comparison. It has also some innovations not found in other Romance languages (except Galician and the Fala):
* The present perfect tense has an iterative sense unique to Galician-Portuguese language group. It denotes an action or a series of actions which began in the past and are expected to keep repeating in the future. For instance, the sentence Tenho tentado falar com ela would be translated to "I have been trying to talk to her", not "I have tried to talk to her". On the other hand, the correct translation of the question "Have you heard the latest news?" is not *Tem ouvido a última notÃcia?, but Ouviu a última notÃcia?, since no repetition is implied. Squartini, Mario (1998) Verbal Periphrases in Romance â Aspect, Actionality, and Grammaticalization ISBN 3-11-016160-5
* The future subjunctive tense, which was developed by medieval West Iberian Romance, but has now fallen into disuse in Spanish and Galician, is still used in vernacular Portuguese. It appears in dependent clauses that denote a condition which must be fulfilled in the future, so that the independent clause will occur. English normally employs the present tense under the same circumstances:
:Se eu for eleito presidente, mudarei a lei.
:If I am elected president, I will change the law.
:Quando fores mais velho, vais entender.
:When you are older, you will understand.
* The personal infinitive: infinitives can inflect according to their subject in person and number, often showing who is expected to perform a certain action; cf. Ã melhor voltares "It is better [for you] to go back," Ã melhor voltarmos "It is better [for us] to go back." Perhaps for this reason, infinitive clauses replace subjunctive clauses more often in Portuguese than in other Romance languages.
Portuguese is written with 23 or 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, making use of five diacritics to denote stress, vowel height, contraction, nasalization, and other sound changes (acute accent, grave accent, circumflex accent, tilde, and cedilla). Accented characters and digraphs are not counted as separate letters for collation purposes.
* Portuguese literature
* Portuguese poetry
* List of Portuguese language poets
* Brazilian literature
* List of Brazilian poets
* Lusophone
* Geographic distribution of Portuguese
* List of countries where Portuguese is an official language
* Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP)
* Instituto Camões
* International Portuguese Language Institute
* Museum of the Portuguese Language
* Portuguese-based creole languages
* Portuñol
* Portuguese in the United States
* List of English words of Portuguese origin
* Spelling reforms of Portuguese
* História da Lingua Portuguesa Instituto Camões
* A LÃngua Portuguesa in Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil (...)
* Poesia e Prosa Medievais, by Maria Ema Tarracha Ferreira, Ulisseia 1998, 3rd ed., ISBN 978-972-568-124-4.
* Bases Temáticas â LÃngua Portuguesa in Instituto Camões
* Portuguese Literature in The Catholic Encyclopedia
* International Phonetic Association (1999) Handbook of the International Phonetic Association ISBN 0-521-63751-1
* Mateus, Maria Helena & d'Andrade, Ernesto (2000) The Phonology of Portuguese ISBN 0-19-823581-X (Excerpt available at Google Books)
* Bergström, Magnus & Reis, Neves Prontuário Ortográfico Editorial NotÃcias, 2004.
* A pronúncia do português europeu - European Portuguese Pronunciation
* Dialects of Portuguese at the Instituto Camões
* Audio samples of the dialects of Portugal
* Audio samples of the dialects from outside Europe
* Antônio Houaiss (2000), Dicionário Houaiss da LÃngua Portuguesa (228,500 entries).
* Aurélio Buarque de Holanda Ferreira, Novo Dicionário da LÃngua Portuguesa (1809pp)
* English-Portuguese-Chinese Dictionary (Freeware, for Windows/Linux/Mac)
* Lindley Cintra, LuÃs F. Nova Proposta de Classificação dos Dialectos Galego-Portugueses (PDF) Boletim de Filologia, Lisboa, Centro de Estudos Filológicos, 1971.
*Swadesh list in English and Portuguese
* English Portuguese Translation Dictionary for English Portuguese translations
* Learn Portuguese BBC
* Portuguese Language Notes BBC
* AULP - Associação das Universidades de LÃngua Portuguesa Portuguese Language Universities Association.
* Portuguese in East Timor an interview with Dr. Geoffrey Hull.
* Portuguese Dictionary with gender and type of words.
* ABL - Academia Brasileira de letras (em português) - (Brazilian Academy of Letters) (Portuguese)
* Brazilian Portuguese Free resources for Portuguese learners.
* EasyPortuguese Free Portuguese learning site with audio.
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Portuguese_language | By 2050, what will the total population of Portuguese speakers in the world be? | 335 million people | data/set5/a1 | Portuguese_language
Portuguese ( or lÃngua portuguesa) is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia and northern Portugal. It is derived from the Latin spoken by the romanized pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula (namely the Gallaeci, the Lusitanians, the Celtici and the Conii) around 2000 years ago. It spread worldwide in the 15th and 16th centuries as Portugal established a colonial and commercial empire (1415â1999) which spanned from Brazil in the Americas to Goa and other parts of India, Macau in China and Timor (north of Australia). It was used as the exclusive lingua franca on the island of Sri Lanka for almost 350 years. During that time, many creole languages based on Portuguese also appeared around the world, especially in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean.
Today it is one of the world's major languages, ranked seventh according to number of native speakers (between 205 and 230 million). It is the language of about half of South America's population, even though Brazil is the only Portuguese-speaking nation in the Americas. It is also a major lingua franca in Portugal's former colonial possessions in Africa. It is an official language in nine countries (see the table on the right), also being co-official with Cantonese Chinese in Macau and Tetum in East Timor. There are sizeable communities of Portuguese speakers in various regions of North America, notably in the United States (New Jersey, New England, California and south Florida) and in Ontario, Canada.
In various aspects, the system of sounds in Portuguese is more similar to the phonologies of Catalan or French than, say, those of Spanish or Italian. Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes once called Portuguese "the sweet language", /ref> Lope de Vega referred to it as "suave" 'Encyclopedia of Literature' Joseph T. Shipley; Philosophical Library, 1946. 1188 pgs. while Brazilian writer Olavo Bilac poetically described it as a última flor do Lácio, inculta e bela: "the last flower of Latium, wild and beautiful". Portuguese is also termed "the language of Camões", after one of Portugal's best known literary figures, LuÃs Vaz de Camões.
Countries and regions where Portuguese has official status.
Members of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries.
Today, Portuguese is the official language of Angola, Brazil (190.6 million), IBGE Official website Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Portugal (10.6 million), INE Official website São Tomé and PrÃncipe and Mozambique. CPLP Official website It is also one of the official languages of the special administrative region of Macau (with Chinese) and East Timor, (with Tetum). It is the language of most of the population in Portugal (100%) , Brazil (100%) , São Tomé and PrÃncipe (99.8%) and Angola (80%), and is the most widely spoken language in Mozambique (40%), though only 6.5% are native speakers. No data are available for Cape Verde, but almost all the population is bilingual, and the monolingual population speaks Cape Verdean Creole. See the main article Geographic distribution of Portuguese, for references.
Small Portuguese-speaking communities subsist in former overseas colonies of Portugal such as Macau, where it is spoken by 7% of the population, and East Timor (13.6%).
Uruguay gave Portuguese an equal status to Spanish in its educational system at the north border with Brazil. In the rest of the country, it is taught as an obligatory subject beginning in the 6th grade. Uruguay recently adopted Portuguese language in its education system as an obligatory subject /ref>
It is also spoken by substantial immigrant communities, though not official, in Andorra, Australia, The Portuguese-Speaking Community in Australia France, Luxembourg, Jersey (with a statistically significant Portuguese-speaking community of approximately 10,000 people), Paraguay, Namibia, South Africa, Switzerland, Venezuela, Japan JAPÃO: IMIGRANTES BRASILEIROS POPULARIZAM LÃNGUA PORTUGUESA and the U.S. states of California, Connecticut, Where America's Other Languages Are Spoken Florida, Widely spoken but 'minor'? Portuguese seeks respect Massachusetts, New Jersey, Hispanic Reading Room of the U.S. Library of Congress website, Twentieth-Century Arrivals from Portugal Settle in Newark, New Jersey, New York Brazucas (Brazilians living in New York) and Rhode Island. Hispanic Reading Room of the U.S. Library of Congress website, Whaling, Fishing, and Industrial Employment in Southeastern New England
In some parts of India, such as Goa Portuguese Language in Goa and Daman and Diu, The Portuguese Experience: The Case of Goa, Daman and Diu Portuguese is still spoken. There are also significant populations of Portuguese speakers in Canada (mainly concentrated in and around Toronto), Multicultural Canada Bermuda World InfoZone: Bermuda and the Netherlands Antilles.
Portuguese is an official language of several international organizations. The Community of Portuguese Language Countries (with the Portuguese acronym CPLP) consists of the eight independent countries that have Portuguese as an official language. It is also an official language of the European Union, accounting for 3% of its population, EUROPA website Languages in the EU Mercosul, the Organization of American States, the Organization of Ibero-American States, the Union of South American Nations, and the African Union (one of the working languages) and one of the official languages of other organizations. The Portuguese language is gaining popularity in Africa, Asia, and South America as a second language for study.
Estação da Luz, home of the Museum of the Portuguese Language, in São Paulo, Brazil.
Portuguese and Spanish are the fastest-growing European languages (with the exception of English, being the world lingua franca) , and, according to estimates by UNESCO, the Portuguese language has the highest potential for growth as an international language in southern Africa and South America. The Portuguese-speaking African countries are expected to have a combined population of 83 million by 2050. In total, the Portuguese-speaking countries will have 335 million people by the same year. Since 1991, when Brazil signed into the economic market of Mercosul with other South American nations, such as Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay, there has been an increase in interest in the study of Portuguese in those South American countries. The demographic weight of Brazil in the continent will continue to strengthen the presence of the language in the region. Although in the early 21st century, after Macau was ceded to China in 1999, the use of Portuguese was in decline in Asia, it is becoming a language of opportunity there; mostly because of East Timor's boost in the number of speakers in the last five years but also because of increased Chinese diplomatic and financial ties with Portuguese-speaking countries.
In July 2007, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema announced his government's decision to establish Portuguese as Equatorial Guinea's third official language, to meet the requirements to apply for full membership of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries. This upgrading from its current Associate Observer condition would result in Equatorial Guinea being able to access several professional and academic exchange programs and the facilitation of cross-border circulation of citizens. Its application is currently being assessed by other CPLP members. "Obiang convierte al portugués en tercer idioma oficial para entrar en la Comunidad lusófona de Naciones", Terra. 13-07-2007
In March 1994 the Bosque de Portugal (Portugal's Woods) was founded in the Brazilian city of Curitiba. The park houses the Portuguese Language Memorial, which honors the Portuguese immigrants and the countries that adopted the Portuguese language. Originally there were seven nations represented with pillars, but the independence of East Timor brought yet another pillar for that nation in 2007.
In March 2006, the Museum of the Portuguese Language, an interactive museum about the Portuguese language, was founded in São Paulo, Brazil, the city with the greatest number of Portuguese speakers in the world.
Portuguese is a pluricentric language with two main groups of dialects, those of Brazil and those of the Old World. For historical reasons, the dialects of Africa and Asia are generally closer to those of Portugal than the Brazilian dialects, although in some aspects of their phonetics, especially the pronunciation of unstressed vowels, they resemble Brazilian Portuguese more than European Portuguese. They have not been studied as widely as European and Brazilian Portuguese.
Audio samples of some dialects of Portuguese are available below. From Audio samples of the dialects of Portuguese at the Instituto Camões website. There are some differences between the areas but these are the best approximations possible. For example, the caipira dialect has some differences from the one of Minas Gerais, but in general it is very close. A good example of Brazilian Portuguese may be found in the capital city, BrasÃlia, because of the generalized population from all parts of the country.
Portuguese dialects of Angola
# Benguelense â Benguela province.
# 11px Luandense â Luanda province.
# Sulista â South of Angola.
Dialects of Portuguese in Brazil
# Caipira â States of São Paulo (countryside; the city of São Paulo and the eastern areas of the state have their own accent, called paulistano); southern Minas Gerais, northern Paraná, Goiás and Mato Grosso do Sul.
# Cearense â Ceará.
# Baiano â Bahia.
# 11px Fluminense â Variants spoken in the states of Rio de Janeiro (excluding the city of Rio de Janeiro and its adjacent metropolitan areas, which have their own dialect, called carioca).
# Gaúcho â Rio Grande do Sul. (There are many distinct accents in Rio Grande do Sul, mainly due to the heavy influx of European immigrants of diverse origins, those which have settled several colonies throughout the state.)
# Mineiro â Minas Gerais (not prevalent in the Triângulo Mineiro, southern and southeastern Minas Gerais and also excluding the city of Belo Horizonte, which has its own accent.).
# 11px Nordestino â northeastern states of Brazil (Pernambuco, ParaÃba and Rio Grande do Norte have a particular way of speaking). Note: the speaker of this sound file is from Rio, and he is talking about his experience with Nordestino and Nortista accents.
# Nortista â Amazon Basin states.
# Paulistano â Variants spoken around São Paulo city and the eastern areas of São Paulo state.
# Sertanejo â States of Goiás and Mato Grosso (the city of Cuiabá has a particular way of speaking).
# Sulista â Variants spoken in the areas between the northern regions of Rio Grande do Sul and southern regions of São Paulo state. (The cities of Curitiba, Florianópolis, and Itapetininga have fairly distinct accents as well.)
# Carioca â Variants spoken in Rio de Janeiro City and Niteroi
Dialects of Portuguese in Portugal
# 11px Açoriano (Azorean) â Azores.
# 11px Alentejano â Alentejo
# 11px Algarvio â Algarve (there is a particular dialect in a small part of western Algarve).
# 11px Alto-Minhoto â North of Braga (hinterland).
# 11px Baixo-Beirão; Alto-Alentejano â Central Portugal (hinterland).
# 11px Beirão â Central Portugal.
# 11px Estremenho â Regions of Coimbra and Lisbon (the Lisbon dialect has some peculiar features not shared with the one of Coimbra).
# 11px Madeirense (Madeiran) â Madeira.
# 11px Nortenho â Regions of Braga and Porto.
# 11px Transmontano â Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro.
* Cape Verde â 11px Português cabo-verdiano (Cape Verdean Portuguese)
* Daman and Diu, India â Damaense.
* East Timor â 11px Timorense (East Timorese)
* Goa, India â Goês.
* Guinea-Bissau â 11px Guineense (Guinean Portuguese).
* Macau, China â 11px Macaense (Macanese)
* Mozambique â 11px Moçambicano (Mozambican)
* São Tomé and PrÃncipe â 11px Santomense
* Uruguay â Dialectos Portugueses del Uruguay (DPU).
Differences between dialects are mostly of accent and vocabulary, but between the Brazilian dialects and other dialects, especially in their most colloquial forms, there can also be some grammatical differences. The Portuguese-based creoles spoken in various parts of Africa, Asia, and the Americas are independent languages which should not be confused with Portuguese itself.
Baroque Library of the Coimbra University, Portugal.
Arriving in the Iberian Peninsula in 216 BC, the Romans brought with them the Latin language, from which all Romance languages descend. The language was spread by arriving Roman soldiers, settlers, and merchants, who built Roman cities mostly near the settlements of previous civilizations.
Between 409 and 711 AD, as the Roman Empire collapsed in Western Europe, the Iberian Peninsula was conquered by Germanic peoples (Migration Period). The occupiers, mainly Suebi and Visigoths, quickly adopted late Roman culture and the Vulgar Latin dialects of the peninsula. After the Moorish invasion of 711, Arabic became the administrative language in the conquered regions, but most of the population continued to speak a form of Romance commonly known as Mozarabic. The influence exerted by Arabic on the Romance dialects spoken in the Christian kingdoms of the north was small, affecting mainly their lexicon.
The earliest surviving records of a distinctively Portuguese language are administrative documents of the 9th century, still interspersed with many Latin phrases. Today this phase is known as Proto-Portuguese (between the 9th and the 12th centuries). In the first period of Old Portuguese â Galician-Portuguese Period (from the 12th to the 14th century) â the language gradually came into general use. For some time, it was the language of preference for lyric poetry in Christian Hispania, much as Occitan was the language of the poetry of the troubadours. Portugal became an independent kingdom from the Kingdom of Leon in 1139, under king Afonso I of Portugal. In 1290, king Denis of Portugal created the first Portuguese university in Lisbon (the Estudos Gerais, later moved to Coimbra) and decreed that Portuguese, then simply called the "common language" should be known as the Portuguese language and used officially.
In the second period of Old Portuguese, from the 14th to the 16th centuries, with the Portuguese discoveries, the language was taken to many regions of Asia, Africa and the Americas (nowadays, the great majority of Portuguese speakers live in Brazil, in South America). By the 16th century, it had become a lingua franca in Asia and Africa, used not only for colonial administration and trade but also for communication between local officials and Europeans of all nationalities. Its spread was helped by mixed marriages between Portuguese and local people, and by its association with Roman Catholic missionary efforts, which led to the formation of a creole language called Kristang in many parts of Asia (from the word cristão, "Christian"). The language continued to be popular in parts of Asia until the 19th century. Some Portuguese-speaking Christian communities in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Indonesia preserved their language even after they were isolated from Portugal.
The end of the Old Portuguese period was marked by the publication of the Cancioneiro Geral by Garcia de Resende, in 1516. The early times of Modern Portuguese, which spans a period from the 16th century to the present day, were characterized by an increase in the number of learned words borrowed from Classical Latin and Classical Greek since the Renaissance, which greatly enriched the lexicon.
A distinctive feature of Portuguese is that it preserved the stressed vowels of Vulgar Latin, which became diphthongs in other Romance languages; cf. Fr. pierre, Sp. piedra, It. pietra, Ro. piatrÄ, Port. pedra ("stone"), from Lat. petram; or Sp. fuego, It. fuoco, Fr. feu, Ro. foc, Port. fogo, from Lat. focus ("fire"). Another characteristic of early Portuguese was the loss of intervocalic l and n, sometimes followed by the merger of the two surrounding vowels, or by the insertion of an epenthetic vowel between them: cf. Lat. salire ("to leave"), tenere ("to have"), catenam ("chain"), Sp. salir, tener, cadena, Port. sair, ter, cadeia.
When the elided consonant was n, it often nasalized the preceding vowel: cf. Lat. manum ("hand"), ranam ("frog"), bonum ("good"), Port. mão, rãa, bõo (now mão, rã, bom). This process was the source of most of the nasal diphthongs which are typical of Portuguese. In particular, the Latin endings -anem, -anum and -onem became -ão in most cases, cf. Lat. canem ("dog"), germanum ("brother"), rationem ("reason") with Modern Port. cão, irmão, razão, and their plurals -anes, -anos, -ones normally became -ães, -ãos, -ões, cf. cães, irmãos, razões.
Library of the Mafra National Palace, Portugal.
Most of the lexicon of Portuguese is derived from Latin. Nevertheless, because of the Moorish occupation of the Iberian Peninsula during the Middle Ages, and the participation of Portugal in the Age of Discovery, it has adopted loanwords from all over the world.
Very few Portuguese words can be traced to the pre-Roman inhabitants of Portugal, which included the Gallaeci, Lusitanians, Celtici and Cynetes. The Phoenicians and Carthaginians, briefly present, also left some scarce traces. Some notable examples are abóbora "pumpkin" and bezerro "year-old calf", from the nearby Celtiberian language (probably through the Celtici); cerveja "beer", from Celtic; and cachorro "dog", from Basque.
In the 5th century, the Iberian Peninsula (the Roman Hispania) was conquered by the Germanic Suebi and Visigoths. As they adopted the Roman civilization and language, however, these people contributed only a few words to the lexicon, mostly related to warfare â such as espora "spur", estaca "stake", and guerra "war", from Gothic *spaúra, *stakka, and *wirro, respectively. The influence also exists in toponymic and patronymic surnames borne by Visigoth sovereigns and their descendants, and it dwells on placenames such has Ermesinde, Esposende and Resende where sinde and sende are derived from the Germanic "sinths" (military expedition) and in the case of Resende, the prefix re comes from Germanic "reths" (council).
Between the 9th and 13th centuries, Portuguese acquired about 800 words from Arabic by influence of Moorish Iberia. They are often recognizable by the initial Arabic article a(l)-, and include many common words such as aldeia "village" from اÙضÙعة aldaya, alface "lettuce" from اÙخس alkhass, armazém "warehouse" from اÙÙ
خز٠almahazan, and azeite "olive oil" from اÙزÙت azzait. From Arabic came also the grammatically peculiar word oxalá إ٠شاء اÙÙÙ "hopefully". The Mozambican currency name metical was derived from the word Ù
تÙا٠mitqÄl, a unit of weight. The word Mozambique itself is from the Arabic name of sultan Muça Alebique (Musa Alibiki).
Starting in the 15th century, the Portuguese maritime explorations led to the introduction of many loanwords from Asian languages. For instance, catana "cutlass" from Japanese katana and chá "tea" from Chinese 'chá'.
From South America came batata "potato", from Taino; ananás and abacaxi, from Tupi-Guarani naná and Tupi ibá cati, respectively (two species of pineapple), and tucano "toucan" from Guarani tucan. See List of Brazil state name etymologies, for some more examples.
From the 16th to the 19th centuries, because of the role of Portugal as intermediary in the Atlantic slave trade, and the establishment of large Portuguese colonies in Angola, Mozambique, and Brazil, Portuguese got several words of African and Amerind origin, especially names for most of the animals and plants found in those territories. While those terms are mostly used in the former colonies, many became current in European Portuguese as well. From Kimbundu, for example, came kifumate â cafuné "head caress", kusula â caçula "youngest child", marimbondo "tropical wasp", and kubungula â bungular "to dance like a wizard".
Finally, it has received a steady influx of loanwords from other European languages. For example, melena "hair lock", fiambre "wet-cured ham" (in contrast with presunto "dry-cured ham" from Latin prae-exsuctus "dehydrated"), and castelhano "Castilian", from Spanish; colchete/crochê "bracket"/"crochet", paletó "jacket", batom "lipstick", and filé/filete "steak"/"slice" respectively, from French crochet, paletot, bâton, filet; macarrão "pasta", piloto "pilot", carroça "carriage", and barraca "barrack", from Italian maccherone, pilota, carrozza, baracca; and bife "steak", futebol, revólver, estoque, folclore, time from English beef,
football, revolver, stock, folklore, and team.
Portuguese belongs to the West Iberian branch of the Romance languages, and it has special ties with the following members of this group:
* Galician and Fala, its closest relatives. See below.
* Spanish, the major language closest to Portuguese. (See also Differences between Spanish and Portuguese.)
* Mirandese and Leonese, two other West Iberian languages spoken in Portugal.
* Judeo-Portuguese and Judeo-Spanish, languages spoken by Sephardic Jews, and which remained close to Portuguese and Spanish.
Despite the obvious lexical and grammatical similarities between Portuguese and other Romance languages, it is not mutually intelligible with them. Apart from Galician, Portuguese speakers will usually need some formal study of basic grammar and vocabulary, before attaining a reasonable level of comprehension of those languages, and vice versa. Native speakers of Portuguese do tend to understand standard Spanish which is spoken clearly, but the reverse is generally not true unless formal education is involved.
The closest language to Portuguese is Galician, spoken in the autonomous community of Galicia (northwestern Spain). The two were at one time a single language, known today as Galician-Portuguese, but since the political separation of Portugal from Galicia they have diverged somewhat, especially in pronunciation and vocabulary. Nevertheless, the core vocabulary and grammar of Galician are still noticeably closer to Portuguese than to those of Spanish. In particular, like Portuguese, it uses the future subjunctive, the personal infinitive, and the synthetic pluperfect (see the section on the grammar of Portuguese, below). Mutual intelligibility (estimated at 85% by R. A. Hall, Jr., 1989) Ethnologue is good between Galicians and northern Portuguese, but poorer between Galicians and speakers from central Portugal.
The Fala language is another descendant of Galician-Portuguese, spoken by a small number of people in the Spanish towns of Valverde del Fresno, Eljas and San MartÃn de Trevejo (autonomous community of Extremadura, near the border with Portugal).
Portuguese has provided loanwords to many languages, such as Indonesian, Manado Malay, Sri Lankan Tamil and Sinhalese (see Sri Lanka Indo-Portuguese), Malay, Bengali, English, Hindi, Konkani, Marathi, Tetum, Xitsonga, Papiamentu, Japanese, Lanc-Patuá (spoken in northern Brazil) and Sranan Tongo (spoken in Suriname). It left a strong influence on the lÃngua brasÃlica, a Tupi-Guarani language which was the most widely spoken in Brazil until the 18th century, and on the language spoken around Sikka in Flores Island, Indonesia. In nearby Larantuka, Portuguese is used for prayers in Holy Week rituals.
The Japanese-Portuguese dictionary Nippo Jisho (1603) was the first dictionary of Japanese in a European language, a product of Jesuit missionary activity in Japan. Building on the work of earlier Portuguese missionaries, the Dictionarium Anamiticum, Lusitanum et Latinum (Annamite-Portuguese-Latin dictionary) of Alexandre de Rhodes (1651) introduced the modern orthography of Vietnamese, which is based on the orthography of 17th-century Portuguese. The Romanization of Chinese was also influenced by the Portuguese language (among others), particularly regarding Chinese surnames; one example is Mei. During 1583-88 Italian Jesuits Michele Ruggieri and Matteo Ricci created a Portuguese-Chinese dictionary - the first ever European-Chinese dictionary. Yves Camus, "Jesuits' Journeys in Chinese Studies" "Dicionário Português-Chinês : Pu Han ci dian : Portuguese-Chinese dictionary", by Michele Ruggieri, Matteo Ricci; edited by John W. Witek. Published 2001, Biblioteca Nacional. ISBN 9725652983. Partial preview available on Google Books
See also List of English words of Portuguese origin, Loan words in Indonesian, Japanese words of Portuguese origin, Borrowed words in Malay, Sinhala words of Portuguese origin, Loan words from Portuguese in Sri Lankan Tamil.
Beginning in the 16th century, the extensive contacts between Portuguese travelers and settlers, African slaves, and local populations led to the appearance of many pidgins with varying amounts of Portuguese influence. As each of these pidgins became the mother tongue of succeeding generations, they evolved into fully fledged creole languages, which remained in use in many parts of Asia and Africa until the 18th century. Some Portuguese-based or Portuguese-influenced creoles are still spoken today, by over 3 million people worldwide, especially people of partial Portuguese ancestry.
There is a growing number of people in the Portuguese-speaking media and the internet who are presenting the case to the CPLP and other organizations to run a debate in the Lusophone community with the purpose of bringing forward a petition to make Portuguese an official language of the United Nations.
In October 2005, during the international Convention of the Elos Club International that took place in Tavira, Portugal, ONU: Petição para tornar português lÃngua oficial a petition was written and unanimously approved whose text can be found on the internet with the title Petição Para Tornar Oficial o Idioma Português na ONU. Romulo Alexandre Soares, president of the Brazil-Portugal Chamber highlights that the positioning of Brazil in the international arena as one of the emergent powers of the 21st century, the size of its population, and the presence of the language around the world provides legitimacy and justifies a petition to the UN to make the Portuguese language an official language of the UN. Português pode ser lÃngua oficial na ONU
Several factors detract from this campaign. The current official languages of the UN are either 1) official/dominant in many countries (English, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, and French) or 2) have several hundreds of millions of speakers (Chinese). English, Spanish, Russian and Arabic fulfill both criteria. Portuguese is a global language in that it is the official tongue of several sovereign countries on four continents. It also has over 200 million speakers. However, it exhibits some noticeable differences when compared to the current 6 UN official languages. For example, English, French, Arabic and Spanish are each official languages of multiple states and of over half of the world's countries. In contrast, four out of every five speakers of the Portuguese-speaking world live in just one country: Brazil. In addition to Brazil, Portuguese is the official language in only 7 other sovereign states; however, English is official in 53 states, French in 29 states, Arabic in 25 states, and Spanish in 20 states.
More significantly, in each part of the world with a Portuguese-speaking country, this language is overshadowed by other powerful languages that are already official languages of the UN. For example, in the Americas, the 190 million Portuguese-speaking Brazilians are overshadowed by the most spoken languages in the Western Hemisphere: Spanish (~360 million speakers) and English (~340 million speakers). Portuguese is overshadowed to an even greater extent in Europe, the continent in which four of the six UN languages originated (English, French, Spanish, and Russian). In the European context, Portuguese is not even among the ten most spoken languages on the continent, with a number of speakers comparable to those of Czech and Bulgarian. In Africa, Portuguese is eclipsed as a continental lingua franca by English and French in countries that surround Cape Verde, São Tomé and PrÃncipe, Guinea-Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique. Finally in Asia, a continent with several languages that have hundreds of millions of speakers, the only sovereign state with Portuguese as an official language is East Timor, which has only a million people. While Brazilian migration has brought 300,000 fluent Portuguese speakers to Japan, Portuguese does not enjoy any official status whatsoever in that country. Therefore, while Portuguese will gain increasing importance as Brazil continues its development as a major economy, it will likely face the same hurdles that prevented Japanese and German (both languages of major global economies with millions of speakers) from becoming both international languages and official ones of the UN.
There is a maximum of 9 oral vowels and 19 consonants, though some varieties of the language have fewer phonemes (Brazilian Portuguese has 8 oral vowels). There are also five nasal vowels, which some linguists regard as allophones of the oral vowels, ten oral diphthongs, and five nasal diphthongs. In total, Brazilian Portuguese has 13 vowel phonemes. /ref> Handbook of the International Phonetic Association'' pg. 126-130; the reference applies to the entire section
Chart of monophthongs of the Portuguese of Lisbon
To the seven vowels of Vulgar Latin, European Portuguese has added two near central vowels, one of which tends to be elided in rapid speech, like the e caduc of French (represented as either , or , or ). The high vowels and the low vowels are four distinct phonemes, and they alternate in various forms of apophony. Like Catalan, Portuguese uses vowel quality to contrast stressed syllables with unstressed syllables: isolated vowels tend to be raised, and in some cases centralized, when unstressed. Nasal diphthongs occur mostly at the ends of words.
The consonant inventory of Portuguese is fairly conservative. The medieval affricates , , , merged with the fricatives , , , , respectively, but not with each other, and there were no other significant changes to the consonant phonemes since then. However, some notable dialectal variants and allophones have appeared, among which:
* In many regions of Brazil, and have the affricate allophones and , respectively, before and . (Quebec French has a similar phenomenon, with alveolar affricates instead of postalveolars. Japanese is another example).
* At the end of a syllable, the phoneme has the allophone in Brazilian Portuguese (L-vocalization).
* In many parts of Brazil and Angola, intervocalic is pronounced as a nasalized palatal approximant which nasalizes the preceding vowel, so that, for instance, is pronounced .
* In most of Brazil, the alveolar sibilants and occur in complementary distribution at the ends of syllables, depending on whether the consonant that follows is voiceless or voiced, as in English. But in most of Portugal and parts of Brazil, sibilants are postalveolar at the ends of syllables, before voiceless consonants, and before voiced consonants (in Judeo-Spanish, is often replaced with at the ends of syllables, too).
* There is considerable dialectal variation in the value of the rhotic phoneme . See Guttural R in Portuguese, for details.
;Excerpt from the Portuguese national epic Os LusÃadas, by author LuÃs de Camões (I, 33)
A notable aspect of the grammar of Portuguese is the verb. Morphologically, more verbal inflections from classical Latin have been preserved by Portuguese than by any other major Romance language. See Romance copula, for a detailed comparison. It has also some innovations not found in other Romance languages (except Galician and the Fala):
* The present perfect tense has an iterative sense unique to Galician-Portuguese language group. It denotes an action or a series of actions which began in the past and are expected to keep repeating in the future. For instance, the sentence Tenho tentado falar com ela would be translated to "I have been trying to talk to her", not "I have tried to talk to her". On the other hand, the correct translation of the question "Have you heard the latest news?" is not *Tem ouvido a última notÃcia?, but Ouviu a última notÃcia?, since no repetition is implied. Squartini, Mario (1998) Verbal Periphrases in Romance â Aspect, Actionality, and Grammaticalization ISBN 3-11-016160-5
* The future subjunctive tense, which was developed by medieval West Iberian Romance, but has now fallen into disuse in Spanish and Galician, is still used in vernacular Portuguese. It appears in dependent clauses that denote a condition which must be fulfilled in the future, so that the independent clause will occur. English normally employs the present tense under the same circumstances:
:Se eu for eleito presidente, mudarei a lei.
:If I am elected president, I will change the law.
:Quando fores mais velho, vais entender.
:When you are older, you will understand.
* The personal infinitive: infinitives can inflect according to their subject in person and number, often showing who is expected to perform a certain action; cf. Ã melhor voltares "It is better [for you] to go back," Ã melhor voltarmos "It is better [for us] to go back." Perhaps for this reason, infinitive clauses replace subjunctive clauses more often in Portuguese than in other Romance languages.
Portuguese is written with 23 or 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, making use of five diacritics to denote stress, vowel height, contraction, nasalization, and other sound changes (acute accent, grave accent, circumflex accent, tilde, and cedilla). Accented characters and digraphs are not counted as separate letters for collation purposes.
* Portuguese literature
* Portuguese poetry
* List of Portuguese language poets
* Brazilian literature
* List of Brazilian poets
* Lusophone
* Geographic distribution of Portuguese
* List of countries where Portuguese is an official language
* Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP)
* Instituto Camões
* International Portuguese Language Institute
* Museum of the Portuguese Language
* Portuguese-based creole languages
* Portuñol
* Portuguese in the United States
* List of English words of Portuguese origin
* Spelling reforms of Portuguese
* História da Lingua Portuguesa Instituto Camões
* A LÃngua Portuguesa in Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil (...)
* Poesia e Prosa Medievais, by Maria Ema Tarracha Ferreira, Ulisseia 1998, 3rd ed., ISBN 978-972-568-124-4.
* Bases Temáticas â LÃngua Portuguesa in Instituto Camões
* Portuguese Literature in The Catholic Encyclopedia
* International Phonetic Association (1999) Handbook of the International Phonetic Association ISBN 0-521-63751-1
* Mateus, Maria Helena & d'Andrade, Ernesto (2000) The Phonology of Portuguese ISBN 0-19-823581-X (Excerpt available at Google Books)
* Bergström, Magnus & Reis, Neves Prontuário Ortográfico Editorial NotÃcias, 2004.
* A pronúncia do português europeu - European Portuguese Pronunciation
* Dialects of Portuguese at the Instituto Camões
* Audio samples of the dialects of Portugal
* Audio samples of the dialects from outside Europe
* Antônio Houaiss (2000), Dicionário Houaiss da LÃngua Portuguesa (228,500 entries).
* Aurélio Buarque de Holanda Ferreira, Novo Dicionário da LÃngua Portuguesa (1809pp)
* English-Portuguese-Chinese Dictionary (Freeware, for Windows/Linux/Mac)
* Lindley Cintra, LuÃs F. Nova Proposta de Classificação dos Dialectos Galego-Portugueses (PDF) Boletim de Filologia, Lisboa, Centro de Estudos Filológicos, 1971.
*Swadesh list in English and Portuguese
* English Portuguese Translation Dictionary for English Portuguese translations
* Learn Portuguese BBC
* Portuguese Language Notes BBC
* AULP - Associação das Universidades de LÃngua Portuguesa Portuguese Language Universities Association.
* Portuguese in East Timor an interview with Dr. Geoffrey Hull.
* Portuguese Dictionary with gender and type of words.
* ABL - Academia Brasileira de letras (em português) - (Brazilian Academy of Letters) (Portuguese)
* Brazilian Portuguese Free resources for Portuguese learners.
* EasyPortuguese Free Portuguese learning site with audio.
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Portuguese_language | By 2050, what will the total population of Portuguese speakers in the world be? | By 2050, Portuguese-speaking countries will have a total population of 335 million people. | data/set5/a1 | Portuguese_language
Portuguese ( or lÃngua portuguesa) is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia and northern Portugal. It is derived from the Latin spoken by the romanized pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula (namely the Gallaeci, the Lusitanians, the Celtici and the Conii) around 2000 years ago. It spread worldwide in the 15th and 16th centuries as Portugal established a colonial and commercial empire (1415â1999) which spanned from Brazil in the Americas to Goa and other parts of India, Macau in China and Timor (north of Australia). It was used as the exclusive lingua franca on the island of Sri Lanka for almost 350 years. During that time, many creole languages based on Portuguese also appeared around the world, especially in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean.
Today it is one of the world's major languages, ranked seventh according to number of native speakers (between 205 and 230 million). It is the language of about half of South America's population, even though Brazil is the only Portuguese-speaking nation in the Americas. It is also a major lingua franca in Portugal's former colonial possessions in Africa. It is an official language in nine countries (see the table on the right), also being co-official with Cantonese Chinese in Macau and Tetum in East Timor. There are sizeable communities of Portuguese speakers in various regions of North America, notably in the United States (New Jersey, New England, California and south Florida) and in Ontario, Canada.
In various aspects, the system of sounds in Portuguese is more similar to the phonologies of Catalan or French than, say, those of Spanish or Italian. Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes once called Portuguese "the sweet language", /ref> Lope de Vega referred to it as "suave" 'Encyclopedia of Literature' Joseph T. Shipley; Philosophical Library, 1946. 1188 pgs. while Brazilian writer Olavo Bilac poetically described it as a última flor do Lácio, inculta e bela: "the last flower of Latium, wild and beautiful". Portuguese is also termed "the language of Camões", after one of Portugal's best known literary figures, LuÃs Vaz de Camões.
Countries and regions where Portuguese has official status.
Members of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries.
Today, Portuguese is the official language of Angola, Brazil (190.6 million), IBGE Official website Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Portugal (10.6 million), INE Official website São Tomé and PrÃncipe and Mozambique. CPLP Official website It is also one of the official languages of the special administrative region of Macau (with Chinese) and East Timor, (with Tetum). It is the language of most of the population in Portugal (100%) , Brazil (100%) , São Tomé and PrÃncipe (99.8%) and Angola (80%), and is the most widely spoken language in Mozambique (40%), though only 6.5% are native speakers. No data are available for Cape Verde, but almost all the population is bilingual, and the monolingual population speaks Cape Verdean Creole. See the main article Geographic distribution of Portuguese, for references.
Small Portuguese-speaking communities subsist in former overseas colonies of Portugal such as Macau, where it is spoken by 7% of the population, and East Timor (13.6%).
Uruguay gave Portuguese an equal status to Spanish in its educational system at the north border with Brazil. In the rest of the country, it is taught as an obligatory subject beginning in the 6th grade. Uruguay recently adopted Portuguese language in its education system as an obligatory subject /ref>
It is also spoken by substantial immigrant communities, though not official, in Andorra, Australia, The Portuguese-Speaking Community in Australia France, Luxembourg, Jersey (with a statistically significant Portuguese-speaking community of approximately 10,000 people), Paraguay, Namibia, South Africa, Switzerland, Venezuela, Japan JAPÃO: IMIGRANTES BRASILEIROS POPULARIZAM LÃNGUA PORTUGUESA and the U.S. states of California, Connecticut, Where America's Other Languages Are Spoken Florida, Widely spoken but 'minor'? Portuguese seeks respect Massachusetts, New Jersey, Hispanic Reading Room of the U.S. Library of Congress website, Twentieth-Century Arrivals from Portugal Settle in Newark, New Jersey, New York Brazucas (Brazilians living in New York) and Rhode Island. Hispanic Reading Room of the U.S. Library of Congress website, Whaling, Fishing, and Industrial Employment in Southeastern New England
In some parts of India, such as Goa Portuguese Language in Goa and Daman and Diu, The Portuguese Experience: The Case of Goa, Daman and Diu Portuguese is still spoken. There are also significant populations of Portuguese speakers in Canada (mainly concentrated in and around Toronto), Multicultural Canada Bermuda World InfoZone: Bermuda and the Netherlands Antilles.
Portuguese is an official language of several international organizations. The Community of Portuguese Language Countries (with the Portuguese acronym CPLP) consists of the eight independent countries that have Portuguese as an official language. It is also an official language of the European Union, accounting for 3% of its population, EUROPA website Languages in the EU Mercosul, the Organization of American States, the Organization of Ibero-American States, the Union of South American Nations, and the African Union (one of the working languages) and one of the official languages of other organizations. The Portuguese language is gaining popularity in Africa, Asia, and South America as a second language for study.
Estação da Luz, home of the Museum of the Portuguese Language, in São Paulo, Brazil.
Portuguese and Spanish are the fastest-growing European languages (with the exception of English, being the world lingua franca) , and, according to estimates by UNESCO, the Portuguese language has the highest potential for growth as an international language in southern Africa and South America. The Portuguese-speaking African countries are expected to have a combined population of 83 million by 2050. In total, the Portuguese-speaking countries will have 335 million people by the same year. Since 1991, when Brazil signed into the economic market of Mercosul with other South American nations, such as Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay, there has been an increase in interest in the study of Portuguese in those South American countries. The demographic weight of Brazil in the continent will continue to strengthen the presence of the language in the region. Although in the early 21st century, after Macau was ceded to China in 1999, the use of Portuguese was in decline in Asia, it is becoming a language of opportunity there; mostly because of East Timor's boost in the number of speakers in the last five years but also because of increased Chinese diplomatic and financial ties with Portuguese-speaking countries.
In July 2007, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema announced his government's decision to establish Portuguese as Equatorial Guinea's third official language, to meet the requirements to apply for full membership of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries. This upgrading from its current Associate Observer condition would result in Equatorial Guinea being able to access several professional and academic exchange programs and the facilitation of cross-border circulation of citizens. Its application is currently being assessed by other CPLP members. "Obiang convierte al portugués en tercer idioma oficial para entrar en la Comunidad lusófona de Naciones", Terra. 13-07-2007
In March 1994 the Bosque de Portugal (Portugal's Woods) was founded in the Brazilian city of Curitiba. The park houses the Portuguese Language Memorial, which honors the Portuguese immigrants and the countries that adopted the Portuguese language. Originally there were seven nations represented with pillars, but the independence of East Timor brought yet another pillar for that nation in 2007.
In March 2006, the Museum of the Portuguese Language, an interactive museum about the Portuguese language, was founded in São Paulo, Brazil, the city with the greatest number of Portuguese speakers in the world.
Portuguese is a pluricentric language with two main groups of dialects, those of Brazil and those of the Old World. For historical reasons, the dialects of Africa and Asia are generally closer to those of Portugal than the Brazilian dialects, although in some aspects of their phonetics, especially the pronunciation of unstressed vowels, they resemble Brazilian Portuguese more than European Portuguese. They have not been studied as widely as European and Brazilian Portuguese.
Audio samples of some dialects of Portuguese are available below. From Audio samples of the dialects of Portuguese at the Instituto Camões website. There are some differences between the areas but these are the best approximations possible. For example, the caipira dialect has some differences from the one of Minas Gerais, but in general it is very close. A good example of Brazilian Portuguese may be found in the capital city, BrasÃlia, because of the generalized population from all parts of the country.
Portuguese dialects of Angola
# Benguelense â Benguela province.
# 11px Luandense â Luanda province.
# Sulista â South of Angola.
Dialects of Portuguese in Brazil
# Caipira â States of São Paulo (countryside; the city of São Paulo and the eastern areas of the state have their own accent, called paulistano); southern Minas Gerais, northern Paraná, Goiás and Mato Grosso do Sul.
# Cearense â Ceará.
# Baiano â Bahia.
# 11px Fluminense â Variants spoken in the states of Rio de Janeiro (excluding the city of Rio de Janeiro and its adjacent metropolitan areas, which have their own dialect, called carioca).
# Gaúcho â Rio Grande do Sul. (There are many distinct accents in Rio Grande do Sul, mainly due to the heavy influx of European immigrants of diverse origins, those which have settled several colonies throughout the state.)
# Mineiro â Minas Gerais (not prevalent in the Triângulo Mineiro, southern and southeastern Minas Gerais and also excluding the city of Belo Horizonte, which has its own accent.).
# 11px Nordestino â northeastern states of Brazil (Pernambuco, ParaÃba and Rio Grande do Norte have a particular way of speaking). Note: the speaker of this sound file is from Rio, and he is talking about his experience with Nordestino and Nortista accents.
# Nortista â Amazon Basin states.
# Paulistano â Variants spoken around São Paulo city and the eastern areas of São Paulo state.
# Sertanejo â States of Goiás and Mato Grosso (the city of Cuiabá has a particular way of speaking).
# Sulista â Variants spoken in the areas between the northern regions of Rio Grande do Sul and southern regions of São Paulo state. (The cities of Curitiba, Florianópolis, and Itapetininga have fairly distinct accents as well.)
# Carioca â Variants spoken in Rio de Janeiro City and Niteroi
Dialects of Portuguese in Portugal
# 11px Açoriano (Azorean) â Azores.
# 11px Alentejano â Alentejo
# 11px Algarvio â Algarve (there is a particular dialect in a small part of western Algarve).
# 11px Alto-Minhoto â North of Braga (hinterland).
# 11px Baixo-Beirão; Alto-Alentejano â Central Portugal (hinterland).
# 11px Beirão â Central Portugal.
# 11px Estremenho â Regions of Coimbra and Lisbon (the Lisbon dialect has some peculiar features not shared with the one of Coimbra).
# 11px Madeirense (Madeiran) â Madeira.
# 11px Nortenho â Regions of Braga and Porto.
# 11px Transmontano â Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro.
* Cape Verde â 11px Português cabo-verdiano (Cape Verdean Portuguese)
* Daman and Diu, India â Damaense.
* East Timor â 11px Timorense (East Timorese)
* Goa, India â Goês.
* Guinea-Bissau â 11px Guineense (Guinean Portuguese).
* Macau, China â 11px Macaense (Macanese)
* Mozambique â 11px Moçambicano (Mozambican)
* São Tomé and PrÃncipe â 11px Santomense
* Uruguay â Dialectos Portugueses del Uruguay (DPU).
Differences between dialects are mostly of accent and vocabulary, but between the Brazilian dialects and other dialects, especially in their most colloquial forms, there can also be some grammatical differences. The Portuguese-based creoles spoken in various parts of Africa, Asia, and the Americas are independent languages which should not be confused with Portuguese itself.
Baroque Library of the Coimbra University, Portugal.
Arriving in the Iberian Peninsula in 216 BC, the Romans brought with them the Latin language, from which all Romance languages descend. The language was spread by arriving Roman soldiers, settlers, and merchants, who built Roman cities mostly near the settlements of previous civilizations.
Between 409 and 711 AD, as the Roman Empire collapsed in Western Europe, the Iberian Peninsula was conquered by Germanic peoples (Migration Period). The occupiers, mainly Suebi and Visigoths, quickly adopted late Roman culture and the Vulgar Latin dialects of the peninsula. After the Moorish invasion of 711, Arabic became the administrative language in the conquered regions, but most of the population continued to speak a form of Romance commonly known as Mozarabic. The influence exerted by Arabic on the Romance dialects spoken in the Christian kingdoms of the north was small, affecting mainly their lexicon.
The earliest surviving records of a distinctively Portuguese language are administrative documents of the 9th century, still interspersed with many Latin phrases. Today this phase is known as Proto-Portuguese (between the 9th and the 12th centuries). In the first period of Old Portuguese â Galician-Portuguese Period (from the 12th to the 14th century) â the language gradually came into general use. For some time, it was the language of preference for lyric poetry in Christian Hispania, much as Occitan was the language of the poetry of the troubadours. Portugal became an independent kingdom from the Kingdom of Leon in 1139, under king Afonso I of Portugal. In 1290, king Denis of Portugal created the first Portuguese university in Lisbon (the Estudos Gerais, later moved to Coimbra) and decreed that Portuguese, then simply called the "common language" should be known as the Portuguese language and used officially.
In the second period of Old Portuguese, from the 14th to the 16th centuries, with the Portuguese discoveries, the language was taken to many regions of Asia, Africa and the Americas (nowadays, the great majority of Portuguese speakers live in Brazil, in South America). By the 16th century, it had become a lingua franca in Asia and Africa, used not only for colonial administration and trade but also for communication between local officials and Europeans of all nationalities. Its spread was helped by mixed marriages between Portuguese and local people, and by its association with Roman Catholic missionary efforts, which led to the formation of a creole language called Kristang in many parts of Asia (from the word cristão, "Christian"). The language continued to be popular in parts of Asia until the 19th century. Some Portuguese-speaking Christian communities in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Indonesia preserved their language even after they were isolated from Portugal.
The end of the Old Portuguese period was marked by the publication of the Cancioneiro Geral by Garcia de Resende, in 1516. The early times of Modern Portuguese, which spans a period from the 16th century to the present day, were characterized by an increase in the number of learned words borrowed from Classical Latin and Classical Greek since the Renaissance, which greatly enriched the lexicon.
A distinctive feature of Portuguese is that it preserved the stressed vowels of Vulgar Latin, which became diphthongs in other Romance languages; cf. Fr. pierre, Sp. piedra, It. pietra, Ro. piatrÄ, Port. pedra ("stone"), from Lat. petram; or Sp. fuego, It. fuoco, Fr. feu, Ro. foc, Port. fogo, from Lat. focus ("fire"). Another characteristic of early Portuguese was the loss of intervocalic l and n, sometimes followed by the merger of the two surrounding vowels, or by the insertion of an epenthetic vowel between them: cf. Lat. salire ("to leave"), tenere ("to have"), catenam ("chain"), Sp. salir, tener, cadena, Port. sair, ter, cadeia.
When the elided consonant was n, it often nasalized the preceding vowel: cf. Lat. manum ("hand"), ranam ("frog"), bonum ("good"), Port. mão, rãa, bõo (now mão, rã, bom). This process was the source of most of the nasal diphthongs which are typical of Portuguese. In particular, the Latin endings -anem, -anum and -onem became -ão in most cases, cf. Lat. canem ("dog"), germanum ("brother"), rationem ("reason") with Modern Port. cão, irmão, razão, and their plurals -anes, -anos, -ones normally became -ães, -ãos, -ões, cf. cães, irmãos, razões.
Library of the Mafra National Palace, Portugal.
Most of the lexicon of Portuguese is derived from Latin. Nevertheless, because of the Moorish occupation of the Iberian Peninsula during the Middle Ages, and the participation of Portugal in the Age of Discovery, it has adopted loanwords from all over the world.
Very few Portuguese words can be traced to the pre-Roman inhabitants of Portugal, which included the Gallaeci, Lusitanians, Celtici and Cynetes. The Phoenicians and Carthaginians, briefly present, also left some scarce traces. Some notable examples are abóbora "pumpkin" and bezerro "year-old calf", from the nearby Celtiberian language (probably through the Celtici); cerveja "beer", from Celtic; and cachorro "dog", from Basque.
In the 5th century, the Iberian Peninsula (the Roman Hispania) was conquered by the Germanic Suebi and Visigoths. As they adopted the Roman civilization and language, however, these people contributed only a few words to the lexicon, mostly related to warfare â such as espora "spur", estaca "stake", and guerra "war", from Gothic *spaúra, *stakka, and *wirro, respectively. The influence also exists in toponymic and patronymic surnames borne by Visigoth sovereigns and their descendants, and it dwells on placenames such has Ermesinde, Esposende and Resende where sinde and sende are derived from the Germanic "sinths" (military expedition) and in the case of Resende, the prefix re comes from Germanic "reths" (council).
Between the 9th and 13th centuries, Portuguese acquired about 800 words from Arabic by influence of Moorish Iberia. They are often recognizable by the initial Arabic article a(l)-, and include many common words such as aldeia "village" from اÙضÙعة aldaya, alface "lettuce" from اÙخس alkhass, armazém "warehouse" from اÙÙ
خز٠almahazan, and azeite "olive oil" from اÙزÙت azzait. From Arabic came also the grammatically peculiar word oxalá إ٠شاء اÙÙÙ "hopefully". The Mozambican currency name metical was derived from the word Ù
تÙا٠mitqÄl, a unit of weight. The word Mozambique itself is from the Arabic name of sultan Muça Alebique (Musa Alibiki).
Starting in the 15th century, the Portuguese maritime explorations led to the introduction of many loanwords from Asian languages. For instance, catana "cutlass" from Japanese katana and chá "tea" from Chinese 'chá'.
From South America came batata "potato", from Taino; ananás and abacaxi, from Tupi-Guarani naná and Tupi ibá cati, respectively (two species of pineapple), and tucano "toucan" from Guarani tucan. See List of Brazil state name etymologies, for some more examples.
From the 16th to the 19th centuries, because of the role of Portugal as intermediary in the Atlantic slave trade, and the establishment of large Portuguese colonies in Angola, Mozambique, and Brazil, Portuguese got several words of African and Amerind origin, especially names for most of the animals and plants found in those territories. While those terms are mostly used in the former colonies, many became current in European Portuguese as well. From Kimbundu, for example, came kifumate â cafuné "head caress", kusula â caçula "youngest child", marimbondo "tropical wasp", and kubungula â bungular "to dance like a wizard".
Finally, it has received a steady influx of loanwords from other European languages. For example, melena "hair lock", fiambre "wet-cured ham" (in contrast with presunto "dry-cured ham" from Latin prae-exsuctus "dehydrated"), and castelhano "Castilian", from Spanish; colchete/crochê "bracket"/"crochet", paletó "jacket", batom "lipstick", and filé/filete "steak"/"slice" respectively, from French crochet, paletot, bâton, filet; macarrão "pasta", piloto "pilot", carroça "carriage", and barraca "barrack", from Italian maccherone, pilota, carrozza, baracca; and bife "steak", futebol, revólver, estoque, folclore, time from English beef,
football, revolver, stock, folklore, and team.
Portuguese belongs to the West Iberian branch of the Romance languages, and it has special ties with the following members of this group:
* Galician and Fala, its closest relatives. See below.
* Spanish, the major language closest to Portuguese. (See also Differences between Spanish and Portuguese.)
* Mirandese and Leonese, two other West Iberian languages spoken in Portugal.
* Judeo-Portuguese and Judeo-Spanish, languages spoken by Sephardic Jews, and which remained close to Portuguese and Spanish.
Despite the obvious lexical and grammatical similarities between Portuguese and other Romance languages, it is not mutually intelligible with them. Apart from Galician, Portuguese speakers will usually need some formal study of basic grammar and vocabulary, before attaining a reasonable level of comprehension of those languages, and vice versa. Native speakers of Portuguese do tend to understand standard Spanish which is spoken clearly, but the reverse is generally not true unless formal education is involved.
The closest language to Portuguese is Galician, spoken in the autonomous community of Galicia (northwestern Spain). The two were at one time a single language, known today as Galician-Portuguese, but since the political separation of Portugal from Galicia they have diverged somewhat, especially in pronunciation and vocabulary. Nevertheless, the core vocabulary and grammar of Galician are still noticeably closer to Portuguese than to those of Spanish. In particular, like Portuguese, it uses the future subjunctive, the personal infinitive, and the synthetic pluperfect (see the section on the grammar of Portuguese, below). Mutual intelligibility (estimated at 85% by R. A. Hall, Jr., 1989) Ethnologue is good between Galicians and northern Portuguese, but poorer between Galicians and speakers from central Portugal.
The Fala language is another descendant of Galician-Portuguese, spoken by a small number of people in the Spanish towns of Valverde del Fresno, Eljas and San MartÃn de Trevejo (autonomous community of Extremadura, near the border with Portugal).
Portuguese has provided loanwords to many languages, such as Indonesian, Manado Malay, Sri Lankan Tamil and Sinhalese (see Sri Lanka Indo-Portuguese), Malay, Bengali, English, Hindi, Konkani, Marathi, Tetum, Xitsonga, Papiamentu, Japanese, Lanc-Patuá (spoken in northern Brazil) and Sranan Tongo (spoken in Suriname). It left a strong influence on the lÃngua brasÃlica, a Tupi-Guarani language which was the most widely spoken in Brazil until the 18th century, and on the language spoken around Sikka in Flores Island, Indonesia. In nearby Larantuka, Portuguese is used for prayers in Holy Week rituals.
The Japanese-Portuguese dictionary Nippo Jisho (1603) was the first dictionary of Japanese in a European language, a product of Jesuit missionary activity in Japan. Building on the work of earlier Portuguese missionaries, the Dictionarium Anamiticum, Lusitanum et Latinum (Annamite-Portuguese-Latin dictionary) of Alexandre de Rhodes (1651) introduced the modern orthography of Vietnamese, which is based on the orthography of 17th-century Portuguese. The Romanization of Chinese was also influenced by the Portuguese language (among others), particularly regarding Chinese surnames; one example is Mei. During 1583-88 Italian Jesuits Michele Ruggieri and Matteo Ricci created a Portuguese-Chinese dictionary - the first ever European-Chinese dictionary. Yves Camus, "Jesuits' Journeys in Chinese Studies" "Dicionário Português-Chinês : Pu Han ci dian : Portuguese-Chinese dictionary", by Michele Ruggieri, Matteo Ricci; edited by John W. Witek. Published 2001, Biblioteca Nacional. ISBN 9725652983. Partial preview available on Google Books
See also List of English words of Portuguese origin, Loan words in Indonesian, Japanese words of Portuguese origin, Borrowed words in Malay, Sinhala words of Portuguese origin, Loan words from Portuguese in Sri Lankan Tamil.
Beginning in the 16th century, the extensive contacts between Portuguese travelers and settlers, African slaves, and local populations led to the appearance of many pidgins with varying amounts of Portuguese influence. As each of these pidgins became the mother tongue of succeeding generations, they evolved into fully fledged creole languages, which remained in use in many parts of Asia and Africa until the 18th century. Some Portuguese-based or Portuguese-influenced creoles are still spoken today, by over 3 million people worldwide, especially people of partial Portuguese ancestry.
There is a growing number of people in the Portuguese-speaking media and the internet who are presenting the case to the CPLP and other organizations to run a debate in the Lusophone community with the purpose of bringing forward a petition to make Portuguese an official language of the United Nations.
In October 2005, during the international Convention of the Elos Club International that took place in Tavira, Portugal, ONU: Petição para tornar português lÃngua oficial a petition was written and unanimously approved whose text can be found on the internet with the title Petição Para Tornar Oficial o Idioma Português na ONU. Romulo Alexandre Soares, president of the Brazil-Portugal Chamber highlights that the positioning of Brazil in the international arena as one of the emergent powers of the 21st century, the size of its population, and the presence of the language around the world provides legitimacy and justifies a petition to the UN to make the Portuguese language an official language of the UN. Português pode ser lÃngua oficial na ONU
Several factors detract from this campaign. The current official languages of the UN are either 1) official/dominant in many countries (English, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, and French) or 2) have several hundreds of millions of speakers (Chinese). English, Spanish, Russian and Arabic fulfill both criteria. Portuguese is a global language in that it is the official tongue of several sovereign countries on four continents. It also has over 200 million speakers. However, it exhibits some noticeable differences when compared to the current 6 UN official languages. For example, English, French, Arabic and Spanish are each official languages of multiple states and of over half of the world's countries. In contrast, four out of every five speakers of the Portuguese-speaking world live in just one country: Brazil. In addition to Brazil, Portuguese is the official language in only 7 other sovereign states; however, English is official in 53 states, French in 29 states, Arabic in 25 states, and Spanish in 20 states.
More significantly, in each part of the world with a Portuguese-speaking country, this language is overshadowed by other powerful languages that are already official languages of the UN. For example, in the Americas, the 190 million Portuguese-speaking Brazilians are overshadowed by the most spoken languages in the Western Hemisphere: Spanish (~360 million speakers) and English (~340 million speakers). Portuguese is overshadowed to an even greater extent in Europe, the continent in which four of the six UN languages originated (English, French, Spanish, and Russian). In the European context, Portuguese is not even among the ten most spoken languages on the continent, with a number of speakers comparable to those of Czech and Bulgarian. In Africa, Portuguese is eclipsed as a continental lingua franca by English and French in countries that surround Cape Verde, São Tomé and PrÃncipe, Guinea-Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique. Finally in Asia, a continent with several languages that have hundreds of millions of speakers, the only sovereign state with Portuguese as an official language is East Timor, which has only a million people. While Brazilian migration has brought 300,000 fluent Portuguese speakers to Japan, Portuguese does not enjoy any official status whatsoever in that country. Therefore, while Portuguese will gain increasing importance as Brazil continues its development as a major economy, it will likely face the same hurdles that prevented Japanese and German (both languages of major global economies with millions of speakers) from becoming both international languages and official ones of the UN.
There is a maximum of 9 oral vowels and 19 consonants, though some varieties of the language have fewer phonemes (Brazilian Portuguese has 8 oral vowels). There are also five nasal vowels, which some linguists regard as allophones of the oral vowels, ten oral diphthongs, and five nasal diphthongs. In total, Brazilian Portuguese has 13 vowel phonemes. /ref> Handbook of the International Phonetic Association'' pg. 126-130; the reference applies to the entire section
Chart of monophthongs of the Portuguese of Lisbon
To the seven vowels of Vulgar Latin, European Portuguese has added two near central vowels, one of which tends to be elided in rapid speech, like the e caduc of French (represented as either , or , or ). The high vowels and the low vowels are four distinct phonemes, and they alternate in various forms of apophony. Like Catalan, Portuguese uses vowel quality to contrast stressed syllables with unstressed syllables: isolated vowels tend to be raised, and in some cases centralized, when unstressed. Nasal diphthongs occur mostly at the ends of words.
The consonant inventory of Portuguese is fairly conservative. The medieval affricates , , , merged with the fricatives , , , , respectively, but not with each other, and there were no other significant changes to the consonant phonemes since then. However, some notable dialectal variants and allophones have appeared, among which:
* In many regions of Brazil, and have the affricate allophones and , respectively, before and . (Quebec French has a similar phenomenon, with alveolar affricates instead of postalveolars. Japanese is another example).
* At the end of a syllable, the phoneme has the allophone in Brazilian Portuguese (L-vocalization).
* In many parts of Brazil and Angola, intervocalic is pronounced as a nasalized palatal approximant which nasalizes the preceding vowel, so that, for instance, is pronounced .
* In most of Brazil, the alveolar sibilants and occur in complementary distribution at the ends of syllables, depending on whether the consonant that follows is voiceless or voiced, as in English. But in most of Portugal and parts of Brazil, sibilants are postalveolar at the ends of syllables, before voiceless consonants, and before voiced consonants (in Judeo-Spanish, is often replaced with at the ends of syllables, too).
* There is considerable dialectal variation in the value of the rhotic phoneme . See Guttural R in Portuguese, for details.
;Excerpt from the Portuguese national epic Os LusÃadas, by author LuÃs de Camões (I, 33)
A notable aspect of the grammar of Portuguese is the verb. Morphologically, more verbal inflections from classical Latin have been preserved by Portuguese than by any other major Romance language. See Romance copula, for a detailed comparison. It has also some innovations not found in other Romance languages (except Galician and the Fala):
* The present perfect tense has an iterative sense unique to Galician-Portuguese language group. It denotes an action or a series of actions which began in the past and are expected to keep repeating in the future. For instance, the sentence Tenho tentado falar com ela would be translated to "I have been trying to talk to her", not "I have tried to talk to her". On the other hand, the correct translation of the question "Have you heard the latest news?" is not *Tem ouvido a última notÃcia?, but Ouviu a última notÃcia?, since no repetition is implied. Squartini, Mario (1998) Verbal Periphrases in Romance â Aspect, Actionality, and Grammaticalization ISBN 3-11-016160-5
* The future subjunctive tense, which was developed by medieval West Iberian Romance, but has now fallen into disuse in Spanish and Galician, is still used in vernacular Portuguese. It appears in dependent clauses that denote a condition which must be fulfilled in the future, so that the independent clause will occur. English normally employs the present tense under the same circumstances:
:Se eu for eleito presidente, mudarei a lei.
:If I am elected president, I will change the law.
:Quando fores mais velho, vais entender.
:When you are older, you will understand.
* The personal infinitive: infinitives can inflect according to their subject in person and number, often showing who is expected to perform a certain action; cf. Ã melhor voltares "It is better [for you] to go back," Ã melhor voltarmos "It is better [for us] to go back." Perhaps for this reason, infinitive clauses replace subjunctive clauses more often in Portuguese than in other Romance languages.
Portuguese is written with 23 or 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, making use of five diacritics to denote stress, vowel height, contraction, nasalization, and other sound changes (acute accent, grave accent, circumflex accent, tilde, and cedilla). Accented characters and digraphs are not counted as separate letters for collation purposes.
* Portuguese literature
* Portuguese poetry
* List of Portuguese language poets
* Brazilian literature
* List of Brazilian poets
* Lusophone
* Geographic distribution of Portuguese
* List of countries where Portuguese is an official language
* Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP)
* Instituto Camões
* International Portuguese Language Institute
* Museum of the Portuguese Language
* Portuguese-based creole languages
* Portuñol
* Portuguese in the United States
* List of English words of Portuguese origin
* Spelling reforms of Portuguese
* História da Lingua Portuguesa Instituto Camões
* A LÃngua Portuguesa in Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil (...)
* Poesia e Prosa Medievais, by Maria Ema Tarracha Ferreira, Ulisseia 1998, 3rd ed., ISBN 978-972-568-124-4.
* Bases Temáticas â LÃngua Portuguesa in Instituto Camões
* Portuguese Literature in The Catholic Encyclopedia
* International Phonetic Association (1999) Handbook of the International Phonetic Association ISBN 0-521-63751-1
* Mateus, Maria Helena & d'Andrade, Ernesto (2000) The Phonology of Portuguese ISBN 0-19-823581-X (Excerpt available at Google Books)
* Bergström, Magnus & Reis, Neves Prontuário Ortográfico Editorial NotÃcias, 2004.
* A pronúncia do português europeu - European Portuguese Pronunciation
* Dialects of Portuguese at the Instituto Camões
* Audio samples of the dialects of Portugal
* Audio samples of the dialects from outside Europe
* Antônio Houaiss (2000), Dicionário Houaiss da LÃngua Portuguesa (228,500 entries).
* Aurélio Buarque de Holanda Ferreira, Novo Dicionário da LÃngua Portuguesa (1809pp)
* English-Portuguese-Chinese Dictionary (Freeware, for Windows/Linux/Mac)
* Lindley Cintra, LuÃs F. Nova Proposta de Classificação dos Dialectos Galego-Portugueses (PDF) Boletim de Filologia, Lisboa, Centro de Estudos Filológicos, 1971.
*Swadesh list in English and Portuguese
* English Portuguese Translation Dictionary for English Portuguese translations
* Learn Portuguese BBC
* Portuguese Language Notes BBC
* AULP - Associação das Universidades de LÃngua Portuguesa Portuguese Language Universities Association.
* Portuguese in East Timor an interview with Dr. Geoffrey Hull.
* Portuguese Dictionary with gender and type of words.
* ABL - Academia Brasileira de letras (em português) - (Brazilian Academy of Letters) (Portuguese)
* Brazilian Portuguese Free resources for Portuguese learners.
* EasyPortuguese Free Portuguese learning site with audio.
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Portuguese_language | In which country is Portuguese the co-official language with Cantonese Chinese? | Macau | data/set5/a1 | Portuguese_language
Portuguese ( or lÃngua portuguesa) is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia and northern Portugal. It is derived from the Latin spoken by the romanized pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula (namely the Gallaeci, the Lusitanians, the Celtici and the Conii) around 2000 years ago. It spread worldwide in the 15th and 16th centuries as Portugal established a colonial and commercial empire (1415â1999) which spanned from Brazil in the Americas to Goa and other parts of India, Macau in China and Timor (north of Australia). It was used as the exclusive lingua franca on the island of Sri Lanka for almost 350 years. During that time, many creole languages based on Portuguese also appeared around the world, especially in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean.
Today it is one of the world's major languages, ranked seventh according to number of native speakers (between 205 and 230 million). It is the language of about half of South America's population, even though Brazil is the only Portuguese-speaking nation in the Americas. It is also a major lingua franca in Portugal's former colonial possessions in Africa. It is an official language in nine countries (see the table on the right), also being co-official with Cantonese Chinese in Macau and Tetum in East Timor. There are sizeable communities of Portuguese speakers in various regions of North America, notably in the United States (New Jersey, New England, California and south Florida) and in Ontario, Canada.
In various aspects, the system of sounds in Portuguese is more similar to the phonologies of Catalan or French than, say, those of Spanish or Italian. Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes once called Portuguese "the sweet language", /ref> Lope de Vega referred to it as "suave" 'Encyclopedia of Literature' Joseph T. Shipley; Philosophical Library, 1946. 1188 pgs. while Brazilian writer Olavo Bilac poetically described it as a última flor do Lácio, inculta e bela: "the last flower of Latium, wild and beautiful". Portuguese is also termed "the language of Camões", after one of Portugal's best known literary figures, LuÃs Vaz de Camões.
Countries and regions where Portuguese has official status.
Members of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries.
Today, Portuguese is the official language of Angola, Brazil (190.6 million), IBGE Official website Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Portugal (10.6 million), INE Official website São Tomé and PrÃncipe and Mozambique. CPLP Official website It is also one of the official languages of the special administrative region of Macau (with Chinese) and East Timor, (with Tetum). It is the language of most of the population in Portugal (100%) , Brazil (100%) , São Tomé and PrÃncipe (99.8%) and Angola (80%), and is the most widely spoken language in Mozambique (40%), though only 6.5% are native speakers. No data are available for Cape Verde, but almost all the population is bilingual, and the monolingual population speaks Cape Verdean Creole. See the main article Geographic distribution of Portuguese, for references.
Small Portuguese-speaking communities subsist in former overseas colonies of Portugal such as Macau, where it is spoken by 7% of the population, and East Timor (13.6%).
Uruguay gave Portuguese an equal status to Spanish in its educational system at the north border with Brazil. In the rest of the country, it is taught as an obligatory subject beginning in the 6th grade. Uruguay recently adopted Portuguese language in its education system as an obligatory subject /ref>
It is also spoken by substantial immigrant communities, though not official, in Andorra, Australia, The Portuguese-Speaking Community in Australia France, Luxembourg, Jersey (with a statistically significant Portuguese-speaking community of approximately 10,000 people), Paraguay, Namibia, South Africa, Switzerland, Venezuela, Japan JAPÃO: IMIGRANTES BRASILEIROS POPULARIZAM LÃNGUA PORTUGUESA and the U.S. states of California, Connecticut, Where America's Other Languages Are Spoken Florida, Widely spoken but 'minor'? Portuguese seeks respect Massachusetts, New Jersey, Hispanic Reading Room of the U.S. Library of Congress website, Twentieth-Century Arrivals from Portugal Settle in Newark, New Jersey, New York Brazucas (Brazilians living in New York) and Rhode Island. Hispanic Reading Room of the U.S. Library of Congress website, Whaling, Fishing, and Industrial Employment in Southeastern New England
In some parts of India, such as Goa Portuguese Language in Goa and Daman and Diu, The Portuguese Experience: The Case of Goa, Daman and Diu Portuguese is still spoken. There are also significant populations of Portuguese speakers in Canada (mainly concentrated in and around Toronto), Multicultural Canada Bermuda World InfoZone: Bermuda and the Netherlands Antilles.
Portuguese is an official language of several international organizations. The Community of Portuguese Language Countries (with the Portuguese acronym CPLP) consists of the eight independent countries that have Portuguese as an official language. It is also an official language of the European Union, accounting for 3% of its population, EUROPA website Languages in the EU Mercosul, the Organization of American States, the Organization of Ibero-American States, the Union of South American Nations, and the African Union (one of the working languages) and one of the official languages of other organizations. The Portuguese language is gaining popularity in Africa, Asia, and South America as a second language for study.
Estação da Luz, home of the Museum of the Portuguese Language, in São Paulo, Brazil.
Portuguese and Spanish are the fastest-growing European languages (with the exception of English, being the world lingua franca) , and, according to estimates by UNESCO, the Portuguese language has the highest potential for growth as an international language in southern Africa and South America. The Portuguese-speaking African countries are expected to have a combined population of 83 million by 2050. In total, the Portuguese-speaking countries will have 335 million people by the same year. Since 1991, when Brazil signed into the economic market of Mercosul with other South American nations, such as Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay, there has been an increase in interest in the study of Portuguese in those South American countries. The demographic weight of Brazil in the continent will continue to strengthen the presence of the language in the region. Although in the early 21st century, after Macau was ceded to China in 1999, the use of Portuguese was in decline in Asia, it is becoming a language of opportunity there; mostly because of East Timor's boost in the number of speakers in the last five years but also because of increased Chinese diplomatic and financial ties with Portuguese-speaking countries.
In July 2007, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema announced his government's decision to establish Portuguese as Equatorial Guinea's third official language, to meet the requirements to apply for full membership of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries. This upgrading from its current Associate Observer condition would result in Equatorial Guinea being able to access several professional and academic exchange programs and the facilitation of cross-border circulation of citizens. Its application is currently being assessed by other CPLP members. "Obiang convierte al portugués en tercer idioma oficial para entrar en la Comunidad lusófona de Naciones", Terra. 13-07-2007
In March 1994 the Bosque de Portugal (Portugal's Woods) was founded in the Brazilian city of Curitiba. The park houses the Portuguese Language Memorial, which honors the Portuguese immigrants and the countries that adopted the Portuguese language. Originally there were seven nations represented with pillars, but the independence of East Timor brought yet another pillar for that nation in 2007.
In March 2006, the Museum of the Portuguese Language, an interactive museum about the Portuguese language, was founded in São Paulo, Brazil, the city with the greatest number of Portuguese speakers in the world.
Portuguese is a pluricentric language with two main groups of dialects, those of Brazil and those of the Old World. For historical reasons, the dialects of Africa and Asia are generally closer to those of Portugal than the Brazilian dialects, although in some aspects of their phonetics, especially the pronunciation of unstressed vowels, they resemble Brazilian Portuguese more than European Portuguese. They have not been studied as widely as European and Brazilian Portuguese.
Audio samples of some dialects of Portuguese are available below. From Audio samples of the dialects of Portuguese at the Instituto Camões website. There are some differences between the areas but these are the best approximations possible. For example, the caipira dialect has some differences from the one of Minas Gerais, but in general it is very close. A good example of Brazilian Portuguese may be found in the capital city, BrasÃlia, because of the generalized population from all parts of the country.
Portuguese dialects of Angola
# Benguelense â Benguela province.
# 11px Luandense â Luanda province.
# Sulista â South of Angola.
Dialects of Portuguese in Brazil
# Caipira â States of São Paulo (countryside; the city of São Paulo and the eastern areas of the state have their own accent, called paulistano); southern Minas Gerais, northern Paraná, Goiás and Mato Grosso do Sul.
# Cearense â Ceará.
# Baiano â Bahia.
# 11px Fluminense â Variants spoken in the states of Rio de Janeiro (excluding the city of Rio de Janeiro and its adjacent metropolitan areas, which have their own dialect, called carioca).
# Gaúcho â Rio Grande do Sul. (There are many distinct accents in Rio Grande do Sul, mainly due to the heavy influx of European immigrants of diverse origins, those which have settled several colonies throughout the state.)
# Mineiro â Minas Gerais (not prevalent in the Triângulo Mineiro, southern and southeastern Minas Gerais and also excluding the city of Belo Horizonte, which has its own accent.).
# 11px Nordestino â northeastern states of Brazil (Pernambuco, ParaÃba and Rio Grande do Norte have a particular way of speaking). Note: the speaker of this sound file is from Rio, and he is talking about his experience with Nordestino and Nortista accents.
# Nortista â Amazon Basin states.
# Paulistano â Variants spoken around São Paulo city and the eastern areas of São Paulo state.
# Sertanejo â States of Goiás and Mato Grosso (the city of Cuiabá has a particular way of speaking).
# Sulista â Variants spoken in the areas between the northern regions of Rio Grande do Sul and southern regions of São Paulo state. (The cities of Curitiba, Florianópolis, and Itapetininga have fairly distinct accents as well.)
# Carioca â Variants spoken in Rio de Janeiro City and Niteroi
Dialects of Portuguese in Portugal
# 11px Açoriano (Azorean) â Azores.
# 11px Alentejano â Alentejo
# 11px Algarvio â Algarve (there is a particular dialect in a small part of western Algarve).
# 11px Alto-Minhoto â North of Braga (hinterland).
# 11px Baixo-Beirão; Alto-Alentejano â Central Portugal (hinterland).
# 11px Beirão â Central Portugal.
# 11px Estremenho â Regions of Coimbra and Lisbon (the Lisbon dialect has some peculiar features not shared with the one of Coimbra).
# 11px Madeirense (Madeiran) â Madeira.
# 11px Nortenho â Regions of Braga and Porto.
# 11px Transmontano â Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro.
* Cape Verde â 11px Português cabo-verdiano (Cape Verdean Portuguese)
* Daman and Diu, India â Damaense.
* East Timor â 11px Timorense (East Timorese)
* Goa, India â Goês.
* Guinea-Bissau â 11px Guineense (Guinean Portuguese).
* Macau, China â 11px Macaense (Macanese)
* Mozambique â 11px Moçambicano (Mozambican)
* São Tomé and PrÃncipe â 11px Santomense
* Uruguay â Dialectos Portugueses del Uruguay (DPU).
Differences between dialects are mostly of accent and vocabulary, but between the Brazilian dialects and other dialects, especially in their most colloquial forms, there can also be some grammatical differences. The Portuguese-based creoles spoken in various parts of Africa, Asia, and the Americas are independent languages which should not be confused with Portuguese itself.
Baroque Library of the Coimbra University, Portugal.
Arriving in the Iberian Peninsula in 216 BC, the Romans brought with them the Latin language, from which all Romance languages descend. The language was spread by arriving Roman soldiers, settlers, and merchants, who built Roman cities mostly near the settlements of previous civilizations.
Between 409 and 711 AD, as the Roman Empire collapsed in Western Europe, the Iberian Peninsula was conquered by Germanic peoples (Migration Period). The occupiers, mainly Suebi and Visigoths, quickly adopted late Roman culture and the Vulgar Latin dialects of the peninsula. After the Moorish invasion of 711, Arabic became the administrative language in the conquered regions, but most of the population continued to speak a form of Romance commonly known as Mozarabic. The influence exerted by Arabic on the Romance dialects spoken in the Christian kingdoms of the north was small, affecting mainly their lexicon.
The earliest surviving records of a distinctively Portuguese language are administrative documents of the 9th century, still interspersed with many Latin phrases. Today this phase is known as Proto-Portuguese (between the 9th and the 12th centuries). In the first period of Old Portuguese â Galician-Portuguese Period (from the 12th to the 14th century) â the language gradually came into general use. For some time, it was the language of preference for lyric poetry in Christian Hispania, much as Occitan was the language of the poetry of the troubadours. Portugal became an independent kingdom from the Kingdom of Leon in 1139, under king Afonso I of Portugal. In 1290, king Denis of Portugal created the first Portuguese university in Lisbon (the Estudos Gerais, later moved to Coimbra) and decreed that Portuguese, then simply called the "common language" should be known as the Portuguese language and used officially.
In the second period of Old Portuguese, from the 14th to the 16th centuries, with the Portuguese discoveries, the language was taken to many regions of Asia, Africa and the Americas (nowadays, the great majority of Portuguese speakers live in Brazil, in South America). By the 16th century, it had become a lingua franca in Asia and Africa, used not only for colonial administration and trade but also for communication between local officials and Europeans of all nationalities. Its spread was helped by mixed marriages between Portuguese and local people, and by its association with Roman Catholic missionary efforts, which led to the formation of a creole language called Kristang in many parts of Asia (from the word cristão, "Christian"). The language continued to be popular in parts of Asia until the 19th century. Some Portuguese-speaking Christian communities in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Indonesia preserved their language even after they were isolated from Portugal.
The end of the Old Portuguese period was marked by the publication of the Cancioneiro Geral by Garcia de Resende, in 1516. The early times of Modern Portuguese, which spans a period from the 16th century to the present day, were characterized by an increase in the number of learned words borrowed from Classical Latin and Classical Greek since the Renaissance, which greatly enriched the lexicon.
A distinctive feature of Portuguese is that it preserved the stressed vowels of Vulgar Latin, which became diphthongs in other Romance languages; cf. Fr. pierre, Sp. piedra, It. pietra, Ro. piatrÄ, Port. pedra ("stone"), from Lat. petram; or Sp. fuego, It. fuoco, Fr. feu, Ro. foc, Port. fogo, from Lat. focus ("fire"). Another characteristic of early Portuguese was the loss of intervocalic l and n, sometimes followed by the merger of the two surrounding vowels, or by the insertion of an epenthetic vowel between them: cf. Lat. salire ("to leave"), tenere ("to have"), catenam ("chain"), Sp. salir, tener, cadena, Port. sair, ter, cadeia.
When the elided consonant was n, it often nasalized the preceding vowel: cf. Lat. manum ("hand"), ranam ("frog"), bonum ("good"), Port. mão, rãa, bõo (now mão, rã, bom). This process was the source of most of the nasal diphthongs which are typical of Portuguese. In particular, the Latin endings -anem, -anum and -onem became -ão in most cases, cf. Lat. canem ("dog"), germanum ("brother"), rationem ("reason") with Modern Port. cão, irmão, razão, and their plurals -anes, -anos, -ones normally became -ães, -ãos, -ões, cf. cães, irmãos, razões.
Library of the Mafra National Palace, Portugal.
Most of the lexicon of Portuguese is derived from Latin. Nevertheless, because of the Moorish occupation of the Iberian Peninsula during the Middle Ages, and the participation of Portugal in the Age of Discovery, it has adopted loanwords from all over the world.
Very few Portuguese words can be traced to the pre-Roman inhabitants of Portugal, which included the Gallaeci, Lusitanians, Celtici and Cynetes. The Phoenicians and Carthaginians, briefly present, also left some scarce traces. Some notable examples are abóbora "pumpkin" and bezerro "year-old calf", from the nearby Celtiberian language (probably through the Celtici); cerveja "beer", from Celtic; and cachorro "dog", from Basque.
In the 5th century, the Iberian Peninsula (the Roman Hispania) was conquered by the Germanic Suebi and Visigoths. As they adopted the Roman civilization and language, however, these people contributed only a few words to the lexicon, mostly related to warfare â such as espora "spur", estaca "stake", and guerra "war", from Gothic *spaúra, *stakka, and *wirro, respectively. The influence also exists in toponymic and patronymic surnames borne by Visigoth sovereigns and their descendants, and it dwells on placenames such has Ermesinde, Esposende and Resende where sinde and sende are derived from the Germanic "sinths" (military expedition) and in the case of Resende, the prefix re comes from Germanic "reths" (council).
Between the 9th and 13th centuries, Portuguese acquired about 800 words from Arabic by influence of Moorish Iberia. They are often recognizable by the initial Arabic article a(l)-, and include many common words such as aldeia "village" from اÙضÙعة aldaya, alface "lettuce" from اÙخس alkhass, armazém "warehouse" from اÙÙ
خز٠almahazan, and azeite "olive oil" from اÙزÙت azzait. From Arabic came also the grammatically peculiar word oxalá إ٠شاء اÙÙÙ "hopefully". The Mozambican currency name metical was derived from the word Ù
تÙا٠mitqÄl, a unit of weight. The word Mozambique itself is from the Arabic name of sultan Muça Alebique (Musa Alibiki).
Starting in the 15th century, the Portuguese maritime explorations led to the introduction of many loanwords from Asian languages. For instance, catana "cutlass" from Japanese katana and chá "tea" from Chinese 'chá'.
From South America came batata "potato", from Taino; ananás and abacaxi, from Tupi-Guarani naná and Tupi ibá cati, respectively (two species of pineapple), and tucano "toucan" from Guarani tucan. See List of Brazil state name etymologies, for some more examples.
From the 16th to the 19th centuries, because of the role of Portugal as intermediary in the Atlantic slave trade, and the establishment of large Portuguese colonies in Angola, Mozambique, and Brazil, Portuguese got several words of African and Amerind origin, especially names for most of the animals and plants found in those territories. While those terms are mostly used in the former colonies, many became current in European Portuguese as well. From Kimbundu, for example, came kifumate â cafuné "head caress", kusula â caçula "youngest child", marimbondo "tropical wasp", and kubungula â bungular "to dance like a wizard".
Finally, it has received a steady influx of loanwords from other European languages. For example, melena "hair lock", fiambre "wet-cured ham" (in contrast with presunto "dry-cured ham" from Latin prae-exsuctus "dehydrated"), and castelhano "Castilian", from Spanish; colchete/crochê "bracket"/"crochet", paletó "jacket", batom "lipstick", and filé/filete "steak"/"slice" respectively, from French crochet, paletot, bâton, filet; macarrão "pasta", piloto "pilot", carroça "carriage", and barraca "barrack", from Italian maccherone, pilota, carrozza, baracca; and bife "steak", futebol, revólver, estoque, folclore, time from English beef,
football, revolver, stock, folklore, and team.
Portuguese belongs to the West Iberian branch of the Romance languages, and it has special ties with the following members of this group:
* Galician and Fala, its closest relatives. See below.
* Spanish, the major language closest to Portuguese. (See also Differences between Spanish and Portuguese.)
* Mirandese and Leonese, two other West Iberian languages spoken in Portugal.
* Judeo-Portuguese and Judeo-Spanish, languages spoken by Sephardic Jews, and which remained close to Portuguese and Spanish.
Despite the obvious lexical and grammatical similarities between Portuguese and other Romance languages, it is not mutually intelligible with them. Apart from Galician, Portuguese speakers will usually need some formal study of basic grammar and vocabulary, before attaining a reasonable level of comprehension of those languages, and vice versa. Native speakers of Portuguese do tend to understand standard Spanish which is spoken clearly, but the reverse is generally not true unless formal education is involved.
The closest language to Portuguese is Galician, spoken in the autonomous community of Galicia (northwestern Spain). The two were at one time a single language, known today as Galician-Portuguese, but since the political separation of Portugal from Galicia they have diverged somewhat, especially in pronunciation and vocabulary. Nevertheless, the core vocabulary and grammar of Galician are still noticeably closer to Portuguese than to those of Spanish. In particular, like Portuguese, it uses the future subjunctive, the personal infinitive, and the synthetic pluperfect (see the section on the grammar of Portuguese, below). Mutual intelligibility (estimated at 85% by R. A. Hall, Jr., 1989) Ethnologue is good between Galicians and northern Portuguese, but poorer between Galicians and speakers from central Portugal.
The Fala language is another descendant of Galician-Portuguese, spoken by a small number of people in the Spanish towns of Valverde del Fresno, Eljas and San MartÃn de Trevejo (autonomous community of Extremadura, near the border with Portugal).
Portuguese has provided loanwords to many languages, such as Indonesian, Manado Malay, Sri Lankan Tamil and Sinhalese (see Sri Lanka Indo-Portuguese), Malay, Bengali, English, Hindi, Konkani, Marathi, Tetum, Xitsonga, Papiamentu, Japanese, Lanc-Patuá (spoken in northern Brazil) and Sranan Tongo (spoken in Suriname). It left a strong influence on the lÃngua brasÃlica, a Tupi-Guarani language which was the most widely spoken in Brazil until the 18th century, and on the language spoken around Sikka in Flores Island, Indonesia. In nearby Larantuka, Portuguese is used for prayers in Holy Week rituals.
The Japanese-Portuguese dictionary Nippo Jisho (1603) was the first dictionary of Japanese in a European language, a product of Jesuit missionary activity in Japan. Building on the work of earlier Portuguese missionaries, the Dictionarium Anamiticum, Lusitanum et Latinum (Annamite-Portuguese-Latin dictionary) of Alexandre de Rhodes (1651) introduced the modern orthography of Vietnamese, which is based on the orthography of 17th-century Portuguese. The Romanization of Chinese was also influenced by the Portuguese language (among others), particularly regarding Chinese surnames; one example is Mei. During 1583-88 Italian Jesuits Michele Ruggieri and Matteo Ricci created a Portuguese-Chinese dictionary - the first ever European-Chinese dictionary. Yves Camus, "Jesuits' Journeys in Chinese Studies" "Dicionário Português-Chinês : Pu Han ci dian : Portuguese-Chinese dictionary", by Michele Ruggieri, Matteo Ricci; edited by John W. Witek. Published 2001, Biblioteca Nacional. ISBN 9725652983. Partial preview available on Google Books
See also List of English words of Portuguese origin, Loan words in Indonesian, Japanese words of Portuguese origin, Borrowed words in Malay, Sinhala words of Portuguese origin, Loan words from Portuguese in Sri Lankan Tamil.
Beginning in the 16th century, the extensive contacts between Portuguese travelers and settlers, African slaves, and local populations led to the appearance of many pidgins with varying amounts of Portuguese influence. As each of these pidgins became the mother tongue of succeeding generations, they evolved into fully fledged creole languages, which remained in use in many parts of Asia and Africa until the 18th century. Some Portuguese-based or Portuguese-influenced creoles are still spoken today, by over 3 million people worldwide, especially people of partial Portuguese ancestry.
There is a growing number of people in the Portuguese-speaking media and the internet who are presenting the case to the CPLP and other organizations to run a debate in the Lusophone community with the purpose of bringing forward a petition to make Portuguese an official language of the United Nations.
In October 2005, during the international Convention of the Elos Club International that took place in Tavira, Portugal, ONU: Petição para tornar português lÃngua oficial a petition was written and unanimously approved whose text can be found on the internet with the title Petição Para Tornar Oficial o Idioma Português na ONU. Romulo Alexandre Soares, president of the Brazil-Portugal Chamber highlights that the positioning of Brazil in the international arena as one of the emergent powers of the 21st century, the size of its population, and the presence of the language around the world provides legitimacy and justifies a petition to the UN to make the Portuguese language an official language of the UN. Português pode ser lÃngua oficial na ONU
Several factors detract from this campaign. The current official languages of the UN are either 1) official/dominant in many countries (English, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, and French) or 2) have several hundreds of millions of speakers (Chinese). English, Spanish, Russian and Arabic fulfill both criteria. Portuguese is a global language in that it is the official tongue of several sovereign countries on four continents. It also has over 200 million speakers. However, it exhibits some noticeable differences when compared to the current 6 UN official languages. For example, English, French, Arabic and Spanish are each official languages of multiple states and of over half of the world's countries. In contrast, four out of every five speakers of the Portuguese-speaking world live in just one country: Brazil. In addition to Brazil, Portuguese is the official language in only 7 other sovereign states; however, English is official in 53 states, French in 29 states, Arabic in 25 states, and Spanish in 20 states.
More significantly, in each part of the world with a Portuguese-speaking country, this language is overshadowed by other powerful languages that are already official languages of the UN. For example, in the Americas, the 190 million Portuguese-speaking Brazilians are overshadowed by the most spoken languages in the Western Hemisphere: Spanish (~360 million speakers) and English (~340 million speakers). Portuguese is overshadowed to an even greater extent in Europe, the continent in which four of the six UN languages originated (English, French, Spanish, and Russian). In the European context, Portuguese is not even among the ten most spoken languages on the continent, with a number of speakers comparable to those of Czech and Bulgarian. In Africa, Portuguese is eclipsed as a continental lingua franca by English and French in countries that surround Cape Verde, São Tomé and PrÃncipe, Guinea-Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique. Finally in Asia, a continent with several languages that have hundreds of millions of speakers, the only sovereign state with Portuguese as an official language is East Timor, which has only a million people. While Brazilian migration has brought 300,000 fluent Portuguese speakers to Japan, Portuguese does not enjoy any official status whatsoever in that country. Therefore, while Portuguese will gain increasing importance as Brazil continues its development as a major economy, it will likely face the same hurdles that prevented Japanese and German (both languages of major global economies with millions of speakers) from becoming both international languages and official ones of the UN.
There is a maximum of 9 oral vowels and 19 consonants, though some varieties of the language have fewer phonemes (Brazilian Portuguese has 8 oral vowels). There are also five nasal vowels, which some linguists regard as allophones of the oral vowels, ten oral diphthongs, and five nasal diphthongs. In total, Brazilian Portuguese has 13 vowel phonemes. /ref> Handbook of the International Phonetic Association'' pg. 126-130; the reference applies to the entire section
Chart of monophthongs of the Portuguese of Lisbon
To the seven vowels of Vulgar Latin, European Portuguese has added two near central vowels, one of which tends to be elided in rapid speech, like the e caduc of French (represented as either , or , or ). The high vowels and the low vowels are four distinct phonemes, and they alternate in various forms of apophony. Like Catalan, Portuguese uses vowel quality to contrast stressed syllables with unstressed syllables: isolated vowels tend to be raised, and in some cases centralized, when unstressed. Nasal diphthongs occur mostly at the ends of words.
The consonant inventory of Portuguese is fairly conservative. The medieval affricates , , , merged with the fricatives , , , , respectively, but not with each other, and there were no other significant changes to the consonant phonemes since then. However, some notable dialectal variants and allophones have appeared, among which:
* In many regions of Brazil, and have the affricate allophones and , respectively, before and . (Quebec French has a similar phenomenon, with alveolar affricates instead of postalveolars. Japanese is another example).
* At the end of a syllable, the phoneme has the allophone in Brazilian Portuguese (L-vocalization).
* In many parts of Brazil and Angola, intervocalic is pronounced as a nasalized palatal approximant which nasalizes the preceding vowel, so that, for instance, is pronounced .
* In most of Brazil, the alveolar sibilants and occur in complementary distribution at the ends of syllables, depending on whether the consonant that follows is voiceless or voiced, as in English. But in most of Portugal and parts of Brazil, sibilants are postalveolar at the ends of syllables, before voiceless consonants, and before voiced consonants (in Judeo-Spanish, is often replaced with at the ends of syllables, too).
* There is considerable dialectal variation in the value of the rhotic phoneme . See Guttural R in Portuguese, for details.
;Excerpt from the Portuguese national epic Os LusÃadas, by author LuÃs de Camões (I, 33)
A notable aspect of the grammar of Portuguese is the verb. Morphologically, more verbal inflections from classical Latin have been preserved by Portuguese than by any other major Romance language. See Romance copula, for a detailed comparison. It has also some innovations not found in other Romance languages (except Galician and the Fala):
* The present perfect tense has an iterative sense unique to Galician-Portuguese language group. It denotes an action or a series of actions which began in the past and are expected to keep repeating in the future. For instance, the sentence Tenho tentado falar com ela would be translated to "I have been trying to talk to her", not "I have tried to talk to her". On the other hand, the correct translation of the question "Have you heard the latest news?" is not *Tem ouvido a última notÃcia?, but Ouviu a última notÃcia?, since no repetition is implied. Squartini, Mario (1998) Verbal Periphrases in Romance â Aspect, Actionality, and Grammaticalization ISBN 3-11-016160-5
* The future subjunctive tense, which was developed by medieval West Iberian Romance, but has now fallen into disuse in Spanish and Galician, is still used in vernacular Portuguese. It appears in dependent clauses that denote a condition which must be fulfilled in the future, so that the independent clause will occur. English normally employs the present tense under the same circumstances:
:Se eu for eleito presidente, mudarei a lei.
:If I am elected president, I will change the law.
:Quando fores mais velho, vais entender.
:When you are older, you will understand.
* The personal infinitive: infinitives can inflect according to their subject in person and number, often showing who is expected to perform a certain action; cf. Ã melhor voltares "It is better [for you] to go back," Ã melhor voltarmos "It is better [for us] to go back." Perhaps for this reason, infinitive clauses replace subjunctive clauses more often in Portuguese than in other Romance languages.
Portuguese is written with 23 or 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, making use of five diacritics to denote stress, vowel height, contraction, nasalization, and other sound changes (acute accent, grave accent, circumflex accent, tilde, and cedilla). Accented characters and digraphs are not counted as separate letters for collation purposes.
* Portuguese literature
* Portuguese poetry
* List of Portuguese language poets
* Brazilian literature
* List of Brazilian poets
* Lusophone
* Geographic distribution of Portuguese
* List of countries where Portuguese is an official language
* Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP)
* Instituto Camões
* International Portuguese Language Institute
* Museum of the Portuguese Language
* Portuguese-based creole languages
* Portuñol
* Portuguese in the United States
* List of English words of Portuguese origin
* Spelling reforms of Portuguese
* História da Lingua Portuguesa Instituto Camões
* A LÃngua Portuguesa in Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil (...)
* Poesia e Prosa Medievais, by Maria Ema Tarracha Ferreira, Ulisseia 1998, 3rd ed., ISBN 978-972-568-124-4.
* Bases Temáticas â LÃngua Portuguesa in Instituto Camões
* Portuguese Literature in The Catholic Encyclopedia
* International Phonetic Association (1999) Handbook of the International Phonetic Association ISBN 0-521-63751-1
* Mateus, Maria Helena & d'Andrade, Ernesto (2000) The Phonology of Portuguese ISBN 0-19-823581-X (Excerpt available at Google Books)
* Bergström, Magnus & Reis, Neves Prontuário Ortográfico Editorial NotÃcias, 2004.
* A pronúncia do português europeu - European Portuguese Pronunciation
* Dialects of Portuguese at the Instituto Camões
* Audio samples of the dialects of Portugal
* Audio samples of the dialects from outside Europe
* Antônio Houaiss (2000), Dicionário Houaiss da LÃngua Portuguesa (228,500 entries).
* Aurélio Buarque de Holanda Ferreira, Novo Dicionário da LÃngua Portuguesa (1809pp)
* English-Portuguese-Chinese Dictionary (Freeware, for Windows/Linux/Mac)
* Lindley Cintra, LuÃs F. Nova Proposta de Classificação dos Dialectos Galego-Portugueses (PDF) Boletim de Filologia, Lisboa, Centro de Estudos Filológicos, 1971.
*Swadesh list in English and Portuguese
* English Portuguese Translation Dictionary for English Portuguese translations
* Learn Portuguese BBC
* Portuguese Language Notes BBC
* AULP - Associação das Universidades de LÃngua Portuguesa Portuguese Language Universities Association.
* Portuguese in East Timor an interview with Dr. Geoffrey Hull.
* Portuguese Dictionary with gender and type of words.
* ABL - Academia Brasileira de letras (em português) - (Brazilian Academy of Letters) (Portuguese)
* Brazilian Portuguese Free resources for Portuguese learners.
* EasyPortuguese Free Portuguese learning site with audio.
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Portuguese_language | In which country is Portuguese the co-official language with Cantonese Chinese? | Portuguese is the co-official language with Cantonese Chinese in Macau. | data/set5/a1 | Portuguese_language
Portuguese ( or lÃngua portuguesa) is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia and northern Portugal. It is derived from the Latin spoken by the romanized pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula (namely the Gallaeci, the Lusitanians, the Celtici and the Conii) around 2000 years ago. It spread worldwide in the 15th and 16th centuries as Portugal established a colonial and commercial empire (1415â1999) which spanned from Brazil in the Americas to Goa and other parts of India, Macau in China and Timor (north of Australia). It was used as the exclusive lingua franca on the island of Sri Lanka for almost 350 years. During that time, many creole languages based on Portuguese also appeared around the world, especially in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean.
Today it is one of the world's major languages, ranked seventh according to number of native speakers (between 205 and 230 million). It is the language of about half of South America's population, even though Brazil is the only Portuguese-speaking nation in the Americas. It is also a major lingua franca in Portugal's former colonial possessions in Africa. It is an official language in nine countries (see the table on the right), also being co-official with Cantonese Chinese in Macau and Tetum in East Timor. There are sizeable communities of Portuguese speakers in various regions of North America, notably in the United States (New Jersey, New England, California and south Florida) and in Ontario, Canada.
In various aspects, the system of sounds in Portuguese is more similar to the phonologies of Catalan or French than, say, those of Spanish or Italian. Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes once called Portuguese "the sweet language", /ref> Lope de Vega referred to it as "suave" 'Encyclopedia of Literature' Joseph T. Shipley; Philosophical Library, 1946. 1188 pgs. while Brazilian writer Olavo Bilac poetically described it as a última flor do Lácio, inculta e bela: "the last flower of Latium, wild and beautiful". Portuguese is also termed "the language of Camões", after one of Portugal's best known literary figures, LuÃs Vaz de Camões.
Countries and regions where Portuguese has official status.
Members of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries.
Today, Portuguese is the official language of Angola, Brazil (190.6 million), IBGE Official website Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Portugal (10.6 million), INE Official website São Tomé and PrÃncipe and Mozambique. CPLP Official website It is also one of the official languages of the special administrative region of Macau (with Chinese) and East Timor, (with Tetum). It is the language of most of the population in Portugal (100%) , Brazil (100%) , São Tomé and PrÃncipe (99.8%) and Angola (80%), and is the most widely spoken language in Mozambique (40%), though only 6.5% are native speakers. No data are available for Cape Verde, but almost all the population is bilingual, and the monolingual population speaks Cape Verdean Creole. See the main article Geographic distribution of Portuguese, for references.
Small Portuguese-speaking communities subsist in former overseas colonies of Portugal such as Macau, where it is spoken by 7% of the population, and East Timor (13.6%).
Uruguay gave Portuguese an equal status to Spanish in its educational system at the north border with Brazil. In the rest of the country, it is taught as an obligatory subject beginning in the 6th grade. Uruguay recently adopted Portuguese language in its education system as an obligatory subject /ref>
It is also spoken by substantial immigrant communities, though not official, in Andorra, Australia, The Portuguese-Speaking Community in Australia France, Luxembourg, Jersey (with a statistically significant Portuguese-speaking community of approximately 10,000 people), Paraguay, Namibia, South Africa, Switzerland, Venezuela, Japan JAPÃO: IMIGRANTES BRASILEIROS POPULARIZAM LÃNGUA PORTUGUESA and the U.S. states of California, Connecticut, Where America's Other Languages Are Spoken Florida, Widely spoken but 'minor'? Portuguese seeks respect Massachusetts, New Jersey, Hispanic Reading Room of the U.S. Library of Congress website, Twentieth-Century Arrivals from Portugal Settle in Newark, New Jersey, New York Brazucas (Brazilians living in New York) and Rhode Island. Hispanic Reading Room of the U.S. Library of Congress website, Whaling, Fishing, and Industrial Employment in Southeastern New England
In some parts of India, such as Goa Portuguese Language in Goa and Daman and Diu, The Portuguese Experience: The Case of Goa, Daman and Diu Portuguese is still spoken. There are also significant populations of Portuguese speakers in Canada (mainly concentrated in and around Toronto), Multicultural Canada Bermuda World InfoZone: Bermuda and the Netherlands Antilles.
Portuguese is an official language of several international organizations. The Community of Portuguese Language Countries (with the Portuguese acronym CPLP) consists of the eight independent countries that have Portuguese as an official language. It is also an official language of the European Union, accounting for 3% of its population, EUROPA website Languages in the EU Mercosul, the Organization of American States, the Organization of Ibero-American States, the Union of South American Nations, and the African Union (one of the working languages) and one of the official languages of other organizations. The Portuguese language is gaining popularity in Africa, Asia, and South America as a second language for study.
Estação da Luz, home of the Museum of the Portuguese Language, in São Paulo, Brazil.
Portuguese and Spanish are the fastest-growing European languages (with the exception of English, being the world lingua franca) , and, according to estimates by UNESCO, the Portuguese language has the highest potential for growth as an international language in southern Africa and South America. The Portuguese-speaking African countries are expected to have a combined population of 83 million by 2050. In total, the Portuguese-speaking countries will have 335 million people by the same year. Since 1991, when Brazil signed into the economic market of Mercosul with other South American nations, such as Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay, there has been an increase in interest in the study of Portuguese in those South American countries. The demographic weight of Brazil in the continent will continue to strengthen the presence of the language in the region. Although in the early 21st century, after Macau was ceded to China in 1999, the use of Portuguese was in decline in Asia, it is becoming a language of opportunity there; mostly because of East Timor's boost in the number of speakers in the last five years but also because of increased Chinese diplomatic and financial ties with Portuguese-speaking countries.
In July 2007, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema announced his government's decision to establish Portuguese as Equatorial Guinea's third official language, to meet the requirements to apply for full membership of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries. This upgrading from its current Associate Observer condition would result in Equatorial Guinea being able to access several professional and academic exchange programs and the facilitation of cross-border circulation of citizens. Its application is currently being assessed by other CPLP members. "Obiang convierte al portugués en tercer idioma oficial para entrar en la Comunidad lusófona de Naciones", Terra. 13-07-2007
In March 1994 the Bosque de Portugal (Portugal's Woods) was founded in the Brazilian city of Curitiba. The park houses the Portuguese Language Memorial, which honors the Portuguese immigrants and the countries that adopted the Portuguese language. Originally there were seven nations represented with pillars, but the independence of East Timor brought yet another pillar for that nation in 2007.
In March 2006, the Museum of the Portuguese Language, an interactive museum about the Portuguese language, was founded in São Paulo, Brazil, the city with the greatest number of Portuguese speakers in the world.
Portuguese is a pluricentric language with two main groups of dialects, those of Brazil and those of the Old World. For historical reasons, the dialects of Africa and Asia are generally closer to those of Portugal than the Brazilian dialects, although in some aspects of their phonetics, especially the pronunciation of unstressed vowels, they resemble Brazilian Portuguese more than European Portuguese. They have not been studied as widely as European and Brazilian Portuguese.
Audio samples of some dialects of Portuguese are available below. From Audio samples of the dialects of Portuguese at the Instituto Camões website. There are some differences between the areas but these are the best approximations possible. For example, the caipira dialect has some differences from the one of Minas Gerais, but in general it is very close. A good example of Brazilian Portuguese may be found in the capital city, BrasÃlia, because of the generalized population from all parts of the country.
Portuguese dialects of Angola
# Benguelense â Benguela province.
# 11px Luandense â Luanda province.
# Sulista â South of Angola.
Dialects of Portuguese in Brazil
# Caipira â States of São Paulo (countryside; the city of São Paulo and the eastern areas of the state have their own accent, called paulistano); southern Minas Gerais, northern Paraná, Goiás and Mato Grosso do Sul.
# Cearense â Ceará.
# Baiano â Bahia.
# 11px Fluminense â Variants spoken in the states of Rio de Janeiro (excluding the city of Rio de Janeiro and its adjacent metropolitan areas, which have their own dialect, called carioca).
# Gaúcho â Rio Grande do Sul. (There are many distinct accents in Rio Grande do Sul, mainly due to the heavy influx of European immigrants of diverse origins, those which have settled several colonies throughout the state.)
# Mineiro â Minas Gerais (not prevalent in the Triângulo Mineiro, southern and southeastern Minas Gerais and also excluding the city of Belo Horizonte, which has its own accent.).
# 11px Nordestino â northeastern states of Brazil (Pernambuco, ParaÃba and Rio Grande do Norte have a particular way of speaking). Note: the speaker of this sound file is from Rio, and he is talking about his experience with Nordestino and Nortista accents.
# Nortista â Amazon Basin states.
# Paulistano â Variants spoken around São Paulo city and the eastern areas of São Paulo state.
# Sertanejo â States of Goiás and Mato Grosso (the city of Cuiabá has a particular way of speaking).
# Sulista â Variants spoken in the areas between the northern regions of Rio Grande do Sul and southern regions of São Paulo state. (The cities of Curitiba, Florianópolis, and Itapetininga have fairly distinct accents as well.)
# Carioca â Variants spoken in Rio de Janeiro City and Niteroi
Dialects of Portuguese in Portugal
# 11px Açoriano (Azorean) â Azores.
# 11px Alentejano â Alentejo
# 11px Algarvio â Algarve (there is a particular dialect in a small part of western Algarve).
# 11px Alto-Minhoto â North of Braga (hinterland).
# 11px Baixo-Beirão; Alto-Alentejano â Central Portugal (hinterland).
# 11px Beirão â Central Portugal.
# 11px Estremenho â Regions of Coimbra and Lisbon (the Lisbon dialect has some peculiar features not shared with the one of Coimbra).
# 11px Madeirense (Madeiran) â Madeira.
# 11px Nortenho â Regions of Braga and Porto.
# 11px Transmontano â Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro.
* Cape Verde â 11px Português cabo-verdiano (Cape Verdean Portuguese)
* Daman and Diu, India â Damaense.
* East Timor â 11px Timorense (East Timorese)
* Goa, India â Goês.
* Guinea-Bissau â 11px Guineense (Guinean Portuguese).
* Macau, China â 11px Macaense (Macanese)
* Mozambique â 11px Moçambicano (Mozambican)
* São Tomé and PrÃncipe â 11px Santomense
* Uruguay â Dialectos Portugueses del Uruguay (DPU).
Differences between dialects are mostly of accent and vocabulary, but between the Brazilian dialects and other dialects, especially in their most colloquial forms, there can also be some grammatical differences. The Portuguese-based creoles spoken in various parts of Africa, Asia, and the Americas are independent languages which should not be confused with Portuguese itself.
Baroque Library of the Coimbra University, Portugal.
Arriving in the Iberian Peninsula in 216 BC, the Romans brought with them the Latin language, from which all Romance languages descend. The language was spread by arriving Roman soldiers, settlers, and merchants, who built Roman cities mostly near the settlements of previous civilizations.
Between 409 and 711 AD, as the Roman Empire collapsed in Western Europe, the Iberian Peninsula was conquered by Germanic peoples (Migration Period). The occupiers, mainly Suebi and Visigoths, quickly adopted late Roman culture and the Vulgar Latin dialects of the peninsula. After the Moorish invasion of 711, Arabic became the administrative language in the conquered regions, but most of the population continued to speak a form of Romance commonly known as Mozarabic. The influence exerted by Arabic on the Romance dialects spoken in the Christian kingdoms of the north was small, affecting mainly their lexicon.
The earliest surviving records of a distinctively Portuguese language are administrative documents of the 9th century, still interspersed with many Latin phrases. Today this phase is known as Proto-Portuguese (between the 9th and the 12th centuries). In the first period of Old Portuguese â Galician-Portuguese Period (from the 12th to the 14th century) â the language gradually came into general use. For some time, it was the language of preference for lyric poetry in Christian Hispania, much as Occitan was the language of the poetry of the troubadours. Portugal became an independent kingdom from the Kingdom of Leon in 1139, under king Afonso I of Portugal. In 1290, king Denis of Portugal created the first Portuguese university in Lisbon (the Estudos Gerais, later moved to Coimbra) and decreed that Portuguese, then simply called the "common language" should be known as the Portuguese language and used officially.
In the second period of Old Portuguese, from the 14th to the 16th centuries, with the Portuguese discoveries, the language was taken to many regions of Asia, Africa and the Americas (nowadays, the great majority of Portuguese speakers live in Brazil, in South America). By the 16th century, it had become a lingua franca in Asia and Africa, used not only for colonial administration and trade but also for communication between local officials and Europeans of all nationalities. Its spread was helped by mixed marriages between Portuguese and local people, and by its association with Roman Catholic missionary efforts, which led to the formation of a creole language called Kristang in many parts of Asia (from the word cristão, "Christian"). The language continued to be popular in parts of Asia until the 19th century. Some Portuguese-speaking Christian communities in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Indonesia preserved their language even after they were isolated from Portugal.
The end of the Old Portuguese period was marked by the publication of the Cancioneiro Geral by Garcia de Resende, in 1516. The early times of Modern Portuguese, which spans a period from the 16th century to the present day, were characterized by an increase in the number of learned words borrowed from Classical Latin and Classical Greek since the Renaissance, which greatly enriched the lexicon.
A distinctive feature of Portuguese is that it preserved the stressed vowels of Vulgar Latin, which became diphthongs in other Romance languages; cf. Fr. pierre, Sp. piedra, It. pietra, Ro. piatrÄ, Port. pedra ("stone"), from Lat. petram; or Sp. fuego, It. fuoco, Fr. feu, Ro. foc, Port. fogo, from Lat. focus ("fire"). Another characteristic of early Portuguese was the loss of intervocalic l and n, sometimes followed by the merger of the two surrounding vowels, or by the insertion of an epenthetic vowel between them: cf. Lat. salire ("to leave"), tenere ("to have"), catenam ("chain"), Sp. salir, tener, cadena, Port. sair, ter, cadeia.
When the elided consonant was n, it often nasalized the preceding vowel: cf. Lat. manum ("hand"), ranam ("frog"), bonum ("good"), Port. mão, rãa, bõo (now mão, rã, bom). This process was the source of most of the nasal diphthongs which are typical of Portuguese. In particular, the Latin endings -anem, -anum and -onem became -ão in most cases, cf. Lat. canem ("dog"), germanum ("brother"), rationem ("reason") with Modern Port. cão, irmão, razão, and their plurals -anes, -anos, -ones normally became -ães, -ãos, -ões, cf. cães, irmãos, razões.
Library of the Mafra National Palace, Portugal.
Most of the lexicon of Portuguese is derived from Latin. Nevertheless, because of the Moorish occupation of the Iberian Peninsula during the Middle Ages, and the participation of Portugal in the Age of Discovery, it has adopted loanwords from all over the world.
Very few Portuguese words can be traced to the pre-Roman inhabitants of Portugal, which included the Gallaeci, Lusitanians, Celtici and Cynetes. The Phoenicians and Carthaginians, briefly present, also left some scarce traces. Some notable examples are abóbora "pumpkin" and bezerro "year-old calf", from the nearby Celtiberian language (probably through the Celtici); cerveja "beer", from Celtic; and cachorro "dog", from Basque.
In the 5th century, the Iberian Peninsula (the Roman Hispania) was conquered by the Germanic Suebi and Visigoths. As they adopted the Roman civilization and language, however, these people contributed only a few words to the lexicon, mostly related to warfare â such as espora "spur", estaca "stake", and guerra "war", from Gothic *spaúra, *stakka, and *wirro, respectively. The influence also exists in toponymic and patronymic surnames borne by Visigoth sovereigns and their descendants, and it dwells on placenames such has Ermesinde, Esposende and Resende where sinde and sende are derived from the Germanic "sinths" (military expedition) and in the case of Resende, the prefix re comes from Germanic "reths" (council).
Between the 9th and 13th centuries, Portuguese acquired about 800 words from Arabic by influence of Moorish Iberia. They are often recognizable by the initial Arabic article a(l)-, and include many common words such as aldeia "village" from اÙضÙعة aldaya, alface "lettuce" from اÙخس alkhass, armazém "warehouse" from اÙÙ
خز٠almahazan, and azeite "olive oil" from اÙزÙت azzait. From Arabic came also the grammatically peculiar word oxalá إ٠شاء اÙÙÙ "hopefully". The Mozambican currency name metical was derived from the word Ù
تÙا٠mitqÄl, a unit of weight. The word Mozambique itself is from the Arabic name of sultan Muça Alebique (Musa Alibiki).
Starting in the 15th century, the Portuguese maritime explorations led to the introduction of many loanwords from Asian languages. For instance, catana "cutlass" from Japanese katana and chá "tea" from Chinese 'chá'.
From South America came batata "potato", from Taino; ananás and abacaxi, from Tupi-Guarani naná and Tupi ibá cati, respectively (two species of pineapple), and tucano "toucan" from Guarani tucan. See List of Brazil state name etymologies, for some more examples.
From the 16th to the 19th centuries, because of the role of Portugal as intermediary in the Atlantic slave trade, and the establishment of large Portuguese colonies in Angola, Mozambique, and Brazil, Portuguese got several words of African and Amerind origin, especially names for most of the animals and plants found in those territories. While those terms are mostly used in the former colonies, many became current in European Portuguese as well. From Kimbundu, for example, came kifumate â cafuné "head caress", kusula â caçula "youngest child", marimbondo "tropical wasp", and kubungula â bungular "to dance like a wizard".
Finally, it has received a steady influx of loanwords from other European languages. For example, melena "hair lock", fiambre "wet-cured ham" (in contrast with presunto "dry-cured ham" from Latin prae-exsuctus "dehydrated"), and castelhano "Castilian", from Spanish; colchete/crochê "bracket"/"crochet", paletó "jacket", batom "lipstick", and filé/filete "steak"/"slice" respectively, from French crochet, paletot, bâton, filet; macarrão "pasta", piloto "pilot", carroça "carriage", and barraca "barrack", from Italian maccherone, pilota, carrozza, baracca; and bife "steak", futebol, revólver, estoque, folclore, time from English beef,
football, revolver, stock, folklore, and team.
Portuguese belongs to the West Iberian branch of the Romance languages, and it has special ties with the following members of this group:
* Galician and Fala, its closest relatives. See below.
* Spanish, the major language closest to Portuguese. (See also Differences between Spanish and Portuguese.)
* Mirandese and Leonese, two other West Iberian languages spoken in Portugal.
* Judeo-Portuguese and Judeo-Spanish, languages spoken by Sephardic Jews, and which remained close to Portuguese and Spanish.
Despite the obvious lexical and grammatical similarities between Portuguese and other Romance languages, it is not mutually intelligible with them. Apart from Galician, Portuguese speakers will usually need some formal study of basic grammar and vocabulary, before attaining a reasonable level of comprehension of those languages, and vice versa. Native speakers of Portuguese do tend to understand standard Spanish which is spoken clearly, but the reverse is generally not true unless formal education is involved.
The closest language to Portuguese is Galician, spoken in the autonomous community of Galicia (northwestern Spain). The two were at one time a single language, known today as Galician-Portuguese, but since the political separation of Portugal from Galicia they have diverged somewhat, especially in pronunciation and vocabulary. Nevertheless, the core vocabulary and grammar of Galician are still noticeably closer to Portuguese than to those of Spanish. In particular, like Portuguese, it uses the future subjunctive, the personal infinitive, and the synthetic pluperfect (see the section on the grammar of Portuguese, below). Mutual intelligibility (estimated at 85% by R. A. Hall, Jr., 1989) Ethnologue is good between Galicians and northern Portuguese, but poorer between Galicians and speakers from central Portugal.
The Fala language is another descendant of Galician-Portuguese, spoken by a small number of people in the Spanish towns of Valverde del Fresno, Eljas and San MartÃn de Trevejo (autonomous community of Extremadura, near the border with Portugal).
Portuguese has provided loanwords to many languages, such as Indonesian, Manado Malay, Sri Lankan Tamil and Sinhalese (see Sri Lanka Indo-Portuguese), Malay, Bengali, English, Hindi, Konkani, Marathi, Tetum, Xitsonga, Papiamentu, Japanese, Lanc-Patuá (spoken in northern Brazil) and Sranan Tongo (spoken in Suriname). It left a strong influence on the lÃngua brasÃlica, a Tupi-Guarani language which was the most widely spoken in Brazil until the 18th century, and on the language spoken around Sikka in Flores Island, Indonesia. In nearby Larantuka, Portuguese is used for prayers in Holy Week rituals.
The Japanese-Portuguese dictionary Nippo Jisho (1603) was the first dictionary of Japanese in a European language, a product of Jesuit missionary activity in Japan. Building on the work of earlier Portuguese missionaries, the Dictionarium Anamiticum, Lusitanum et Latinum (Annamite-Portuguese-Latin dictionary) of Alexandre de Rhodes (1651) introduced the modern orthography of Vietnamese, which is based on the orthography of 17th-century Portuguese. The Romanization of Chinese was also influenced by the Portuguese language (among others), particularly regarding Chinese surnames; one example is Mei. During 1583-88 Italian Jesuits Michele Ruggieri and Matteo Ricci created a Portuguese-Chinese dictionary - the first ever European-Chinese dictionary. Yves Camus, "Jesuits' Journeys in Chinese Studies" "Dicionário Português-Chinês : Pu Han ci dian : Portuguese-Chinese dictionary", by Michele Ruggieri, Matteo Ricci; edited by John W. Witek. Published 2001, Biblioteca Nacional. ISBN 9725652983. Partial preview available on Google Books
See also List of English words of Portuguese origin, Loan words in Indonesian, Japanese words of Portuguese origin, Borrowed words in Malay, Sinhala words of Portuguese origin, Loan words from Portuguese in Sri Lankan Tamil.
Beginning in the 16th century, the extensive contacts between Portuguese travelers and settlers, African slaves, and local populations led to the appearance of many pidgins with varying amounts of Portuguese influence. As each of these pidgins became the mother tongue of succeeding generations, they evolved into fully fledged creole languages, which remained in use in many parts of Asia and Africa until the 18th century. Some Portuguese-based or Portuguese-influenced creoles are still spoken today, by over 3 million people worldwide, especially people of partial Portuguese ancestry.
There is a growing number of people in the Portuguese-speaking media and the internet who are presenting the case to the CPLP and other organizations to run a debate in the Lusophone community with the purpose of bringing forward a petition to make Portuguese an official language of the United Nations.
In October 2005, during the international Convention of the Elos Club International that took place in Tavira, Portugal, ONU: Petição para tornar português lÃngua oficial a petition was written and unanimously approved whose text can be found on the internet with the title Petição Para Tornar Oficial o Idioma Português na ONU. Romulo Alexandre Soares, president of the Brazil-Portugal Chamber highlights that the positioning of Brazil in the international arena as one of the emergent powers of the 21st century, the size of its population, and the presence of the language around the world provides legitimacy and justifies a petition to the UN to make the Portuguese language an official language of the UN. Português pode ser lÃngua oficial na ONU
Several factors detract from this campaign. The current official languages of the UN are either 1) official/dominant in many countries (English, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, and French) or 2) have several hundreds of millions of speakers (Chinese). English, Spanish, Russian and Arabic fulfill both criteria. Portuguese is a global language in that it is the official tongue of several sovereign countries on four continents. It also has over 200 million speakers. However, it exhibits some noticeable differences when compared to the current 6 UN official languages. For example, English, French, Arabic and Spanish are each official languages of multiple states and of over half of the world's countries. In contrast, four out of every five speakers of the Portuguese-speaking world live in just one country: Brazil. In addition to Brazil, Portuguese is the official language in only 7 other sovereign states; however, English is official in 53 states, French in 29 states, Arabic in 25 states, and Spanish in 20 states.
More significantly, in each part of the world with a Portuguese-speaking country, this language is overshadowed by other powerful languages that are already official languages of the UN. For example, in the Americas, the 190 million Portuguese-speaking Brazilians are overshadowed by the most spoken languages in the Western Hemisphere: Spanish (~360 million speakers) and English (~340 million speakers). Portuguese is overshadowed to an even greater extent in Europe, the continent in which four of the six UN languages originated (English, French, Spanish, and Russian). In the European context, Portuguese is not even among the ten most spoken languages on the continent, with a number of speakers comparable to those of Czech and Bulgarian. In Africa, Portuguese is eclipsed as a continental lingua franca by English and French in countries that surround Cape Verde, São Tomé and PrÃncipe, Guinea-Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique. Finally in Asia, a continent with several languages that have hundreds of millions of speakers, the only sovereign state with Portuguese as an official language is East Timor, which has only a million people. While Brazilian migration has brought 300,000 fluent Portuguese speakers to Japan, Portuguese does not enjoy any official status whatsoever in that country. Therefore, while Portuguese will gain increasing importance as Brazil continues its development as a major economy, it will likely face the same hurdles that prevented Japanese and German (both languages of major global economies with millions of speakers) from becoming both international languages and official ones of the UN.
There is a maximum of 9 oral vowels and 19 consonants, though some varieties of the language have fewer phonemes (Brazilian Portuguese has 8 oral vowels). There are also five nasal vowels, which some linguists regard as allophones of the oral vowels, ten oral diphthongs, and five nasal diphthongs. In total, Brazilian Portuguese has 13 vowel phonemes. /ref> Handbook of the International Phonetic Association'' pg. 126-130; the reference applies to the entire section
Chart of monophthongs of the Portuguese of Lisbon
To the seven vowels of Vulgar Latin, European Portuguese has added two near central vowels, one of which tends to be elided in rapid speech, like the e caduc of French (represented as either , or , or ). The high vowels and the low vowels are four distinct phonemes, and they alternate in various forms of apophony. Like Catalan, Portuguese uses vowel quality to contrast stressed syllables with unstressed syllables: isolated vowels tend to be raised, and in some cases centralized, when unstressed. Nasal diphthongs occur mostly at the ends of words.
The consonant inventory of Portuguese is fairly conservative. The medieval affricates , , , merged with the fricatives , , , , respectively, but not with each other, and there were no other significant changes to the consonant phonemes since then. However, some notable dialectal variants and allophones have appeared, among which:
* In many regions of Brazil, and have the affricate allophones and , respectively, before and . (Quebec French has a similar phenomenon, with alveolar affricates instead of postalveolars. Japanese is another example).
* At the end of a syllable, the phoneme has the allophone in Brazilian Portuguese (L-vocalization).
* In many parts of Brazil and Angola, intervocalic is pronounced as a nasalized palatal approximant which nasalizes the preceding vowel, so that, for instance, is pronounced .
* In most of Brazil, the alveolar sibilants and occur in complementary distribution at the ends of syllables, depending on whether the consonant that follows is voiceless or voiced, as in English. But in most of Portugal and parts of Brazil, sibilants are postalveolar at the ends of syllables, before voiceless consonants, and before voiced consonants (in Judeo-Spanish, is often replaced with at the ends of syllables, too).
* There is considerable dialectal variation in the value of the rhotic phoneme . See Guttural R in Portuguese, for details.
;Excerpt from the Portuguese national epic Os LusÃadas, by author LuÃs de Camões (I, 33)
A notable aspect of the grammar of Portuguese is the verb. Morphologically, more verbal inflections from classical Latin have been preserved by Portuguese than by any other major Romance language. See Romance copula, for a detailed comparison. It has also some innovations not found in other Romance languages (except Galician and the Fala):
* The present perfect tense has an iterative sense unique to Galician-Portuguese language group. It denotes an action or a series of actions which began in the past and are expected to keep repeating in the future. For instance, the sentence Tenho tentado falar com ela would be translated to "I have been trying to talk to her", not "I have tried to talk to her". On the other hand, the correct translation of the question "Have you heard the latest news?" is not *Tem ouvido a última notÃcia?, but Ouviu a última notÃcia?, since no repetition is implied. Squartini, Mario (1998) Verbal Periphrases in Romance â Aspect, Actionality, and Grammaticalization ISBN 3-11-016160-5
* The future subjunctive tense, which was developed by medieval West Iberian Romance, but has now fallen into disuse in Spanish and Galician, is still used in vernacular Portuguese. It appears in dependent clauses that denote a condition which must be fulfilled in the future, so that the independent clause will occur. English normally employs the present tense under the same circumstances:
:Se eu for eleito presidente, mudarei a lei.
:If I am elected president, I will change the law.
:Quando fores mais velho, vais entender.
:When you are older, you will understand.
* The personal infinitive: infinitives can inflect according to their subject in person and number, often showing who is expected to perform a certain action; cf. Ã melhor voltares "It is better [for you] to go back," Ã melhor voltarmos "It is better [for us] to go back." Perhaps for this reason, infinitive clauses replace subjunctive clauses more often in Portuguese than in other Romance languages.
Portuguese is written with 23 or 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, making use of five diacritics to denote stress, vowel height, contraction, nasalization, and other sound changes (acute accent, grave accent, circumflex accent, tilde, and cedilla). Accented characters and digraphs are not counted as separate letters for collation purposes.
* Portuguese literature
* Portuguese poetry
* List of Portuguese language poets
* Brazilian literature
* List of Brazilian poets
* Lusophone
* Geographic distribution of Portuguese
* List of countries where Portuguese is an official language
* Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP)
* Instituto Camões
* International Portuguese Language Institute
* Museum of the Portuguese Language
* Portuguese-based creole languages
* Portuñol
* Portuguese in the United States
* List of English words of Portuguese origin
* Spelling reforms of Portuguese
* História da Lingua Portuguesa Instituto Camões
* A LÃngua Portuguesa in Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil (...)
* Poesia e Prosa Medievais, by Maria Ema Tarracha Ferreira, Ulisseia 1998, 3rd ed., ISBN 978-972-568-124-4.
* Bases Temáticas â LÃngua Portuguesa in Instituto Camões
* Portuguese Literature in The Catholic Encyclopedia
* International Phonetic Association (1999) Handbook of the International Phonetic Association ISBN 0-521-63751-1
* Mateus, Maria Helena & d'Andrade, Ernesto (2000) The Phonology of Portuguese ISBN 0-19-823581-X (Excerpt available at Google Books)
* Bergström, Magnus & Reis, Neves Prontuário Ortográfico Editorial NotÃcias, 2004.
* A pronúncia do português europeu - European Portuguese Pronunciation
* Dialects of Portuguese at the Instituto Camões
* Audio samples of the dialects of Portugal
* Audio samples of the dialects from outside Europe
* Antônio Houaiss (2000), Dicionário Houaiss da LÃngua Portuguesa (228,500 entries).
* Aurélio Buarque de Holanda Ferreira, Novo Dicionário da LÃngua Portuguesa (1809pp)
* English-Portuguese-Chinese Dictionary (Freeware, for Windows/Linux/Mac)
* Lindley Cintra, LuÃs F. Nova Proposta de Classificação dos Dialectos Galego-Portugueses (PDF) Boletim de Filologia, Lisboa, Centro de Estudos Filológicos, 1971.
*Swadesh list in English and Portuguese
* English Portuguese Translation Dictionary for English Portuguese translations
* Learn Portuguese BBC
* Portuguese Language Notes BBC
* AULP - Associação das Universidades de LÃngua Portuguesa Portuguese Language Universities Association.
* Portuguese in East Timor an interview with Dr. Geoffrey Hull.
* Portuguese Dictionary with gender and type of words.
* ABL - Academia Brasileira de letras (em português) - (Brazilian Academy of Letters) (Portuguese)
* Brazilian Portuguese Free resources for Portuguese learners.
* EasyPortuguese Free Portuguese learning site with audio.
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Portuguese_language | Wasn't Portuguese language spread by arriving Roman soldiers? | Yes. | data/set5/a1 | Portuguese_language
Portuguese ( or lÃngua portuguesa) is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia and northern Portugal. It is derived from the Latin spoken by the romanized pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula (namely the Gallaeci, the Lusitanians, the Celtici and the Conii) around 2000 years ago. It spread worldwide in the 15th and 16th centuries as Portugal established a colonial and commercial empire (1415â1999) which spanned from Brazil in the Americas to Goa and other parts of India, Macau in China and Timor (north of Australia). It was used as the exclusive lingua franca on the island of Sri Lanka for almost 350 years. During that time, many creole languages based on Portuguese also appeared around the world, especially in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean.
Today it is one of the world's major languages, ranked seventh according to number of native speakers (between 205 and 230 million). It is the language of about half of South America's population, even though Brazil is the only Portuguese-speaking nation in the Americas. It is also a major lingua franca in Portugal's former colonial possessions in Africa. It is an official language in nine countries (see the table on the right), also being co-official with Cantonese Chinese in Macau and Tetum in East Timor. There are sizeable communities of Portuguese speakers in various regions of North America, notably in the United States (New Jersey, New England, California and south Florida) and in Ontario, Canada.
In various aspects, the system of sounds in Portuguese is more similar to the phonologies of Catalan or French than, say, those of Spanish or Italian. Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes once called Portuguese "the sweet language", /ref> Lope de Vega referred to it as "suave" 'Encyclopedia of Literature' Joseph T. Shipley; Philosophical Library, 1946. 1188 pgs. while Brazilian writer Olavo Bilac poetically described it as a última flor do Lácio, inculta e bela: "the last flower of Latium, wild and beautiful". Portuguese is also termed "the language of Camões", after one of Portugal's best known literary figures, LuÃs Vaz de Camões.
Countries and regions where Portuguese has official status.
Members of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries.
Today, Portuguese is the official language of Angola, Brazil (190.6 million), IBGE Official website Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Portugal (10.6 million), INE Official website São Tomé and PrÃncipe and Mozambique. CPLP Official website It is also one of the official languages of the special administrative region of Macau (with Chinese) and East Timor, (with Tetum). It is the language of most of the population in Portugal (100%) , Brazil (100%) , São Tomé and PrÃncipe (99.8%) and Angola (80%), and is the most widely spoken language in Mozambique (40%), though only 6.5% are native speakers. No data are available for Cape Verde, but almost all the population is bilingual, and the monolingual population speaks Cape Verdean Creole. See the main article Geographic distribution of Portuguese, for references.
Small Portuguese-speaking communities subsist in former overseas colonies of Portugal such as Macau, where it is spoken by 7% of the population, and East Timor (13.6%).
Uruguay gave Portuguese an equal status to Spanish in its educational system at the north border with Brazil. In the rest of the country, it is taught as an obligatory subject beginning in the 6th grade. Uruguay recently adopted Portuguese language in its education system as an obligatory subject /ref>
It is also spoken by substantial immigrant communities, though not official, in Andorra, Australia, The Portuguese-Speaking Community in Australia France, Luxembourg, Jersey (with a statistically significant Portuguese-speaking community of approximately 10,000 people), Paraguay, Namibia, South Africa, Switzerland, Venezuela, Japan JAPÃO: IMIGRANTES BRASILEIROS POPULARIZAM LÃNGUA PORTUGUESA and the U.S. states of California, Connecticut, Where America's Other Languages Are Spoken Florida, Widely spoken but 'minor'? Portuguese seeks respect Massachusetts, New Jersey, Hispanic Reading Room of the U.S. Library of Congress website, Twentieth-Century Arrivals from Portugal Settle in Newark, New Jersey, New York Brazucas (Brazilians living in New York) and Rhode Island. Hispanic Reading Room of the U.S. Library of Congress website, Whaling, Fishing, and Industrial Employment in Southeastern New England
In some parts of India, such as Goa Portuguese Language in Goa and Daman and Diu, The Portuguese Experience: The Case of Goa, Daman and Diu Portuguese is still spoken. There are also significant populations of Portuguese speakers in Canada (mainly concentrated in and around Toronto), Multicultural Canada Bermuda World InfoZone: Bermuda and the Netherlands Antilles.
Portuguese is an official language of several international organizations. The Community of Portuguese Language Countries (with the Portuguese acronym CPLP) consists of the eight independent countries that have Portuguese as an official language. It is also an official language of the European Union, accounting for 3% of its population, EUROPA website Languages in the EU Mercosul, the Organization of American States, the Organization of Ibero-American States, the Union of South American Nations, and the African Union (one of the working languages) and one of the official languages of other organizations. The Portuguese language is gaining popularity in Africa, Asia, and South America as a second language for study.
Estação da Luz, home of the Museum of the Portuguese Language, in São Paulo, Brazil.
Portuguese and Spanish are the fastest-growing European languages (with the exception of English, being the world lingua franca) , and, according to estimates by UNESCO, the Portuguese language has the highest potential for growth as an international language in southern Africa and South America. The Portuguese-speaking African countries are expected to have a combined population of 83 million by 2050. In total, the Portuguese-speaking countries will have 335 million people by the same year. Since 1991, when Brazil signed into the economic market of Mercosul with other South American nations, such as Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay, there has been an increase in interest in the study of Portuguese in those South American countries. The demographic weight of Brazil in the continent will continue to strengthen the presence of the language in the region. Although in the early 21st century, after Macau was ceded to China in 1999, the use of Portuguese was in decline in Asia, it is becoming a language of opportunity there; mostly because of East Timor's boost in the number of speakers in the last five years but also because of increased Chinese diplomatic and financial ties with Portuguese-speaking countries.
In July 2007, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema announced his government's decision to establish Portuguese as Equatorial Guinea's third official language, to meet the requirements to apply for full membership of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries. This upgrading from its current Associate Observer condition would result in Equatorial Guinea being able to access several professional and academic exchange programs and the facilitation of cross-border circulation of citizens. Its application is currently being assessed by other CPLP members. "Obiang convierte al portugués en tercer idioma oficial para entrar en la Comunidad lusófona de Naciones", Terra. 13-07-2007
In March 1994 the Bosque de Portugal (Portugal's Woods) was founded in the Brazilian city of Curitiba. The park houses the Portuguese Language Memorial, which honors the Portuguese immigrants and the countries that adopted the Portuguese language. Originally there were seven nations represented with pillars, but the independence of East Timor brought yet another pillar for that nation in 2007.
In March 2006, the Museum of the Portuguese Language, an interactive museum about the Portuguese language, was founded in São Paulo, Brazil, the city with the greatest number of Portuguese speakers in the world.
Portuguese is a pluricentric language with two main groups of dialects, those of Brazil and those of the Old World. For historical reasons, the dialects of Africa and Asia are generally closer to those of Portugal than the Brazilian dialects, although in some aspects of their phonetics, especially the pronunciation of unstressed vowels, they resemble Brazilian Portuguese more than European Portuguese. They have not been studied as widely as European and Brazilian Portuguese.
Audio samples of some dialects of Portuguese are available below. From Audio samples of the dialects of Portuguese at the Instituto Camões website. There are some differences between the areas but these are the best approximations possible. For example, the caipira dialect has some differences from the one of Minas Gerais, but in general it is very close. A good example of Brazilian Portuguese may be found in the capital city, BrasÃlia, because of the generalized population from all parts of the country.
Portuguese dialects of Angola
# Benguelense â Benguela province.
# 11px Luandense â Luanda province.
# Sulista â South of Angola.
Dialects of Portuguese in Brazil
# Caipira â States of São Paulo (countryside; the city of São Paulo and the eastern areas of the state have their own accent, called paulistano); southern Minas Gerais, northern Paraná, Goiás and Mato Grosso do Sul.
# Cearense â Ceará.
# Baiano â Bahia.
# 11px Fluminense â Variants spoken in the states of Rio de Janeiro (excluding the city of Rio de Janeiro and its adjacent metropolitan areas, which have their own dialect, called carioca).
# Gaúcho â Rio Grande do Sul. (There are many distinct accents in Rio Grande do Sul, mainly due to the heavy influx of European immigrants of diverse origins, those which have settled several colonies throughout the state.)
# Mineiro â Minas Gerais (not prevalent in the Triângulo Mineiro, southern and southeastern Minas Gerais and also excluding the city of Belo Horizonte, which has its own accent.).
# 11px Nordestino â northeastern states of Brazil (Pernambuco, ParaÃba and Rio Grande do Norte have a particular way of speaking). Note: the speaker of this sound file is from Rio, and he is talking about his experience with Nordestino and Nortista accents.
# Nortista â Amazon Basin states.
# Paulistano â Variants spoken around São Paulo city and the eastern areas of São Paulo state.
# Sertanejo â States of Goiás and Mato Grosso (the city of Cuiabá has a particular way of speaking).
# Sulista â Variants spoken in the areas between the northern regions of Rio Grande do Sul and southern regions of São Paulo state. (The cities of Curitiba, Florianópolis, and Itapetininga have fairly distinct accents as well.)
# Carioca â Variants spoken in Rio de Janeiro City and Niteroi
Dialects of Portuguese in Portugal
# 11px Açoriano (Azorean) â Azores.
# 11px Alentejano â Alentejo
# 11px Algarvio â Algarve (there is a particular dialect in a small part of western Algarve).
# 11px Alto-Minhoto â North of Braga (hinterland).
# 11px Baixo-Beirão; Alto-Alentejano â Central Portugal (hinterland).
# 11px Beirão â Central Portugal.
# 11px Estremenho â Regions of Coimbra and Lisbon (the Lisbon dialect has some peculiar features not shared with the one of Coimbra).
# 11px Madeirense (Madeiran) â Madeira.
# 11px Nortenho â Regions of Braga and Porto.
# 11px Transmontano â Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro.
* Cape Verde â 11px Português cabo-verdiano (Cape Verdean Portuguese)
* Daman and Diu, India â Damaense.
* East Timor â 11px Timorense (East Timorese)
* Goa, India â Goês.
* Guinea-Bissau â 11px Guineense (Guinean Portuguese).
* Macau, China â 11px Macaense (Macanese)
* Mozambique â 11px Moçambicano (Mozambican)
* São Tomé and PrÃncipe â 11px Santomense
* Uruguay â Dialectos Portugueses del Uruguay (DPU).
Differences between dialects are mostly of accent and vocabulary, but between the Brazilian dialects and other dialects, especially in their most colloquial forms, there can also be some grammatical differences. The Portuguese-based creoles spoken in various parts of Africa, Asia, and the Americas are independent languages which should not be confused with Portuguese itself.
Baroque Library of the Coimbra University, Portugal.
Arriving in the Iberian Peninsula in 216 BC, the Romans brought with them the Latin language, from which all Romance languages descend. The language was spread by arriving Roman soldiers, settlers, and merchants, who built Roman cities mostly near the settlements of previous civilizations.
Between 409 and 711 AD, as the Roman Empire collapsed in Western Europe, the Iberian Peninsula was conquered by Germanic peoples (Migration Period). The occupiers, mainly Suebi and Visigoths, quickly adopted late Roman culture and the Vulgar Latin dialects of the peninsula. After the Moorish invasion of 711, Arabic became the administrative language in the conquered regions, but most of the population continued to speak a form of Romance commonly known as Mozarabic. The influence exerted by Arabic on the Romance dialects spoken in the Christian kingdoms of the north was small, affecting mainly their lexicon.
The earliest surviving records of a distinctively Portuguese language are administrative documents of the 9th century, still interspersed with many Latin phrases. Today this phase is known as Proto-Portuguese (between the 9th and the 12th centuries). In the first period of Old Portuguese â Galician-Portuguese Period (from the 12th to the 14th century) â the language gradually came into general use. For some time, it was the language of preference for lyric poetry in Christian Hispania, much as Occitan was the language of the poetry of the troubadours. Portugal became an independent kingdom from the Kingdom of Leon in 1139, under king Afonso I of Portugal. In 1290, king Denis of Portugal created the first Portuguese university in Lisbon (the Estudos Gerais, later moved to Coimbra) and decreed that Portuguese, then simply called the "common language" should be known as the Portuguese language and used officially.
In the second period of Old Portuguese, from the 14th to the 16th centuries, with the Portuguese discoveries, the language was taken to many regions of Asia, Africa and the Americas (nowadays, the great majority of Portuguese speakers live in Brazil, in South America). By the 16th century, it had become a lingua franca in Asia and Africa, used not only for colonial administration and trade but also for communication between local officials and Europeans of all nationalities. Its spread was helped by mixed marriages between Portuguese and local people, and by its association with Roman Catholic missionary efforts, which led to the formation of a creole language called Kristang in many parts of Asia (from the word cristão, "Christian"). The language continued to be popular in parts of Asia until the 19th century. Some Portuguese-speaking Christian communities in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Indonesia preserved their language even after they were isolated from Portugal.
The end of the Old Portuguese period was marked by the publication of the Cancioneiro Geral by Garcia de Resende, in 1516. The early times of Modern Portuguese, which spans a period from the 16th century to the present day, were characterized by an increase in the number of learned words borrowed from Classical Latin and Classical Greek since the Renaissance, which greatly enriched the lexicon.
A distinctive feature of Portuguese is that it preserved the stressed vowels of Vulgar Latin, which became diphthongs in other Romance languages; cf. Fr. pierre, Sp. piedra, It. pietra, Ro. piatrÄ, Port. pedra ("stone"), from Lat. petram; or Sp. fuego, It. fuoco, Fr. feu, Ro. foc, Port. fogo, from Lat. focus ("fire"). Another characteristic of early Portuguese was the loss of intervocalic l and n, sometimes followed by the merger of the two surrounding vowels, or by the insertion of an epenthetic vowel between them: cf. Lat. salire ("to leave"), tenere ("to have"), catenam ("chain"), Sp. salir, tener, cadena, Port. sair, ter, cadeia.
When the elided consonant was n, it often nasalized the preceding vowel: cf. Lat. manum ("hand"), ranam ("frog"), bonum ("good"), Port. mão, rãa, bõo (now mão, rã, bom). This process was the source of most of the nasal diphthongs which are typical of Portuguese. In particular, the Latin endings -anem, -anum and -onem became -ão in most cases, cf. Lat. canem ("dog"), germanum ("brother"), rationem ("reason") with Modern Port. cão, irmão, razão, and their plurals -anes, -anos, -ones normally became -ães, -ãos, -ões, cf. cães, irmãos, razões.
Library of the Mafra National Palace, Portugal.
Most of the lexicon of Portuguese is derived from Latin. Nevertheless, because of the Moorish occupation of the Iberian Peninsula during the Middle Ages, and the participation of Portugal in the Age of Discovery, it has adopted loanwords from all over the world.
Very few Portuguese words can be traced to the pre-Roman inhabitants of Portugal, which included the Gallaeci, Lusitanians, Celtici and Cynetes. The Phoenicians and Carthaginians, briefly present, also left some scarce traces. Some notable examples are abóbora "pumpkin" and bezerro "year-old calf", from the nearby Celtiberian language (probably through the Celtici); cerveja "beer", from Celtic; and cachorro "dog", from Basque.
In the 5th century, the Iberian Peninsula (the Roman Hispania) was conquered by the Germanic Suebi and Visigoths. As they adopted the Roman civilization and language, however, these people contributed only a few words to the lexicon, mostly related to warfare â such as espora "spur", estaca "stake", and guerra "war", from Gothic *spaúra, *stakka, and *wirro, respectively. The influence also exists in toponymic and patronymic surnames borne by Visigoth sovereigns and their descendants, and it dwells on placenames such has Ermesinde, Esposende and Resende where sinde and sende are derived from the Germanic "sinths" (military expedition) and in the case of Resende, the prefix re comes from Germanic "reths" (council).
Between the 9th and 13th centuries, Portuguese acquired about 800 words from Arabic by influence of Moorish Iberia. They are often recognizable by the initial Arabic article a(l)-, and include many common words such as aldeia "village" from اÙضÙعة aldaya, alface "lettuce" from اÙخس alkhass, armazém "warehouse" from اÙÙ
خز٠almahazan, and azeite "olive oil" from اÙزÙت azzait. From Arabic came also the grammatically peculiar word oxalá إ٠شاء اÙÙÙ "hopefully". The Mozambican currency name metical was derived from the word Ù
تÙا٠mitqÄl, a unit of weight. The word Mozambique itself is from the Arabic name of sultan Muça Alebique (Musa Alibiki).
Starting in the 15th century, the Portuguese maritime explorations led to the introduction of many loanwords from Asian languages. For instance, catana "cutlass" from Japanese katana and chá "tea" from Chinese 'chá'.
From South America came batata "potato", from Taino; ananás and abacaxi, from Tupi-Guarani naná and Tupi ibá cati, respectively (two species of pineapple), and tucano "toucan" from Guarani tucan. See List of Brazil state name etymologies, for some more examples.
From the 16th to the 19th centuries, because of the role of Portugal as intermediary in the Atlantic slave trade, and the establishment of large Portuguese colonies in Angola, Mozambique, and Brazil, Portuguese got several words of African and Amerind origin, especially names for most of the animals and plants found in those territories. While those terms are mostly used in the former colonies, many became current in European Portuguese as well. From Kimbundu, for example, came kifumate â cafuné "head caress", kusula â caçula "youngest child", marimbondo "tropical wasp", and kubungula â bungular "to dance like a wizard".
Finally, it has received a steady influx of loanwords from other European languages. For example, melena "hair lock", fiambre "wet-cured ham" (in contrast with presunto "dry-cured ham" from Latin prae-exsuctus "dehydrated"), and castelhano "Castilian", from Spanish; colchete/crochê "bracket"/"crochet", paletó "jacket", batom "lipstick", and filé/filete "steak"/"slice" respectively, from French crochet, paletot, bâton, filet; macarrão "pasta", piloto "pilot", carroça "carriage", and barraca "barrack", from Italian maccherone, pilota, carrozza, baracca; and bife "steak", futebol, revólver, estoque, folclore, time from English beef,
football, revolver, stock, folklore, and team.
Portuguese belongs to the West Iberian branch of the Romance languages, and it has special ties with the following members of this group:
* Galician and Fala, its closest relatives. See below.
* Spanish, the major language closest to Portuguese. (See also Differences between Spanish and Portuguese.)
* Mirandese and Leonese, two other West Iberian languages spoken in Portugal.
* Judeo-Portuguese and Judeo-Spanish, languages spoken by Sephardic Jews, and which remained close to Portuguese and Spanish.
Despite the obvious lexical and grammatical similarities between Portuguese and other Romance languages, it is not mutually intelligible with them. Apart from Galician, Portuguese speakers will usually need some formal study of basic grammar and vocabulary, before attaining a reasonable level of comprehension of those languages, and vice versa. Native speakers of Portuguese do tend to understand standard Spanish which is spoken clearly, but the reverse is generally not true unless formal education is involved.
The closest language to Portuguese is Galician, spoken in the autonomous community of Galicia (northwestern Spain). The two were at one time a single language, known today as Galician-Portuguese, but since the political separation of Portugal from Galicia they have diverged somewhat, especially in pronunciation and vocabulary. Nevertheless, the core vocabulary and grammar of Galician are still noticeably closer to Portuguese than to those of Spanish. In particular, like Portuguese, it uses the future subjunctive, the personal infinitive, and the synthetic pluperfect (see the section on the grammar of Portuguese, below). Mutual intelligibility (estimated at 85% by R. A. Hall, Jr., 1989) Ethnologue is good between Galicians and northern Portuguese, but poorer between Galicians and speakers from central Portugal.
The Fala language is another descendant of Galician-Portuguese, spoken by a small number of people in the Spanish towns of Valverde del Fresno, Eljas and San MartÃn de Trevejo (autonomous community of Extremadura, near the border with Portugal).
Portuguese has provided loanwords to many languages, such as Indonesian, Manado Malay, Sri Lankan Tamil and Sinhalese (see Sri Lanka Indo-Portuguese), Malay, Bengali, English, Hindi, Konkani, Marathi, Tetum, Xitsonga, Papiamentu, Japanese, Lanc-Patuá (spoken in northern Brazil) and Sranan Tongo (spoken in Suriname). It left a strong influence on the lÃngua brasÃlica, a Tupi-Guarani language which was the most widely spoken in Brazil until the 18th century, and on the language spoken around Sikka in Flores Island, Indonesia. In nearby Larantuka, Portuguese is used for prayers in Holy Week rituals.
The Japanese-Portuguese dictionary Nippo Jisho (1603) was the first dictionary of Japanese in a European language, a product of Jesuit missionary activity in Japan. Building on the work of earlier Portuguese missionaries, the Dictionarium Anamiticum, Lusitanum et Latinum (Annamite-Portuguese-Latin dictionary) of Alexandre de Rhodes (1651) introduced the modern orthography of Vietnamese, which is based on the orthography of 17th-century Portuguese. The Romanization of Chinese was also influenced by the Portuguese language (among others), particularly regarding Chinese surnames; one example is Mei. During 1583-88 Italian Jesuits Michele Ruggieri and Matteo Ricci created a Portuguese-Chinese dictionary - the first ever European-Chinese dictionary. Yves Camus, "Jesuits' Journeys in Chinese Studies" "Dicionário Português-Chinês : Pu Han ci dian : Portuguese-Chinese dictionary", by Michele Ruggieri, Matteo Ricci; edited by John W. Witek. Published 2001, Biblioteca Nacional. ISBN 9725652983. Partial preview available on Google Books
See also List of English words of Portuguese origin, Loan words in Indonesian, Japanese words of Portuguese origin, Borrowed words in Malay, Sinhala words of Portuguese origin, Loan words from Portuguese in Sri Lankan Tamil.
Beginning in the 16th century, the extensive contacts between Portuguese travelers and settlers, African slaves, and local populations led to the appearance of many pidgins with varying amounts of Portuguese influence. As each of these pidgins became the mother tongue of succeeding generations, they evolved into fully fledged creole languages, which remained in use in many parts of Asia and Africa until the 18th century. Some Portuguese-based or Portuguese-influenced creoles are still spoken today, by over 3 million people worldwide, especially people of partial Portuguese ancestry.
There is a growing number of people in the Portuguese-speaking media and the internet who are presenting the case to the CPLP and other organizations to run a debate in the Lusophone community with the purpose of bringing forward a petition to make Portuguese an official language of the United Nations.
In October 2005, during the international Convention of the Elos Club International that took place in Tavira, Portugal, ONU: Petição para tornar português lÃngua oficial a petition was written and unanimously approved whose text can be found on the internet with the title Petição Para Tornar Oficial o Idioma Português na ONU. Romulo Alexandre Soares, president of the Brazil-Portugal Chamber highlights that the positioning of Brazil in the international arena as one of the emergent powers of the 21st century, the size of its population, and the presence of the language around the world provides legitimacy and justifies a petition to the UN to make the Portuguese language an official language of the UN. Português pode ser lÃngua oficial na ONU
Several factors detract from this campaign. The current official languages of the UN are either 1) official/dominant in many countries (English, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, and French) or 2) have several hundreds of millions of speakers (Chinese). English, Spanish, Russian and Arabic fulfill both criteria. Portuguese is a global language in that it is the official tongue of several sovereign countries on four continents. It also has over 200 million speakers. However, it exhibits some noticeable differences when compared to the current 6 UN official languages. For example, English, French, Arabic and Spanish are each official languages of multiple states and of over half of the world's countries. In contrast, four out of every five speakers of the Portuguese-speaking world live in just one country: Brazil. In addition to Brazil, Portuguese is the official language in only 7 other sovereign states; however, English is official in 53 states, French in 29 states, Arabic in 25 states, and Spanish in 20 states.
More significantly, in each part of the world with a Portuguese-speaking country, this language is overshadowed by other powerful languages that are already official languages of the UN. For example, in the Americas, the 190 million Portuguese-speaking Brazilians are overshadowed by the most spoken languages in the Western Hemisphere: Spanish (~360 million speakers) and English (~340 million speakers). Portuguese is overshadowed to an even greater extent in Europe, the continent in which four of the six UN languages originated (English, French, Spanish, and Russian). In the European context, Portuguese is not even among the ten most spoken languages on the continent, with a number of speakers comparable to those of Czech and Bulgarian. In Africa, Portuguese is eclipsed as a continental lingua franca by English and French in countries that surround Cape Verde, São Tomé and PrÃncipe, Guinea-Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique. Finally in Asia, a continent with several languages that have hundreds of millions of speakers, the only sovereign state with Portuguese as an official language is East Timor, which has only a million people. While Brazilian migration has brought 300,000 fluent Portuguese speakers to Japan, Portuguese does not enjoy any official status whatsoever in that country. Therefore, while Portuguese will gain increasing importance as Brazil continues its development as a major economy, it will likely face the same hurdles that prevented Japanese and German (both languages of major global economies with millions of speakers) from becoming both international languages and official ones of the UN.
There is a maximum of 9 oral vowels and 19 consonants, though some varieties of the language have fewer phonemes (Brazilian Portuguese has 8 oral vowels). There are also five nasal vowels, which some linguists regard as allophones of the oral vowels, ten oral diphthongs, and five nasal diphthongs. In total, Brazilian Portuguese has 13 vowel phonemes. /ref> Handbook of the International Phonetic Association'' pg. 126-130; the reference applies to the entire section
Chart of monophthongs of the Portuguese of Lisbon
To the seven vowels of Vulgar Latin, European Portuguese has added two near central vowels, one of which tends to be elided in rapid speech, like the e caduc of French (represented as either , or , or ). The high vowels and the low vowels are four distinct phonemes, and they alternate in various forms of apophony. Like Catalan, Portuguese uses vowel quality to contrast stressed syllables with unstressed syllables: isolated vowels tend to be raised, and in some cases centralized, when unstressed. Nasal diphthongs occur mostly at the ends of words.
The consonant inventory of Portuguese is fairly conservative. The medieval affricates , , , merged with the fricatives , , , , respectively, but not with each other, and there were no other significant changes to the consonant phonemes since then. However, some notable dialectal variants and allophones have appeared, among which:
* In many regions of Brazil, and have the affricate allophones and , respectively, before and . (Quebec French has a similar phenomenon, with alveolar affricates instead of postalveolars. Japanese is another example).
* At the end of a syllable, the phoneme has the allophone in Brazilian Portuguese (L-vocalization).
* In many parts of Brazil and Angola, intervocalic is pronounced as a nasalized palatal approximant which nasalizes the preceding vowel, so that, for instance, is pronounced .
* In most of Brazil, the alveolar sibilants and occur in complementary distribution at the ends of syllables, depending on whether the consonant that follows is voiceless or voiced, as in English. But in most of Portugal and parts of Brazil, sibilants are postalveolar at the ends of syllables, before voiceless consonants, and before voiced consonants (in Judeo-Spanish, is often replaced with at the ends of syllables, too).
* There is considerable dialectal variation in the value of the rhotic phoneme . See Guttural R in Portuguese, for details.
;Excerpt from the Portuguese national epic Os LusÃadas, by author LuÃs de Camões (I, 33)
A notable aspect of the grammar of Portuguese is the verb. Morphologically, more verbal inflections from classical Latin have been preserved by Portuguese than by any other major Romance language. See Romance copula, for a detailed comparison. It has also some innovations not found in other Romance languages (except Galician and the Fala):
* The present perfect tense has an iterative sense unique to Galician-Portuguese language group. It denotes an action or a series of actions which began in the past and are expected to keep repeating in the future. For instance, the sentence Tenho tentado falar com ela would be translated to "I have been trying to talk to her", not "I have tried to talk to her". On the other hand, the correct translation of the question "Have you heard the latest news?" is not *Tem ouvido a última notÃcia?, but Ouviu a última notÃcia?, since no repetition is implied. Squartini, Mario (1998) Verbal Periphrases in Romance â Aspect, Actionality, and Grammaticalization ISBN 3-11-016160-5
* The future subjunctive tense, which was developed by medieval West Iberian Romance, but has now fallen into disuse in Spanish and Galician, is still used in vernacular Portuguese. It appears in dependent clauses that denote a condition which must be fulfilled in the future, so that the independent clause will occur. English normally employs the present tense under the same circumstances:
:Se eu for eleito presidente, mudarei a lei.
:If I am elected president, I will change the law.
:Quando fores mais velho, vais entender.
:When you are older, you will understand.
* The personal infinitive: infinitives can inflect according to their subject in person and number, often showing who is expected to perform a certain action; cf. Ã melhor voltares "It is better [for you] to go back," Ã melhor voltarmos "It is better [for us] to go back." Perhaps for this reason, infinitive clauses replace subjunctive clauses more often in Portuguese than in other Romance languages.
Portuguese is written with 23 or 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, making use of five diacritics to denote stress, vowel height, contraction, nasalization, and other sound changes (acute accent, grave accent, circumflex accent, tilde, and cedilla). Accented characters and digraphs are not counted as separate letters for collation purposes.
* Portuguese literature
* Portuguese poetry
* List of Portuguese language poets
* Brazilian literature
* List of Brazilian poets
* Lusophone
* Geographic distribution of Portuguese
* List of countries where Portuguese is an official language
* Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP)
* Instituto Camões
* International Portuguese Language Institute
* Museum of the Portuguese Language
* Portuguese-based creole languages
* Portuñol
* Portuguese in the United States
* List of English words of Portuguese origin
* Spelling reforms of Portuguese
* História da Lingua Portuguesa Instituto Camões
* A LÃngua Portuguesa in Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil (...)
* Poesia e Prosa Medievais, by Maria Ema Tarracha Ferreira, Ulisseia 1998, 3rd ed., ISBN 978-972-568-124-4.
* Bases Temáticas â LÃngua Portuguesa in Instituto Camões
* Portuguese Literature in The Catholic Encyclopedia
* International Phonetic Association (1999) Handbook of the International Phonetic Association ISBN 0-521-63751-1
* Mateus, Maria Helena & d'Andrade, Ernesto (2000) The Phonology of Portuguese ISBN 0-19-823581-X (Excerpt available at Google Books)
* Bergström, Magnus & Reis, Neves Prontuário Ortográfico Editorial NotÃcias, 2004.
* A pronúncia do português europeu - European Portuguese Pronunciation
* Dialects of Portuguese at the Instituto Camões
* Audio samples of the dialects of Portugal
* Audio samples of the dialects from outside Europe
* Antônio Houaiss (2000), Dicionário Houaiss da LÃngua Portuguesa (228,500 entries).
* Aurélio Buarque de Holanda Ferreira, Novo Dicionário da LÃngua Portuguesa (1809pp)
* English-Portuguese-Chinese Dictionary (Freeware, for Windows/Linux/Mac)
* Lindley Cintra, LuÃs F. Nova Proposta de Classificação dos Dialectos Galego-Portugueses (PDF) Boletim de Filologia, Lisboa, Centro de Estudos Filológicos, 1971.
*Swadesh list in English and Portuguese
* English Portuguese Translation Dictionary for English Portuguese translations
* Learn Portuguese BBC
* Portuguese Language Notes BBC
* AULP - Associação das Universidades de LÃngua Portuguesa Portuguese Language Universities Association.
* Portuguese in East Timor an interview with Dr. Geoffrey Hull.
* Portuguese Dictionary with gender and type of words.
* ABL - Academia Brasileira de letras (em português) - (Brazilian Academy of Letters) (Portuguese)
* Brazilian Portuguese Free resources for Portuguese learners.
* EasyPortuguese Free Portuguese learning site with audio.
|
Portuguese_language | (where French has a similar phenomenon, with alveolar affricates instead of postalveolars? | Quebec. | data/set5/a1 | Portuguese_language
Portuguese ( or lÃngua portuguesa) is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia and northern Portugal. It is derived from the Latin spoken by the romanized pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula (namely the Gallaeci, the Lusitanians, the Celtici and the Conii) around 2000 years ago. It spread worldwide in the 15th and 16th centuries as Portugal established a colonial and commercial empire (1415â1999) which spanned from Brazil in the Americas to Goa and other parts of India, Macau in China and Timor (north of Australia). It was used as the exclusive lingua franca on the island of Sri Lanka for almost 350 years. During that time, many creole languages based on Portuguese also appeared around the world, especially in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean.
Today it is one of the world's major languages, ranked seventh according to number of native speakers (between 205 and 230 million). It is the language of about half of South America's population, even though Brazil is the only Portuguese-speaking nation in the Americas. It is also a major lingua franca in Portugal's former colonial possessions in Africa. It is an official language in nine countries (see the table on the right), also being co-official with Cantonese Chinese in Macau and Tetum in East Timor. There are sizeable communities of Portuguese speakers in various regions of North America, notably in the United States (New Jersey, New England, California and south Florida) and in Ontario, Canada.
In various aspects, the system of sounds in Portuguese is more similar to the phonologies of Catalan or French than, say, those of Spanish or Italian. Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes once called Portuguese "the sweet language", /ref> Lope de Vega referred to it as "suave" 'Encyclopedia of Literature' Joseph T. Shipley; Philosophical Library, 1946. 1188 pgs. while Brazilian writer Olavo Bilac poetically described it as a última flor do Lácio, inculta e bela: "the last flower of Latium, wild and beautiful". Portuguese is also termed "the language of Camões", after one of Portugal's best known literary figures, LuÃs Vaz de Camões.
Countries and regions where Portuguese has official status.
Members of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries.
Today, Portuguese is the official language of Angola, Brazil (190.6 million), IBGE Official website Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Portugal (10.6 million), INE Official website São Tomé and PrÃncipe and Mozambique. CPLP Official website It is also one of the official languages of the special administrative region of Macau (with Chinese) and East Timor, (with Tetum). It is the language of most of the population in Portugal (100%) , Brazil (100%) , São Tomé and PrÃncipe (99.8%) and Angola (80%), and is the most widely spoken language in Mozambique (40%), though only 6.5% are native speakers. No data are available for Cape Verde, but almost all the population is bilingual, and the monolingual population speaks Cape Verdean Creole. See the main article Geographic distribution of Portuguese, for references.
Small Portuguese-speaking communities subsist in former overseas colonies of Portugal such as Macau, where it is spoken by 7% of the population, and East Timor (13.6%).
Uruguay gave Portuguese an equal status to Spanish in its educational system at the north border with Brazil. In the rest of the country, it is taught as an obligatory subject beginning in the 6th grade. Uruguay recently adopted Portuguese language in its education system as an obligatory subject /ref>
It is also spoken by substantial immigrant communities, though not official, in Andorra, Australia, The Portuguese-Speaking Community in Australia France, Luxembourg, Jersey (with a statistically significant Portuguese-speaking community of approximately 10,000 people), Paraguay, Namibia, South Africa, Switzerland, Venezuela, Japan JAPÃO: IMIGRANTES BRASILEIROS POPULARIZAM LÃNGUA PORTUGUESA and the U.S. states of California, Connecticut, Where America's Other Languages Are Spoken Florida, Widely spoken but 'minor'? Portuguese seeks respect Massachusetts, New Jersey, Hispanic Reading Room of the U.S. Library of Congress website, Twentieth-Century Arrivals from Portugal Settle in Newark, New Jersey, New York Brazucas (Brazilians living in New York) and Rhode Island. Hispanic Reading Room of the U.S. Library of Congress website, Whaling, Fishing, and Industrial Employment in Southeastern New England
In some parts of India, such as Goa Portuguese Language in Goa and Daman and Diu, The Portuguese Experience: The Case of Goa, Daman and Diu Portuguese is still spoken. There are also significant populations of Portuguese speakers in Canada (mainly concentrated in and around Toronto), Multicultural Canada Bermuda World InfoZone: Bermuda and the Netherlands Antilles.
Portuguese is an official language of several international organizations. The Community of Portuguese Language Countries (with the Portuguese acronym CPLP) consists of the eight independent countries that have Portuguese as an official language. It is also an official language of the European Union, accounting for 3% of its population, EUROPA website Languages in the EU Mercosul, the Organization of American States, the Organization of Ibero-American States, the Union of South American Nations, and the African Union (one of the working languages) and one of the official languages of other organizations. The Portuguese language is gaining popularity in Africa, Asia, and South America as a second language for study.
Estação da Luz, home of the Museum of the Portuguese Language, in São Paulo, Brazil.
Portuguese and Spanish are the fastest-growing European languages (with the exception of English, being the world lingua franca) , and, according to estimates by UNESCO, the Portuguese language has the highest potential for growth as an international language in southern Africa and South America. The Portuguese-speaking African countries are expected to have a combined population of 83 million by 2050. In total, the Portuguese-speaking countries will have 335 million people by the same year. Since 1991, when Brazil signed into the economic market of Mercosul with other South American nations, such as Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay, there has been an increase in interest in the study of Portuguese in those South American countries. The demographic weight of Brazil in the continent will continue to strengthen the presence of the language in the region. Although in the early 21st century, after Macau was ceded to China in 1999, the use of Portuguese was in decline in Asia, it is becoming a language of opportunity there; mostly because of East Timor's boost in the number of speakers in the last five years but also because of increased Chinese diplomatic and financial ties with Portuguese-speaking countries.
In July 2007, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema announced his government's decision to establish Portuguese as Equatorial Guinea's third official language, to meet the requirements to apply for full membership of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries. This upgrading from its current Associate Observer condition would result in Equatorial Guinea being able to access several professional and academic exchange programs and the facilitation of cross-border circulation of citizens. Its application is currently being assessed by other CPLP members. "Obiang convierte al portugués en tercer idioma oficial para entrar en la Comunidad lusófona de Naciones", Terra. 13-07-2007
In March 1994 the Bosque de Portugal (Portugal's Woods) was founded in the Brazilian city of Curitiba. The park houses the Portuguese Language Memorial, which honors the Portuguese immigrants and the countries that adopted the Portuguese language. Originally there were seven nations represented with pillars, but the independence of East Timor brought yet another pillar for that nation in 2007.
In March 2006, the Museum of the Portuguese Language, an interactive museum about the Portuguese language, was founded in São Paulo, Brazil, the city with the greatest number of Portuguese speakers in the world.
Portuguese is a pluricentric language with two main groups of dialects, those of Brazil and those of the Old World. For historical reasons, the dialects of Africa and Asia are generally closer to those of Portugal than the Brazilian dialects, although in some aspects of their phonetics, especially the pronunciation of unstressed vowels, they resemble Brazilian Portuguese more than European Portuguese. They have not been studied as widely as European and Brazilian Portuguese.
Audio samples of some dialects of Portuguese are available below. From Audio samples of the dialects of Portuguese at the Instituto Camões website. There are some differences between the areas but these are the best approximations possible. For example, the caipira dialect has some differences from the one of Minas Gerais, but in general it is very close. A good example of Brazilian Portuguese may be found in the capital city, BrasÃlia, because of the generalized population from all parts of the country.
Portuguese dialects of Angola
# Benguelense â Benguela province.
# 11px Luandense â Luanda province.
# Sulista â South of Angola.
Dialects of Portuguese in Brazil
# Caipira â States of São Paulo (countryside; the city of São Paulo and the eastern areas of the state have their own accent, called paulistano); southern Minas Gerais, northern Paraná, Goiás and Mato Grosso do Sul.
# Cearense â Ceará.
# Baiano â Bahia.
# 11px Fluminense â Variants spoken in the states of Rio de Janeiro (excluding the city of Rio de Janeiro and its adjacent metropolitan areas, which have their own dialect, called carioca).
# Gaúcho â Rio Grande do Sul. (There are many distinct accents in Rio Grande do Sul, mainly due to the heavy influx of European immigrants of diverse origins, those which have settled several colonies throughout the state.)
# Mineiro â Minas Gerais (not prevalent in the Triângulo Mineiro, southern and southeastern Minas Gerais and also excluding the city of Belo Horizonte, which has its own accent.).
# 11px Nordestino â northeastern states of Brazil (Pernambuco, ParaÃba and Rio Grande do Norte have a particular way of speaking). Note: the speaker of this sound file is from Rio, and he is talking about his experience with Nordestino and Nortista accents.
# Nortista â Amazon Basin states.
# Paulistano â Variants spoken around São Paulo city and the eastern areas of São Paulo state.
# Sertanejo â States of Goiás and Mato Grosso (the city of Cuiabá has a particular way of speaking).
# Sulista â Variants spoken in the areas between the northern regions of Rio Grande do Sul and southern regions of São Paulo state. (The cities of Curitiba, Florianópolis, and Itapetininga have fairly distinct accents as well.)
# Carioca â Variants spoken in Rio de Janeiro City and Niteroi
Dialects of Portuguese in Portugal
# 11px Açoriano (Azorean) â Azores.
# 11px Alentejano â Alentejo
# 11px Algarvio â Algarve (there is a particular dialect in a small part of western Algarve).
# 11px Alto-Minhoto â North of Braga (hinterland).
# 11px Baixo-Beirão; Alto-Alentejano â Central Portugal (hinterland).
# 11px Beirão â Central Portugal.
# 11px Estremenho â Regions of Coimbra and Lisbon (the Lisbon dialect has some peculiar features not shared with the one of Coimbra).
# 11px Madeirense (Madeiran) â Madeira.
# 11px Nortenho â Regions of Braga and Porto.
# 11px Transmontano â Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro.
* Cape Verde â 11px Português cabo-verdiano (Cape Verdean Portuguese)
* Daman and Diu, India â Damaense.
* East Timor â 11px Timorense (East Timorese)
* Goa, India â Goês.
* Guinea-Bissau â 11px Guineense (Guinean Portuguese).
* Macau, China â 11px Macaense (Macanese)
* Mozambique â 11px Moçambicano (Mozambican)
* São Tomé and PrÃncipe â 11px Santomense
* Uruguay â Dialectos Portugueses del Uruguay (DPU).
Differences between dialects are mostly of accent and vocabulary, but between the Brazilian dialects and other dialects, especially in their most colloquial forms, there can also be some grammatical differences. The Portuguese-based creoles spoken in various parts of Africa, Asia, and the Americas are independent languages which should not be confused with Portuguese itself.
Baroque Library of the Coimbra University, Portugal.
Arriving in the Iberian Peninsula in 216 BC, the Romans brought with them the Latin language, from which all Romance languages descend. The language was spread by arriving Roman soldiers, settlers, and merchants, who built Roman cities mostly near the settlements of previous civilizations.
Between 409 and 711 AD, as the Roman Empire collapsed in Western Europe, the Iberian Peninsula was conquered by Germanic peoples (Migration Period). The occupiers, mainly Suebi and Visigoths, quickly adopted late Roman culture and the Vulgar Latin dialects of the peninsula. After the Moorish invasion of 711, Arabic became the administrative language in the conquered regions, but most of the population continued to speak a form of Romance commonly known as Mozarabic. The influence exerted by Arabic on the Romance dialects spoken in the Christian kingdoms of the north was small, affecting mainly their lexicon.
The earliest surviving records of a distinctively Portuguese language are administrative documents of the 9th century, still interspersed with many Latin phrases. Today this phase is known as Proto-Portuguese (between the 9th and the 12th centuries). In the first period of Old Portuguese â Galician-Portuguese Period (from the 12th to the 14th century) â the language gradually came into general use. For some time, it was the language of preference for lyric poetry in Christian Hispania, much as Occitan was the language of the poetry of the troubadours. Portugal became an independent kingdom from the Kingdom of Leon in 1139, under king Afonso I of Portugal. In 1290, king Denis of Portugal created the first Portuguese university in Lisbon (the Estudos Gerais, later moved to Coimbra) and decreed that Portuguese, then simply called the "common language" should be known as the Portuguese language and used officially.
In the second period of Old Portuguese, from the 14th to the 16th centuries, with the Portuguese discoveries, the language was taken to many regions of Asia, Africa and the Americas (nowadays, the great majority of Portuguese speakers live in Brazil, in South America). By the 16th century, it had become a lingua franca in Asia and Africa, used not only for colonial administration and trade but also for communication between local officials and Europeans of all nationalities. Its spread was helped by mixed marriages between Portuguese and local people, and by its association with Roman Catholic missionary efforts, which led to the formation of a creole language called Kristang in many parts of Asia (from the word cristão, "Christian"). The language continued to be popular in parts of Asia until the 19th century. Some Portuguese-speaking Christian communities in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Indonesia preserved their language even after they were isolated from Portugal.
The end of the Old Portuguese period was marked by the publication of the Cancioneiro Geral by Garcia de Resende, in 1516. The early times of Modern Portuguese, which spans a period from the 16th century to the present day, were characterized by an increase in the number of learned words borrowed from Classical Latin and Classical Greek since the Renaissance, which greatly enriched the lexicon.
A distinctive feature of Portuguese is that it preserved the stressed vowels of Vulgar Latin, which became diphthongs in other Romance languages; cf. Fr. pierre, Sp. piedra, It. pietra, Ro. piatrÄ, Port. pedra ("stone"), from Lat. petram; or Sp. fuego, It. fuoco, Fr. feu, Ro. foc, Port. fogo, from Lat. focus ("fire"). Another characteristic of early Portuguese was the loss of intervocalic l and n, sometimes followed by the merger of the two surrounding vowels, or by the insertion of an epenthetic vowel between them: cf. Lat. salire ("to leave"), tenere ("to have"), catenam ("chain"), Sp. salir, tener, cadena, Port. sair, ter, cadeia.
When the elided consonant was n, it often nasalized the preceding vowel: cf. Lat. manum ("hand"), ranam ("frog"), bonum ("good"), Port. mão, rãa, bõo (now mão, rã, bom). This process was the source of most of the nasal diphthongs which are typical of Portuguese. In particular, the Latin endings -anem, -anum and -onem became -ão in most cases, cf. Lat. canem ("dog"), germanum ("brother"), rationem ("reason") with Modern Port. cão, irmão, razão, and their plurals -anes, -anos, -ones normally became -ães, -ãos, -ões, cf. cães, irmãos, razões.
Library of the Mafra National Palace, Portugal.
Most of the lexicon of Portuguese is derived from Latin. Nevertheless, because of the Moorish occupation of the Iberian Peninsula during the Middle Ages, and the participation of Portugal in the Age of Discovery, it has adopted loanwords from all over the world.
Very few Portuguese words can be traced to the pre-Roman inhabitants of Portugal, which included the Gallaeci, Lusitanians, Celtici and Cynetes. The Phoenicians and Carthaginians, briefly present, also left some scarce traces. Some notable examples are abóbora "pumpkin" and bezerro "year-old calf", from the nearby Celtiberian language (probably through the Celtici); cerveja "beer", from Celtic; and cachorro "dog", from Basque.
In the 5th century, the Iberian Peninsula (the Roman Hispania) was conquered by the Germanic Suebi and Visigoths. As they adopted the Roman civilization and language, however, these people contributed only a few words to the lexicon, mostly related to warfare â such as espora "spur", estaca "stake", and guerra "war", from Gothic *spaúra, *stakka, and *wirro, respectively. The influence also exists in toponymic and patronymic surnames borne by Visigoth sovereigns and their descendants, and it dwells on placenames such has Ermesinde, Esposende and Resende where sinde and sende are derived from the Germanic "sinths" (military expedition) and in the case of Resende, the prefix re comes from Germanic "reths" (council).
Between the 9th and 13th centuries, Portuguese acquired about 800 words from Arabic by influence of Moorish Iberia. They are often recognizable by the initial Arabic article a(l)-, and include many common words such as aldeia "village" from اÙضÙعة aldaya, alface "lettuce" from اÙخس alkhass, armazém "warehouse" from اÙÙ
خز٠almahazan, and azeite "olive oil" from اÙزÙت azzait. From Arabic came also the grammatically peculiar word oxalá إ٠شاء اÙÙÙ "hopefully". The Mozambican currency name metical was derived from the word Ù
تÙا٠mitqÄl, a unit of weight. The word Mozambique itself is from the Arabic name of sultan Muça Alebique (Musa Alibiki).
Starting in the 15th century, the Portuguese maritime explorations led to the introduction of many loanwords from Asian languages. For instance, catana "cutlass" from Japanese katana and chá "tea" from Chinese 'chá'.
From South America came batata "potato", from Taino; ananás and abacaxi, from Tupi-Guarani naná and Tupi ibá cati, respectively (two species of pineapple), and tucano "toucan" from Guarani tucan. See List of Brazil state name etymologies, for some more examples.
From the 16th to the 19th centuries, because of the role of Portugal as intermediary in the Atlantic slave trade, and the establishment of large Portuguese colonies in Angola, Mozambique, and Brazil, Portuguese got several words of African and Amerind origin, especially names for most of the animals and plants found in those territories. While those terms are mostly used in the former colonies, many became current in European Portuguese as well. From Kimbundu, for example, came kifumate â cafuné "head caress", kusula â caçula "youngest child", marimbondo "tropical wasp", and kubungula â bungular "to dance like a wizard".
Finally, it has received a steady influx of loanwords from other European languages. For example, melena "hair lock", fiambre "wet-cured ham" (in contrast with presunto "dry-cured ham" from Latin prae-exsuctus "dehydrated"), and castelhano "Castilian", from Spanish; colchete/crochê "bracket"/"crochet", paletó "jacket", batom "lipstick", and filé/filete "steak"/"slice" respectively, from French crochet, paletot, bâton, filet; macarrão "pasta", piloto "pilot", carroça "carriage", and barraca "barrack", from Italian maccherone, pilota, carrozza, baracca; and bife "steak", futebol, revólver, estoque, folclore, time from English beef,
football, revolver, stock, folklore, and team.
Portuguese belongs to the West Iberian branch of the Romance languages, and it has special ties with the following members of this group:
* Galician and Fala, its closest relatives. See below.
* Spanish, the major language closest to Portuguese. (See also Differences between Spanish and Portuguese.)
* Mirandese and Leonese, two other West Iberian languages spoken in Portugal.
* Judeo-Portuguese and Judeo-Spanish, languages spoken by Sephardic Jews, and which remained close to Portuguese and Spanish.
Despite the obvious lexical and grammatical similarities between Portuguese and other Romance languages, it is not mutually intelligible with them. Apart from Galician, Portuguese speakers will usually need some formal study of basic grammar and vocabulary, before attaining a reasonable level of comprehension of those languages, and vice versa. Native speakers of Portuguese do tend to understand standard Spanish which is spoken clearly, but the reverse is generally not true unless formal education is involved.
The closest language to Portuguese is Galician, spoken in the autonomous community of Galicia (northwestern Spain). The two were at one time a single language, known today as Galician-Portuguese, but since the political separation of Portugal from Galicia they have diverged somewhat, especially in pronunciation and vocabulary. Nevertheless, the core vocabulary and grammar of Galician are still noticeably closer to Portuguese than to those of Spanish. In particular, like Portuguese, it uses the future subjunctive, the personal infinitive, and the synthetic pluperfect (see the section on the grammar of Portuguese, below). Mutual intelligibility (estimated at 85% by R. A. Hall, Jr., 1989) Ethnologue is good between Galicians and northern Portuguese, but poorer between Galicians and speakers from central Portugal.
The Fala language is another descendant of Galician-Portuguese, spoken by a small number of people in the Spanish towns of Valverde del Fresno, Eljas and San MartÃn de Trevejo (autonomous community of Extremadura, near the border with Portugal).
Portuguese has provided loanwords to many languages, such as Indonesian, Manado Malay, Sri Lankan Tamil and Sinhalese (see Sri Lanka Indo-Portuguese), Malay, Bengali, English, Hindi, Konkani, Marathi, Tetum, Xitsonga, Papiamentu, Japanese, Lanc-Patuá (spoken in northern Brazil) and Sranan Tongo (spoken in Suriname). It left a strong influence on the lÃngua brasÃlica, a Tupi-Guarani language which was the most widely spoken in Brazil until the 18th century, and on the language spoken around Sikka in Flores Island, Indonesia. In nearby Larantuka, Portuguese is used for prayers in Holy Week rituals.
The Japanese-Portuguese dictionary Nippo Jisho (1603) was the first dictionary of Japanese in a European language, a product of Jesuit missionary activity in Japan. Building on the work of earlier Portuguese missionaries, the Dictionarium Anamiticum, Lusitanum et Latinum (Annamite-Portuguese-Latin dictionary) of Alexandre de Rhodes (1651) introduced the modern orthography of Vietnamese, which is based on the orthography of 17th-century Portuguese. The Romanization of Chinese was also influenced by the Portuguese language (among others), particularly regarding Chinese surnames; one example is Mei. During 1583-88 Italian Jesuits Michele Ruggieri and Matteo Ricci created a Portuguese-Chinese dictionary - the first ever European-Chinese dictionary. Yves Camus, "Jesuits' Journeys in Chinese Studies" "Dicionário Português-Chinês : Pu Han ci dian : Portuguese-Chinese dictionary", by Michele Ruggieri, Matteo Ricci; edited by John W. Witek. Published 2001, Biblioteca Nacional. ISBN 9725652983. Partial preview available on Google Books
See also List of English words of Portuguese origin, Loan words in Indonesian, Japanese words of Portuguese origin, Borrowed words in Malay, Sinhala words of Portuguese origin, Loan words from Portuguese in Sri Lankan Tamil.
Beginning in the 16th century, the extensive contacts between Portuguese travelers and settlers, African slaves, and local populations led to the appearance of many pidgins with varying amounts of Portuguese influence. As each of these pidgins became the mother tongue of succeeding generations, they evolved into fully fledged creole languages, which remained in use in many parts of Asia and Africa until the 18th century. Some Portuguese-based or Portuguese-influenced creoles are still spoken today, by over 3 million people worldwide, especially people of partial Portuguese ancestry.
There is a growing number of people in the Portuguese-speaking media and the internet who are presenting the case to the CPLP and other organizations to run a debate in the Lusophone community with the purpose of bringing forward a petition to make Portuguese an official language of the United Nations.
In October 2005, during the international Convention of the Elos Club International that took place in Tavira, Portugal, ONU: Petição para tornar português lÃngua oficial a petition was written and unanimously approved whose text can be found on the internet with the title Petição Para Tornar Oficial o Idioma Português na ONU. Romulo Alexandre Soares, president of the Brazil-Portugal Chamber highlights that the positioning of Brazil in the international arena as one of the emergent powers of the 21st century, the size of its population, and the presence of the language around the world provides legitimacy and justifies a petition to the UN to make the Portuguese language an official language of the UN. Português pode ser lÃngua oficial na ONU
Several factors detract from this campaign. The current official languages of the UN are either 1) official/dominant in many countries (English, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, and French) or 2) have several hundreds of millions of speakers (Chinese). English, Spanish, Russian and Arabic fulfill both criteria. Portuguese is a global language in that it is the official tongue of several sovereign countries on four continents. It also has over 200 million speakers. However, it exhibits some noticeable differences when compared to the current 6 UN official languages. For example, English, French, Arabic and Spanish are each official languages of multiple states and of over half of the world's countries. In contrast, four out of every five speakers of the Portuguese-speaking world live in just one country: Brazil. In addition to Brazil, Portuguese is the official language in only 7 other sovereign states; however, English is official in 53 states, French in 29 states, Arabic in 25 states, and Spanish in 20 states.
More significantly, in each part of the world with a Portuguese-speaking country, this language is overshadowed by other powerful languages that are already official languages of the UN. For example, in the Americas, the 190 million Portuguese-speaking Brazilians are overshadowed by the most spoken languages in the Western Hemisphere: Spanish (~360 million speakers) and English (~340 million speakers). Portuguese is overshadowed to an even greater extent in Europe, the continent in which four of the six UN languages originated (English, French, Spanish, and Russian). In the European context, Portuguese is not even among the ten most spoken languages on the continent, with a number of speakers comparable to those of Czech and Bulgarian. In Africa, Portuguese is eclipsed as a continental lingua franca by English and French in countries that surround Cape Verde, São Tomé and PrÃncipe, Guinea-Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique. Finally in Asia, a continent with several languages that have hundreds of millions of speakers, the only sovereign state with Portuguese as an official language is East Timor, which has only a million people. While Brazilian migration has brought 300,000 fluent Portuguese speakers to Japan, Portuguese does not enjoy any official status whatsoever in that country. Therefore, while Portuguese will gain increasing importance as Brazil continues its development as a major economy, it will likely face the same hurdles that prevented Japanese and German (both languages of major global economies with millions of speakers) from becoming both international languages and official ones of the UN.
There is a maximum of 9 oral vowels and 19 consonants, though some varieties of the language have fewer phonemes (Brazilian Portuguese has 8 oral vowels). There are also five nasal vowels, which some linguists regard as allophones of the oral vowels, ten oral diphthongs, and five nasal diphthongs. In total, Brazilian Portuguese has 13 vowel phonemes. /ref> Handbook of the International Phonetic Association'' pg. 126-130; the reference applies to the entire section
Chart of monophthongs of the Portuguese of Lisbon
To the seven vowels of Vulgar Latin, European Portuguese has added two near central vowels, one of which tends to be elided in rapid speech, like the e caduc of French (represented as either , or , or ). The high vowels and the low vowels are four distinct phonemes, and they alternate in various forms of apophony. Like Catalan, Portuguese uses vowel quality to contrast stressed syllables with unstressed syllables: isolated vowels tend to be raised, and in some cases centralized, when unstressed. Nasal diphthongs occur mostly at the ends of words.
The consonant inventory of Portuguese is fairly conservative. The medieval affricates , , , merged with the fricatives , , , , respectively, but not with each other, and there were no other significant changes to the consonant phonemes since then. However, some notable dialectal variants and allophones have appeared, among which:
* In many regions of Brazil, and have the affricate allophones and , respectively, before and . (Quebec French has a similar phenomenon, with alveolar affricates instead of postalveolars. Japanese is another example).
* At the end of a syllable, the phoneme has the allophone in Brazilian Portuguese (L-vocalization).
* In many parts of Brazil and Angola, intervocalic is pronounced as a nasalized palatal approximant which nasalizes the preceding vowel, so that, for instance, is pronounced .
* In most of Brazil, the alveolar sibilants and occur in complementary distribution at the ends of syllables, depending on whether the consonant that follows is voiceless or voiced, as in English. But in most of Portugal and parts of Brazil, sibilants are postalveolar at the ends of syllables, before voiceless consonants, and before voiced consonants (in Judeo-Spanish, is often replaced with at the ends of syllables, too).
* There is considerable dialectal variation in the value of the rhotic phoneme . See Guttural R in Portuguese, for details.
;Excerpt from the Portuguese national epic Os LusÃadas, by author LuÃs de Camões (I, 33)
A notable aspect of the grammar of Portuguese is the verb. Morphologically, more verbal inflections from classical Latin have been preserved by Portuguese than by any other major Romance language. See Romance copula, for a detailed comparison. It has also some innovations not found in other Romance languages (except Galician and the Fala):
* The present perfect tense has an iterative sense unique to Galician-Portuguese language group. It denotes an action or a series of actions which began in the past and are expected to keep repeating in the future. For instance, the sentence Tenho tentado falar com ela would be translated to "I have been trying to talk to her", not "I have tried to talk to her". On the other hand, the correct translation of the question "Have you heard the latest news?" is not *Tem ouvido a última notÃcia?, but Ouviu a última notÃcia?, since no repetition is implied. Squartini, Mario (1998) Verbal Periphrases in Romance â Aspect, Actionality, and Grammaticalization ISBN 3-11-016160-5
* The future subjunctive tense, which was developed by medieval West Iberian Romance, but has now fallen into disuse in Spanish and Galician, is still used in vernacular Portuguese. It appears in dependent clauses that denote a condition which must be fulfilled in the future, so that the independent clause will occur. English normally employs the present tense under the same circumstances:
:Se eu for eleito presidente, mudarei a lei.
:If I am elected president, I will change the law.
:Quando fores mais velho, vais entender.
:When you are older, you will understand.
* The personal infinitive: infinitives can inflect according to their subject in person and number, often showing who is expected to perform a certain action; cf. Ã melhor voltares "It is better [for you] to go back," Ã melhor voltarmos "It is better [for us] to go back." Perhaps for this reason, infinitive clauses replace subjunctive clauses more often in Portuguese than in other Romance languages.
Portuguese is written with 23 or 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, making use of five diacritics to denote stress, vowel height, contraction, nasalization, and other sound changes (acute accent, grave accent, circumflex accent, tilde, and cedilla). Accented characters and digraphs are not counted as separate letters for collation purposes.
* Portuguese literature
* Portuguese poetry
* List of Portuguese language poets
* Brazilian literature
* List of Brazilian poets
* Lusophone
* Geographic distribution of Portuguese
* List of countries where Portuguese is an official language
* Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP)
* Instituto Camões
* International Portuguese Language Institute
* Museum of the Portuguese Language
* Portuguese-based creole languages
* Portuñol
* Portuguese in the United States
* List of English words of Portuguese origin
* Spelling reforms of Portuguese
* História da Lingua Portuguesa Instituto Camões
* A LÃngua Portuguesa in Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil (...)
* Poesia e Prosa Medievais, by Maria Ema Tarracha Ferreira, Ulisseia 1998, 3rd ed., ISBN 978-972-568-124-4.
* Bases Temáticas â LÃngua Portuguesa in Instituto Camões
* Portuguese Literature in The Catholic Encyclopedia
* International Phonetic Association (1999) Handbook of the International Phonetic Association ISBN 0-521-63751-1
* Mateus, Maria Helena & d'Andrade, Ernesto (2000) The Phonology of Portuguese ISBN 0-19-823581-X (Excerpt available at Google Books)
* Bergström, Magnus & Reis, Neves Prontuário Ortográfico Editorial NotÃcias, 2004.
* A pronúncia do português europeu - European Portuguese Pronunciation
* Dialects of Portuguese at the Instituto Camões
* Audio samples of the dialects of Portugal
* Audio samples of the dialects from outside Europe
* Antônio Houaiss (2000), Dicionário Houaiss da LÃngua Portuguesa (228,500 entries).
* Aurélio Buarque de Holanda Ferreira, Novo Dicionário da LÃngua Portuguesa (1809pp)
* English-Portuguese-Chinese Dictionary (Freeware, for Windows/Linux/Mac)
* Lindley Cintra, LuÃs F. Nova Proposta de Classificação dos Dialectos Galego-Portugueses (PDF) Boletim de Filologia, Lisboa, Centro de Estudos Filológicos, 1971.
*Swadesh list in English and Portuguese
* English Portuguese Translation Dictionary for English Portuguese translations
* Learn Portuguese BBC
* Portuguese Language Notes BBC
* AULP - Associação das Universidades de LÃngua Portuguesa Portuguese Language Universities Association.
* Portuguese in East Timor an interview with Dr. Geoffrey Hull.
* Portuguese Dictionary with gender and type of words.
* ABL - Academia Brasileira de letras (em português) - (Brazilian Academy of Letters) (Portuguese)
* Brazilian Portuguese Free resources for Portuguese learners.
* EasyPortuguese Free Portuguese learning site with audio.
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Portuguese_language | Give an example of the official languages of the special administrative region of Macau and East Timor, . | Portuguese | data/set5/a1 | Portuguese_language
Portuguese ( or lÃngua portuguesa) is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia and northern Portugal. It is derived from the Latin spoken by the romanized pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula (namely the Gallaeci, the Lusitanians, the Celtici and the Conii) around 2000 years ago. It spread worldwide in the 15th and 16th centuries as Portugal established a colonial and commercial empire (1415â1999) which spanned from Brazil in the Americas to Goa and other parts of India, Macau in China and Timor (north of Australia). It was used as the exclusive lingua franca on the island of Sri Lanka for almost 350 years. During that time, many creole languages based on Portuguese also appeared around the world, especially in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean.
Today it is one of the world's major languages, ranked seventh according to number of native speakers (between 205 and 230 million). It is the language of about half of South America's population, even though Brazil is the only Portuguese-speaking nation in the Americas. It is also a major lingua franca in Portugal's former colonial possessions in Africa. It is an official language in nine countries (see the table on the right), also being co-official with Cantonese Chinese in Macau and Tetum in East Timor. There are sizeable communities of Portuguese speakers in various regions of North America, notably in the United States (New Jersey, New England, California and south Florida) and in Ontario, Canada.
In various aspects, the system of sounds in Portuguese is more similar to the phonologies of Catalan or French than, say, those of Spanish or Italian. Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes once called Portuguese "the sweet language", /ref> Lope de Vega referred to it as "suave" 'Encyclopedia of Literature' Joseph T. Shipley; Philosophical Library, 1946. 1188 pgs. while Brazilian writer Olavo Bilac poetically described it as a última flor do Lácio, inculta e bela: "the last flower of Latium, wild and beautiful". Portuguese is also termed "the language of Camões", after one of Portugal's best known literary figures, LuÃs Vaz de Camões.
Countries and regions where Portuguese has official status.
Members of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries.
Today, Portuguese is the official language of Angola, Brazil (190.6 million), IBGE Official website Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Portugal (10.6 million), INE Official website São Tomé and PrÃncipe and Mozambique. CPLP Official website It is also one of the official languages of the special administrative region of Macau (with Chinese) and East Timor, (with Tetum). It is the language of most of the population in Portugal (100%) , Brazil (100%) , São Tomé and PrÃncipe (99.8%) and Angola (80%), and is the most widely spoken language in Mozambique (40%), though only 6.5% are native speakers. No data are available for Cape Verde, but almost all the population is bilingual, and the monolingual population speaks Cape Verdean Creole. See the main article Geographic distribution of Portuguese, for references.
Small Portuguese-speaking communities subsist in former overseas colonies of Portugal such as Macau, where it is spoken by 7% of the population, and East Timor (13.6%).
Uruguay gave Portuguese an equal status to Spanish in its educational system at the north border with Brazil. In the rest of the country, it is taught as an obligatory subject beginning in the 6th grade. Uruguay recently adopted Portuguese language in its education system as an obligatory subject /ref>
It is also spoken by substantial immigrant communities, though not official, in Andorra, Australia, The Portuguese-Speaking Community in Australia France, Luxembourg, Jersey (with a statistically significant Portuguese-speaking community of approximately 10,000 people), Paraguay, Namibia, South Africa, Switzerland, Venezuela, Japan JAPÃO: IMIGRANTES BRASILEIROS POPULARIZAM LÃNGUA PORTUGUESA and the U.S. states of California, Connecticut, Where America's Other Languages Are Spoken Florida, Widely spoken but 'minor'? Portuguese seeks respect Massachusetts, New Jersey, Hispanic Reading Room of the U.S. Library of Congress website, Twentieth-Century Arrivals from Portugal Settle in Newark, New Jersey, New York Brazucas (Brazilians living in New York) and Rhode Island. Hispanic Reading Room of the U.S. Library of Congress website, Whaling, Fishing, and Industrial Employment in Southeastern New England
In some parts of India, such as Goa Portuguese Language in Goa and Daman and Diu, The Portuguese Experience: The Case of Goa, Daman and Diu Portuguese is still spoken. There are also significant populations of Portuguese speakers in Canada (mainly concentrated in and around Toronto), Multicultural Canada Bermuda World InfoZone: Bermuda and the Netherlands Antilles.
Portuguese is an official language of several international organizations. The Community of Portuguese Language Countries (with the Portuguese acronym CPLP) consists of the eight independent countries that have Portuguese as an official language. It is also an official language of the European Union, accounting for 3% of its population, EUROPA website Languages in the EU Mercosul, the Organization of American States, the Organization of Ibero-American States, the Union of South American Nations, and the African Union (one of the working languages) and one of the official languages of other organizations. The Portuguese language is gaining popularity in Africa, Asia, and South America as a second language for study.
Estação da Luz, home of the Museum of the Portuguese Language, in São Paulo, Brazil.
Portuguese and Spanish are the fastest-growing European languages (with the exception of English, being the world lingua franca) , and, according to estimates by UNESCO, the Portuguese language has the highest potential for growth as an international language in southern Africa and South America. The Portuguese-speaking African countries are expected to have a combined population of 83 million by 2050. In total, the Portuguese-speaking countries will have 335 million people by the same year. Since 1991, when Brazil signed into the economic market of Mercosul with other South American nations, such as Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay, there has been an increase in interest in the study of Portuguese in those South American countries. The demographic weight of Brazil in the continent will continue to strengthen the presence of the language in the region. Although in the early 21st century, after Macau was ceded to China in 1999, the use of Portuguese was in decline in Asia, it is becoming a language of opportunity there; mostly because of East Timor's boost in the number of speakers in the last five years but also because of increased Chinese diplomatic and financial ties with Portuguese-speaking countries.
In July 2007, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema announced his government's decision to establish Portuguese as Equatorial Guinea's third official language, to meet the requirements to apply for full membership of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries. This upgrading from its current Associate Observer condition would result in Equatorial Guinea being able to access several professional and academic exchange programs and the facilitation of cross-border circulation of citizens. Its application is currently being assessed by other CPLP members. "Obiang convierte al portugués en tercer idioma oficial para entrar en la Comunidad lusófona de Naciones", Terra. 13-07-2007
In March 1994 the Bosque de Portugal (Portugal's Woods) was founded in the Brazilian city of Curitiba. The park houses the Portuguese Language Memorial, which honors the Portuguese immigrants and the countries that adopted the Portuguese language. Originally there were seven nations represented with pillars, but the independence of East Timor brought yet another pillar for that nation in 2007.
In March 2006, the Museum of the Portuguese Language, an interactive museum about the Portuguese language, was founded in São Paulo, Brazil, the city with the greatest number of Portuguese speakers in the world.
Portuguese is a pluricentric language with two main groups of dialects, those of Brazil and those of the Old World. For historical reasons, the dialects of Africa and Asia are generally closer to those of Portugal than the Brazilian dialects, although in some aspects of their phonetics, especially the pronunciation of unstressed vowels, they resemble Brazilian Portuguese more than European Portuguese. They have not been studied as widely as European and Brazilian Portuguese.
Audio samples of some dialects of Portuguese are available below. From Audio samples of the dialects of Portuguese at the Instituto Camões website. There are some differences between the areas but these are the best approximations possible. For example, the caipira dialect has some differences from the one of Minas Gerais, but in general it is very close. A good example of Brazilian Portuguese may be found in the capital city, BrasÃlia, because of the generalized population from all parts of the country.
Portuguese dialects of Angola
# Benguelense â Benguela province.
# 11px Luandense â Luanda province.
# Sulista â South of Angola.
Dialects of Portuguese in Brazil
# Caipira â States of São Paulo (countryside; the city of São Paulo and the eastern areas of the state have their own accent, called paulistano); southern Minas Gerais, northern Paraná, Goiás and Mato Grosso do Sul.
# Cearense â Ceará.
# Baiano â Bahia.
# 11px Fluminense â Variants spoken in the states of Rio de Janeiro (excluding the city of Rio de Janeiro and its adjacent metropolitan areas, which have their own dialect, called carioca).
# Gaúcho â Rio Grande do Sul. (There are many distinct accents in Rio Grande do Sul, mainly due to the heavy influx of European immigrants of diverse origins, those which have settled several colonies throughout the state.)
# Mineiro â Minas Gerais (not prevalent in the Triângulo Mineiro, southern and southeastern Minas Gerais and also excluding the city of Belo Horizonte, which has its own accent.).
# 11px Nordestino â northeastern states of Brazil (Pernambuco, ParaÃba and Rio Grande do Norte have a particular way of speaking). Note: the speaker of this sound file is from Rio, and he is talking about his experience with Nordestino and Nortista accents.
# Nortista â Amazon Basin states.
# Paulistano â Variants spoken around São Paulo city and the eastern areas of São Paulo state.
# Sertanejo â States of Goiás and Mato Grosso (the city of Cuiabá has a particular way of speaking).
# Sulista â Variants spoken in the areas between the northern regions of Rio Grande do Sul and southern regions of São Paulo state. (The cities of Curitiba, Florianópolis, and Itapetininga have fairly distinct accents as well.)
# Carioca â Variants spoken in Rio de Janeiro City and Niteroi
Dialects of Portuguese in Portugal
# 11px Açoriano (Azorean) â Azores.
# 11px Alentejano â Alentejo
# 11px Algarvio â Algarve (there is a particular dialect in a small part of western Algarve).
# 11px Alto-Minhoto â North of Braga (hinterland).
# 11px Baixo-Beirão; Alto-Alentejano â Central Portugal (hinterland).
# 11px Beirão â Central Portugal.
# 11px Estremenho â Regions of Coimbra and Lisbon (the Lisbon dialect has some peculiar features not shared with the one of Coimbra).
# 11px Madeirense (Madeiran) â Madeira.
# 11px Nortenho â Regions of Braga and Porto.
# 11px Transmontano â Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro.
* Cape Verde â 11px Português cabo-verdiano (Cape Verdean Portuguese)
* Daman and Diu, India â Damaense.
* East Timor â 11px Timorense (East Timorese)
* Goa, India â Goês.
* Guinea-Bissau â 11px Guineense (Guinean Portuguese).
* Macau, China â 11px Macaense (Macanese)
* Mozambique â 11px Moçambicano (Mozambican)
* São Tomé and PrÃncipe â 11px Santomense
* Uruguay â Dialectos Portugueses del Uruguay (DPU).
Differences between dialects are mostly of accent and vocabulary, but between the Brazilian dialects and other dialects, especially in their most colloquial forms, there can also be some grammatical differences. The Portuguese-based creoles spoken in various parts of Africa, Asia, and the Americas are independent languages which should not be confused with Portuguese itself.
Baroque Library of the Coimbra University, Portugal.
Arriving in the Iberian Peninsula in 216 BC, the Romans brought with them the Latin language, from which all Romance languages descend. The language was spread by arriving Roman soldiers, settlers, and merchants, who built Roman cities mostly near the settlements of previous civilizations.
Between 409 and 711 AD, as the Roman Empire collapsed in Western Europe, the Iberian Peninsula was conquered by Germanic peoples (Migration Period). The occupiers, mainly Suebi and Visigoths, quickly adopted late Roman culture and the Vulgar Latin dialects of the peninsula. After the Moorish invasion of 711, Arabic became the administrative language in the conquered regions, but most of the population continued to speak a form of Romance commonly known as Mozarabic. The influence exerted by Arabic on the Romance dialects spoken in the Christian kingdoms of the north was small, affecting mainly their lexicon.
The earliest surviving records of a distinctively Portuguese language are administrative documents of the 9th century, still interspersed with many Latin phrases. Today this phase is known as Proto-Portuguese (between the 9th and the 12th centuries). In the first period of Old Portuguese â Galician-Portuguese Period (from the 12th to the 14th century) â the language gradually came into general use. For some time, it was the language of preference for lyric poetry in Christian Hispania, much as Occitan was the language of the poetry of the troubadours. Portugal became an independent kingdom from the Kingdom of Leon in 1139, under king Afonso I of Portugal. In 1290, king Denis of Portugal created the first Portuguese university in Lisbon (the Estudos Gerais, later moved to Coimbra) and decreed that Portuguese, then simply called the "common language" should be known as the Portuguese language and used officially.
In the second period of Old Portuguese, from the 14th to the 16th centuries, with the Portuguese discoveries, the language was taken to many regions of Asia, Africa and the Americas (nowadays, the great majority of Portuguese speakers live in Brazil, in South America). By the 16th century, it had become a lingua franca in Asia and Africa, used not only for colonial administration and trade but also for communication between local officials and Europeans of all nationalities. Its spread was helped by mixed marriages between Portuguese and local people, and by its association with Roman Catholic missionary efforts, which led to the formation of a creole language called Kristang in many parts of Asia (from the word cristão, "Christian"). The language continued to be popular in parts of Asia until the 19th century. Some Portuguese-speaking Christian communities in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Indonesia preserved their language even after they were isolated from Portugal.
The end of the Old Portuguese period was marked by the publication of the Cancioneiro Geral by Garcia de Resende, in 1516. The early times of Modern Portuguese, which spans a period from the 16th century to the present day, were characterized by an increase in the number of learned words borrowed from Classical Latin and Classical Greek since the Renaissance, which greatly enriched the lexicon.
A distinctive feature of Portuguese is that it preserved the stressed vowels of Vulgar Latin, which became diphthongs in other Romance languages; cf. Fr. pierre, Sp. piedra, It. pietra, Ro. piatrÄ, Port. pedra ("stone"), from Lat. petram; or Sp. fuego, It. fuoco, Fr. feu, Ro. foc, Port. fogo, from Lat. focus ("fire"). Another characteristic of early Portuguese was the loss of intervocalic l and n, sometimes followed by the merger of the two surrounding vowels, or by the insertion of an epenthetic vowel between them: cf. Lat. salire ("to leave"), tenere ("to have"), catenam ("chain"), Sp. salir, tener, cadena, Port. sair, ter, cadeia.
When the elided consonant was n, it often nasalized the preceding vowel: cf. Lat. manum ("hand"), ranam ("frog"), bonum ("good"), Port. mão, rãa, bõo (now mão, rã, bom). This process was the source of most of the nasal diphthongs which are typical of Portuguese. In particular, the Latin endings -anem, -anum and -onem became -ão in most cases, cf. Lat. canem ("dog"), germanum ("brother"), rationem ("reason") with Modern Port. cão, irmão, razão, and their plurals -anes, -anos, -ones normally became -ães, -ãos, -ões, cf. cães, irmãos, razões.
Library of the Mafra National Palace, Portugal.
Most of the lexicon of Portuguese is derived from Latin. Nevertheless, because of the Moorish occupation of the Iberian Peninsula during the Middle Ages, and the participation of Portugal in the Age of Discovery, it has adopted loanwords from all over the world.
Very few Portuguese words can be traced to the pre-Roman inhabitants of Portugal, which included the Gallaeci, Lusitanians, Celtici and Cynetes. The Phoenicians and Carthaginians, briefly present, also left some scarce traces. Some notable examples are abóbora "pumpkin" and bezerro "year-old calf", from the nearby Celtiberian language (probably through the Celtici); cerveja "beer", from Celtic; and cachorro "dog", from Basque.
In the 5th century, the Iberian Peninsula (the Roman Hispania) was conquered by the Germanic Suebi and Visigoths. As they adopted the Roman civilization and language, however, these people contributed only a few words to the lexicon, mostly related to warfare â such as espora "spur", estaca "stake", and guerra "war", from Gothic *spaúra, *stakka, and *wirro, respectively. The influence also exists in toponymic and patronymic surnames borne by Visigoth sovereigns and their descendants, and it dwells on placenames such has Ermesinde, Esposende and Resende where sinde and sende are derived from the Germanic "sinths" (military expedition) and in the case of Resende, the prefix re comes from Germanic "reths" (council).
Between the 9th and 13th centuries, Portuguese acquired about 800 words from Arabic by influence of Moorish Iberia. They are often recognizable by the initial Arabic article a(l)-, and include many common words such as aldeia "village" from اÙضÙعة aldaya, alface "lettuce" from اÙخس alkhass, armazém "warehouse" from اÙÙ
خز٠almahazan, and azeite "olive oil" from اÙزÙت azzait. From Arabic came also the grammatically peculiar word oxalá إ٠شاء اÙÙÙ "hopefully". The Mozambican currency name metical was derived from the word Ù
تÙا٠mitqÄl, a unit of weight. The word Mozambique itself is from the Arabic name of sultan Muça Alebique (Musa Alibiki).
Starting in the 15th century, the Portuguese maritime explorations led to the introduction of many loanwords from Asian languages. For instance, catana "cutlass" from Japanese katana and chá "tea" from Chinese 'chá'.
From South America came batata "potato", from Taino; ananás and abacaxi, from Tupi-Guarani naná and Tupi ibá cati, respectively (two species of pineapple), and tucano "toucan" from Guarani tucan. See List of Brazil state name etymologies, for some more examples.
From the 16th to the 19th centuries, because of the role of Portugal as intermediary in the Atlantic slave trade, and the establishment of large Portuguese colonies in Angola, Mozambique, and Brazil, Portuguese got several words of African and Amerind origin, especially names for most of the animals and plants found in those territories. While those terms are mostly used in the former colonies, many became current in European Portuguese as well. From Kimbundu, for example, came kifumate â cafuné "head caress", kusula â caçula "youngest child", marimbondo "tropical wasp", and kubungula â bungular "to dance like a wizard".
Finally, it has received a steady influx of loanwords from other European languages. For example, melena "hair lock", fiambre "wet-cured ham" (in contrast with presunto "dry-cured ham" from Latin prae-exsuctus "dehydrated"), and castelhano "Castilian", from Spanish; colchete/crochê "bracket"/"crochet", paletó "jacket", batom "lipstick", and filé/filete "steak"/"slice" respectively, from French crochet, paletot, bâton, filet; macarrão "pasta", piloto "pilot", carroça "carriage", and barraca "barrack", from Italian maccherone, pilota, carrozza, baracca; and bife "steak", futebol, revólver, estoque, folclore, time from English beef,
football, revolver, stock, folklore, and team.
Portuguese belongs to the West Iberian branch of the Romance languages, and it has special ties with the following members of this group:
* Galician and Fala, its closest relatives. See below.
* Spanish, the major language closest to Portuguese. (See also Differences between Spanish and Portuguese.)
* Mirandese and Leonese, two other West Iberian languages spoken in Portugal.
* Judeo-Portuguese and Judeo-Spanish, languages spoken by Sephardic Jews, and which remained close to Portuguese and Spanish.
Despite the obvious lexical and grammatical similarities between Portuguese and other Romance languages, it is not mutually intelligible with them. Apart from Galician, Portuguese speakers will usually need some formal study of basic grammar and vocabulary, before attaining a reasonable level of comprehension of those languages, and vice versa. Native speakers of Portuguese do tend to understand standard Spanish which is spoken clearly, but the reverse is generally not true unless formal education is involved.
The closest language to Portuguese is Galician, spoken in the autonomous community of Galicia (northwestern Spain). The two were at one time a single language, known today as Galician-Portuguese, but since the political separation of Portugal from Galicia they have diverged somewhat, especially in pronunciation and vocabulary. Nevertheless, the core vocabulary and grammar of Galician are still noticeably closer to Portuguese than to those of Spanish. In particular, like Portuguese, it uses the future subjunctive, the personal infinitive, and the synthetic pluperfect (see the section on the grammar of Portuguese, below). Mutual intelligibility (estimated at 85% by R. A. Hall, Jr., 1989) Ethnologue is good between Galicians and northern Portuguese, but poorer between Galicians and speakers from central Portugal.
The Fala language is another descendant of Galician-Portuguese, spoken by a small number of people in the Spanish towns of Valverde del Fresno, Eljas and San MartÃn de Trevejo (autonomous community of Extremadura, near the border with Portugal).
Portuguese has provided loanwords to many languages, such as Indonesian, Manado Malay, Sri Lankan Tamil and Sinhalese (see Sri Lanka Indo-Portuguese), Malay, Bengali, English, Hindi, Konkani, Marathi, Tetum, Xitsonga, Papiamentu, Japanese, Lanc-Patuá (spoken in northern Brazil) and Sranan Tongo (spoken in Suriname). It left a strong influence on the lÃngua brasÃlica, a Tupi-Guarani language which was the most widely spoken in Brazil until the 18th century, and on the language spoken around Sikka in Flores Island, Indonesia. In nearby Larantuka, Portuguese is used for prayers in Holy Week rituals.
The Japanese-Portuguese dictionary Nippo Jisho (1603) was the first dictionary of Japanese in a European language, a product of Jesuit missionary activity in Japan. Building on the work of earlier Portuguese missionaries, the Dictionarium Anamiticum, Lusitanum et Latinum (Annamite-Portuguese-Latin dictionary) of Alexandre de Rhodes (1651) introduced the modern orthography of Vietnamese, which is based on the orthography of 17th-century Portuguese. The Romanization of Chinese was also influenced by the Portuguese language (among others), particularly regarding Chinese surnames; one example is Mei. During 1583-88 Italian Jesuits Michele Ruggieri and Matteo Ricci created a Portuguese-Chinese dictionary - the first ever European-Chinese dictionary. Yves Camus, "Jesuits' Journeys in Chinese Studies" "Dicionário Português-Chinês : Pu Han ci dian : Portuguese-Chinese dictionary", by Michele Ruggieri, Matteo Ricci; edited by John W. Witek. Published 2001, Biblioteca Nacional. ISBN 9725652983. Partial preview available on Google Books
See also List of English words of Portuguese origin, Loan words in Indonesian, Japanese words of Portuguese origin, Borrowed words in Malay, Sinhala words of Portuguese origin, Loan words from Portuguese in Sri Lankan Tamil.
Beginning in the 16th century, the extensive contacts between Portuguese travelers and settlers, African slaves, and local populations led to the appearance of many pidgins with varying amounts of Portuguese influence. As each of these pidgins became the mother tongue of succeeding generations, they evolved into fully fledged creole languages, which remained in use in many parts of Asia and Africa until the 18th century. Some Portuguese-based or Portuguese-influenced creoles are still spoken today, by over 3 million people worldwide, especially people of partial Portuguese ancestry.
There is a growing number of people in the Portuguese-speaking media and the internet who are presenting the case to the CPLP and other organizations to run a debate in the Lusophone community with the purpose of bringing forward a petition to make Portuguese an official language of the United Nations.
In October 2005, during the international Convention of the Elos Club International that took place in Tavira, Portugal, ONU: Petição para tornar português lÃngua oficial a petition was written and unanimously approved whose text can be found on the internet with the title Petição Para Tornar Oficial o Idioma Português na ONU. Romulo Alexandre Soares, president of the Brazil-Portugal Chamber highlights that the positioning of Brazil in the international arena as one of the emergent powers of the 21st century, the size of its population, and the presence of the language around the world provides legitimacy and justifies a petition to the UN to make the Portuguese language an official language of the UN. Português pode ser lÃngua oficial na ONU
Several factors detract from this campaign. The current official languages of the UN are either 1) official/dominant in many countries (English, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, and French) or 2) have several hundreds of millions of speakers (Chinese). English, Spanish, Russian and Arabic fulfill both criteria. Portuguese is a global language in that it is the official tongue of several sovereign countries on four continents. It also has over 200 million speakers. However, it exhibits some noticeable differences when compared to the current 6 UN official languages. For example, English, French, Arabic and Spanish are each official languages of multiple states and of over half of the world's countries. In contrast, four out of every five speakers of the Portuguese-speaking world live in just one country: Brazil. In addition to Brazil, Portuguese is the official language in only 7 other sovereign states; however, English is official in 53 states, French in 29 states, Arabic in 25 states, and Spanish in 20 states.
More significantly, in each part of the world with a Portuguese-speaking country, this language is overshadowed by other powerful languages that are already official languages of the UN. For example, in the Americas, the 190 million Portuguese-speaking Brazilians are overshadowed by the most spoken languages in the Western Hemisphere: Spanish (~360 million speakers) and English (~340 million speakers). Portuguese is overshadowed to an even greater extent in Europe, the continent in which four of the six UN languages originated (English, French, Spanish, and Russian). In the European context, Portuguese is not even among the ten most spoken languages on the continent, with a number of speakers comparable to those of Czech and Bulgarian. In Africa, Portuguese is eclipsed as a continental lingua franca by English and French in countries that surround Cape Verde, São Tomé and PrÃncipe, Guinea-Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique. Finally in Asia, a continent with several languages that have hundreds of millions of speakers, the only sovereign state with Portuguese as an official language is East Timor, which has only a million people. While Brazilian migration has brought 300,000 fluent Portuguese speakers to Japan, Portuguese does not enjoy any official status whatsoever in that country. Therefore, while Portuguese will gain increasing importance as Brazil continues its development as a major economy, it will likely face the same hurdles that prevented Japanese and German (both languages of major global economies with millions of speakers) from becoming both international languages and official ones of the UN.
There is a maximum of 9 oral vowels and 19 consonants, though some varieties of the language have fewer phonemes (Brazilian Portuguese has 8 oral vowels). There are also five nasal vowels, which some linguists regard as allophones of the oral vowels, ten oral diphthongs, and five nasal diphthongs. In total, Brazilian Portuguese has 13 vowel phonemes. /ref> Handbook of the International Phonetic Association'' pg. 126-130; the reference applies to the entire section
Chart of monophthongs of the Portuguese of Lisbon
To the seven vowels of Vulgar Latin, European Portuguese has added two near central vowels, one of which tends to be elided in rapid speech, like the e caduc of French (represented as either , or , or ). The high vowels and the low vowels are four distinct phonemes, and they alternate in various forms of apophony. Like Catalan, Portuguese uses vowel quality to contrast stressed syllables with unstressed syllables: isolated vowels tend to be raised, and in some cases centralized, when unstressed. Nasal diphthongs occur mostly at the ends of words.
The consonant inventory of Portuguese is fairly conservative. The medieval affricates , , , merged with the fricatives , , , , respectively, but not with each other, and there were no other significant changes to the consonant phonemes since then. However, some notable dialectal variants and allophones have appeared, among which:
* In many regions of Brazil, and have the affricate allophones and , respectively, before and . (Quebec French has a similar phenomenon, with alveolar affricates instead of postalveolars. Japanese is another example).
* At the end of a syllable, the phoneme has the allophone in Brazilian Portuguese (L-vocalization).
* In many parts of Brazil and Angola, intervocalic is pronounced as a nasalized palatal approximant which nasalizes the preceding vowel, so that, for instance, is pronounced .
* In most of Brazil, the alveolar sibilants and occur in complementary distribution at the ends of syllables, depending on whether the consonant that follows is voiceless or voiced, as in English. But in most of Portugal and parts of Brazil, sibilants are postalveolar at the ends of syllables, before voiceless consonants, and before voiced consonants (in Judeo-Spanish, is often replaced with at the ends of syllables, too).
* There is considerable dialectal variation in the value of the rhotic phoneme . See Guttural R in Portuguese, for details.
;Excerpt from the Portuguese national epic Os LusÃadas, by author LuÃs de Camões (I, 33)
A notable aspect of the grammar of Portuguese is the verb. Morphologically, more verbal inflections from classical Latin have been preserved by Portuguese than by any other major Romance language. See Romance copula, for a detailed comparison. It has also some innovations not found in other Romance languages (except Galician and the Fala):
* The present perfect tense has an iterative sense unique to Galician-Portuguese language group. It denotes an action or a series of actions which began in the past and are expected to keep repeating in the future. For instance, the sentence Tenho tentado falar com ela would be translated to "I have been trying to talk to her", not "I have tried to talk to her". On the other hand, the correct translation of the question "Have you heard the latest news?" is not *Tem ouvido a última notÃcia?, but Ouviu a última notÃcia?, since no repetition is implied. Squartini, Mario (1998) Verbal Periphrases in Romance â Aspect, Actionality, and Grammaticalization ISBN 3-11-016160-5
* The future subjunctive tense, which was developed by medieval West Iberian Romance, but has now fallen into disuse in Spanish and Galician, is still used in vernacular Portuguese. It appears in dependent clauses that denote a condition which must be fulfilled in the future, so that the independent clause will occur. English normally employs the present tense under the same circumstances:
:Se eu for eleito presidente, mudarei a lei.
:If I am elected president, I will change the law.
:Quando fores mais velho, vais entender.
:When you are older, you will understand.
* The personal infinitive: infinitives can inflect according to their subject in person and number, often showing who is expected to perform a certain action; cf. Ã melhor voltares "It is better [for you] to go back," Ã melhor voltarmos "It is better [for us] to go back." Perhaps for this reason, infinitive clauses replace subjunctive clauses more often in Portuguese than in other Romance languages.
Portuguese is written with 23 or 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, making use of five diacritics to denote stress, vowel height, contraction, nasalization, and other sound changes (acute accent, grave accent, circumflex accent, tilde, and cedilla). Accented characters and digraphs are not counted as separate letters for collation purposes.
* Portuguese literature
* Portuguese poetry
* List of Portuguese language poets
* Brazilian literature
* List of Brazilian poets
* Lusophone
* Geographic distribution of Portuguese
* List of countries where Portuguese is an official language
* Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP)
* Instituto Camões
* International Portuguese Language Institute
* Museum of the Portuguese Language
* Portuguese-based creole languages
* Portuñol
* Portuguese in the United States
* List of English words of Portuguese origin
* Spelling reforms of Portuguese
* História da Lingua Portuguesa Instituto Camões
* A LÃngua Portuguesa in Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil (...)
* Poesia e Prosa Medievais, by Maria Ema Tarracha Ferreira, Ulisseia 1998, 3rd ed., ISBN 978-972-568-124-4.
* Bases Temáticas â LÃngua Portuguesa in Instituto Camões
* Portuguese Literature in The Catholic Encyclopedia
* International Phonetic Association (1999) Handbook of the International Phonetic Association ISBN 0-521-63751-1
* Mateus, Maria Helena & d'Andrade, Ernesto (2000) The Phonology of Portuguese ISBN 0-19-823581-X (Excerpt available at Google Books)
* Bergström, Magnus & Reis, Neves Prontuário Ortográfico Editorial NotÃcias, 2004.
* A pronúncia do português europeu - European Portuguese Pronunciation
* Dialects of Portuguese at the Instituto Camões
* Audio samples of the dialects of Portugal
* Audio samples of the dialects from outside Europe
* Antônio Houaiss (2000), Dicionário Houaiss da LÃngua Portuguesa (228,500 entries).
* Aurélio Buarque de Holanda Ferreira, Novo Dicionário da LÃngua Portuguesa (1809pp)
* English-Portuguese-Chinese Dictionary (Freeware, for Windows/Linux/Mac)
* Lindley Cintra, LuÃs F. Nova Proposta de Classificação dos Dialectos Galego-Portugueses (PDF) Boletim de Filologia, Lisboa, Centro de Estudos Filológicos, 1971.
*Swadesh list in English and Portuguese
* English Portuguese Translation Dictionary for English Portuguese translations
* Learn Portuguese BBC
* Portuguese Language Notes BBC
* AULP - Associação das Universidades de LÃngua Portuguesa Portuguese Language Universities Association.
* Portuguese in East Timor an interview with Dr. Geoffrey Hull.
* Portuguese Dictionary with gender and type of words.
* ABL - Academia Brasileira de letras (em português) - (Brazilian Academy of Letters) (Portuguese)
* Brazilian Portuguese Free resources for Portuguese learners.
* EasyPortuguese Free Portuguese learning site with audio.
|
Portuguese_language | Is Portuguese an official language of several international organizations? | Yes. | data/set5/a1 | Portuguese_language
Portuguese ( or lÃngua portuguesa) is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia and northern Portugal. It is derived from the Latin spoken by the romanized pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula (namely the Gallaeci, the Lusitanians, the Celtici and the Conii) around 2000 years ago. It spread worldwide in the 15th and 16th centuries as Portugal established a colonial and commercial empire (1415â1999) which spanned from Brazil in the Americas to Goa and other parts of India, Macau in China and Timor (north of Australia). It was used as the exclusive lingua franca on the island of Sri Lanka for almost 350 years. During that time, many creole languages based on Portuguese also appeared around the world, especially in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean.
Today it is one of the world's major languages, ranked seventh according to number of native speakers (between 205 and 230 million). It is the language of about half of South America's population, even though Brazil is the only Portuguese-speaking nation in the Americas. It is also a major lingua franca in Portugal's former colonial possessions in Africa. It is an official language in nine countries (see the table on the right), also being co-official with Cantonese Chinese in Macau and Tetum in East Timor. There are sizeable communities of Portuguese speakers in various regions of North America, notably in the United States (New Jersey, New England, California and south Florida) and in Ontario, Canada.
In various aspects, the system of sounds in Portuguese is more similar to the phonologies of Catalan or French than, say, those of Spanish or Italian. Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes once called Portuguese "the sweet language", /ref> Lope de Vega referred to it as "suave" 'Encyclopedia of Literature' Joseph T. Shipley; Philosophical Library, 1946. 1188 pgs. while Brazilian writer Olavo Bilac poetically described it as a última flor do Lácio, inculta e bela: "the last flower of Latium, wild and beautiful". Portuguese is also termed "the language of Camões", after one of Portugal's best known literary figures, LuÃs Vaz de Camões.
Countries and regions where Portuguese has official status.
Members of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries.
Today, Portuguese is the official language of Angola, Brazil (190.6 million), IBGE Official website Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Portugal (10.6 million), INE Official website São Tomé and PrÃncipe and Mozambique. CPLP Official website It is also one of the official languages of the special administrative region of Macau (with Chinese) and East Timor, (with Tetum). It is the language of most of the population in Portugal (100%) , Brazil (100%) , São Tomé and PrÃncipe (99.8%) and Angola (80%), and is the most widely spoken language in Mozambique (40%), though only 6.5% are native speakers. No data are available for Cape Verde, but almost all the population is bilingual, and the monolingual population speaks Cape Verdean Creole. See the main article Geographic distribution of Portuguese, for references.
Small Portuguese-speaking communities subsist in former overseas colonies of Portugal such as Macau, where it is spoken by 7% of the population, and East Timor (13.6%).
Uruguay gave Portuguese an equal status to Spanish in its educational system at the north border with Brazil. In the rest of the country, it is taught as an obligatory subject beginning in the 6th grade. Uruguay recently adopted Portuguese language in its education system as an obligatory subject /ref>
It is also spoken by substantial immigrant communities, though not official, in Andorra, Australia, The Portuguese-Speaking Community in Australia France, Luxembourg, Jersey (with a statistically significant Portuguese-speaking community of approximately 10,000 people), Paraguay, Namibia, South Africa, Switzerland, Venezuela, Japan JAPÃO: IMIGRANTES BRASILEIROS POPULARIZAM LÃNGUA PORTUGUESA and the U.S. states of California, Connecticut, Where America's Other Languages Are Spoken Florida, Widely spoken but 'minor'? Portuguese seeks respect Massachusetts, New Jersey, Hispanic Reading Room of the U.S. Library of Congress website, Twentieth-Century Arrivals from Portugal Settle in Newark, New Jersey, New York Brazucas (Brazilians living in New York) and Rhode Island. Hispanic Reading Room of the U.S. Library of Congress website, Whaling, Fishing, and Industrial Employment in Southeastern New England
In some parts of India, such as Goa Portuguese Language in Goa and Daman and Diu, The Portuguese Experience: The Case of Goa, Daman and Diu Portuguese is still spoken. There are also significant populations of Portuguese speakers in Canada (mainly concentrated in and around Toronto), Multicultural Canada Bermuda World InfoZone: Bermuda and the Netherlands Antilles.
Portuguese is an official language of several international organizations. The Community of Portuguese Language Countries (with the Portuguese acronym CPLP) consists of the eight independent countries that have Portuguese as an official language. It is also an official language of the European Union, accounting for 3% of its population, EUROPA website Languages in the EU Mercosul, the Organization of American States, the Organization of Ibero-American States, the Union of South American Nations, and the African Union (one of the working languages) and one of the official languages of other organizations. The Portuguese language is gaining popularity in Africa, Asia, and South America as a second language for study.
Estação da Luz, home of the Museum of the Portuguese Language, in São Paulo, Brazil.
Portuguese and Spanish are the fastest-growing European languages (with the exception of English, being the world lingua franca) , and, according to estimates by UNESCO, the Portuguese language has the highest potential for growth as an international language in southern Africa and South America. The Portuguese-speaking African countries are expected to have a combined population of 83 million by 2050. In total, the Portuguese-speaking countries will have 335 million people by the same year. Since 1991, when Brazil signed into the economic market of Mercosul with other South American nations, such as Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay, there has been an increase in interest in the study of Portuguese in those South American countries. The demographic weight of Brazil in the continent will continue to strengthen the presence of the language in the region. Although in the early 21st century, after Macau was ceded to China in 1999, the use of Portuguese was in decline in Asia, it is becoming a language of opportunity there; mostly because of East Timor's boost in the number of speakers in the last five years but also because of increased Chinese diplomatic and financial ties with Portuguese-speaking countries.
In July 2007, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema announced his government's decision to establish Portuguese as Equatorial Guinea's third official language, to meet the requirements to apply for full membership of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries. This upgrading from its current Associate Observer condition would result in Equatorial Guinea being able to access several professional and academic exchange programs and the facilitation of cross-border circulation of citizens. Its application is currently being assessed by other CPLP members. "Obiang convierte al portugués en tercer idioma oficial para entrar en la Comunidad lusófona de Naciones", Terra. 13-07-2007
In March 1994 the Bosque de Portugal (Portugal's Woods) was founded in the Brazilian city of Curitiba. The park houses the Portuguese Language Memorial, which honors the Portuguese immigrants and the countries that adopted the Portuguese language. Originally there were seven nations represented with pillars, but the independence of East Timor brought yet another pillar for that nation in 2007.
In March 2006, the Museum of the Portuguese Language, an interactive museum about the Portuguese language, was founded in São Paulo, Brazil, the city with the greatest number of Portuguese speakers in the world.
Portuguese is a pluricentric language with two main groups of dialects, those of Brazil and those of the Old World. For historical reasons, the dialects of Africa and Asia are generally closer to those of Portugal than the Brazilian dialects, although in some aspects of their phonetics, especially the pronunciation of unstressed vowels, they resemble Brazilian Portuguese more than European Portuguese. They have not been studied as widely as European and Brazilian Portuguese.
Audio samples of some dialects of Portuguese are available below. From Audio samples of the dialects of Portuguese at the Instituto Camões website. There are some differences between the areas but these are the best approximations possible. For example, the caipira dialect has some differences from the one of Minas Gerais, but in general it is very close. A good example of Brazilian Portuguese may be found in the capital city, BrasÃlia, because of the generalized population from all parts of the country.
Portuguese dialects of Angola
# Benguelense â Benguela province.
# 11px Luandense â Luanda province.
# Sulista â South of Angola.
Dialects of Portuguese in Brazil
# Caipira â States of São Paulo (countryside; the city of São Paulo and the eastern areas of the state have their own accent, called paulistano); southern Minas Gerais, northern Paraná, Goiás and Mato Grosso do Sul.
# Cearense â Ceará.
# Baiano â Bahia.
# 11px Fluminense â Variants spoken in the states of Rio de Janeiro (excluding the city of Rio de Janeiro and its adjacent metropolitan areas, which have their own dialect, called carioca).
# Gaúcho â Rio Grande do Sul. (There are many distinct accents in Rio Grande do Sul, mainly due to the heavy influx of European immigrants of diverse origins, those which have settled several colonies throughout the state.)
# Mineiro â Minas Gerais (not prevalent in the Triângulo Mineiro, southern and southeastern Minas Gerais and also excluding the city of Belo Horizonte, which has its own accent.).
# 11px Nordestino â northeastern states of Brazil (Pernambuco, ParaÃba and Rio Grande do Norte have a particular way of speaking). Note: the speaker of this sound file is from Rio, and he is talking about his experience with Nordestino and Nortista accents.
# Nortista â Amazon Basin states.
# Paulistano â Variants spoken around São Paulo city and the eastern areas of São Paulo state.
# Sertanejo â States of Goiás and Mato Grosso (the city of Cuiabá has a particular way of speaking).
# Sulista â Variants spoken in the areas between the northern regions of Rio Grande do Sul and southern regions of São Paulo state. (The cities of Curitiba, Florianópolis, and Itapetininga have fairly distinct accents as well.)
# Carioca â Variants spoken in Rio de Janeiro City and Niteroi
Dialects of Portuguese in Portugal
# 11px Açoriano (Azorean) â Azores.
# 11px Alentejano â Alentejo
# 11px Algarvio â Algarve (there is a particular dialect in a small part of western Algarve).
# 11px Alto-Minhoto â North of Braga (hinterland).
# 11px Baixo-Beirão; Alto-Alentejano â Central Portugal (hinterland).
# 11px Beirão â Central Portugal.
# 11px Estremenho â Regions of Coimbra and Lisbon (the Lisbon dialect has some peculiar features not shared with the one of Coimbra).
# 11px Madeirense (Madeiran) â Madeira.
# 11px Nortenho â Regions of Braga and Porto.
# 11px Transmontano â Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro.
* Cape Verde â 11px Português cabo-verdiano (Cape Verdean Portuguese)
* Daman and Diu, India â Damaense.
* East Timor â 11px Timorense (East Timorese)
* Goa, India â Goês.
* Guinea-Bissau â 11px Guineense (Guinean Portuguese).
* Macau, China â 11px Macaense (Macanese)
* Mozambique â 11px Moçambicano (Mozambican)
* São Tomé and PrÃncipe â 11px Santomense
* Uruguay â Dialectos Portugueses del Uruguay (DPU).
Differences between dialects are mostly of accent and vocabulary, but between the Brazilian dialects and other dialects, especially in their most colloquial forms, there can also be some grammatical differences. The Portuguese-based creoles spoken in various parts of Africa, Asia, and the Americas are independent languages which should not be confused with Portuguese itself.
Baroque Library of the Coimbra University, Portugal.
Arriving in the Iberian Peninsula in 216 BC, the Romans brought with them the Latin language, from which all Romance languages descend. The language was spread by arriving Roman soldiers, settlers, and merchants, who built Roman cities mostly near the settlements of previous civilizations.
Between 409 and 711 AD, as the Roman Empire collapsed in Western Europe, the Iberian Peninsula was conquered by Germanic peoples (Migration Period). The occupiers, mainly Suebi and Visigoths, quickly adopted late Roman culture and the Vulgar Latin dialects of the peninsula. After the Moorish invasion of 711, Arabic became the administrative language in the conquered regions, but most of the population continued to speak a form of Romance commonly known as Mozarabic. The influence exerted by Arabic on the Romance dialects spoken in the Christian kingdoms of the north was small, affecting mainly their lexicon.
The earliest surviving records of a distinctively Portuguese language are administrative documents of the 9th century, still interspersed with many Latin phrases. Today this phase is known as Proto-Portuguese (between the 9th and the 12th centuries). In the first period of Old Portuguese â Galician-Portuguese Period (from the 12th to the 14th century) â the language gradually came into general use. For some time, it was the language of preference for lyric poetry in Christian Hispania, much as Occitan was the language of the poetry of the troubadours. Portugal became an independent kingdom from the Kingdom of Leon in 1139, under king Afonso I of Portugal. In 1290, king Denis of Portugal created the first Portuguese university in Lisbon (the Estudos Gerais, later moved to Coimbra) and decreed that Portuguese, then simply called the "common language" should be known as the Portuguese language and used officially.
In the second period of Old Portuguese, from the 14th to the 16th centuries, with the Portuguese discoveries, the language was taken to many regions of Asia, Africa and the Americas (nowadays, the great majority of Portuguese speakers live in Brazil, in South America). By the 16th century, it had become a lingua franca in Asia and Africa, used not only for colonial administration and trade but also for communication between local officials and Europeans of all nationalities. Its spread was helped by mixed marriages between Portuguese and local people, and by its association with Roman Catholic missionary efforts, which led to the formation of a creole language called Kristang in many parts of Asia (from the word cristão, "Christian"). The language continued to be popular in parts of Asia until the 19th century. Some Portuguese-speaking Christian communities in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Indonesia preserved their language even after they were isolated from Portugal.
The end of the Old Portuguese period was marked by the publication of the Cancioneiro Geral by Garcia de Resende, in 1516. The early times of Modern Portuguese, which spans a period from the 16th century to the present day, were characterized by an increase in the number of learned words borrowed from Classical Latin and Classical Greek since the Renaissance, which greatly enriched the lexicon.
A distinctive feature of Portuguese is that it preserved the stressed vowels of Vulgar Latin, which became diphthongs in other Romance languages; cf. Fr. pierre, Sp. piedra, It. pietra, Ro. piatrÄ, Port. pedra ("stone"), from Lat. petram; or Sp. fuego, It. fuoco, Fr. feu, Ro. foc, Port. fogo, from Lat. focus ("fire"). Another characteristic of early Portuguese was the loss of intervocalic l and n, sometimes followed by the merger of the two surrounding vowels, or by the insertion of an epenthetic vowel between them: cf. Lat. salire ("to leave"), tenere ("to have"), catenam ("chain"), Sp. salir, tener, cadena, Port. sair, ter, cadeia.
When the elided consonant was n, it often nasalized the preceding vowel: cf. Lat. manum ("hand"), ranam ("frog"), bonum ("good"), Port. mão, rãa, bõo (now mão, rã, bom). This process was the source of most of the nasal diphthongs which are typical of Portuguese. In particular, the Latin endings -anem, -anum and -onem became -ão in most cases, cf. Lat. canem ("dog"), germanum ("brother"), rationem ("reason") with Modern Port. cão, irmão, razão, and their plurals -anes, -anos, -ones normally became -ães, -ãos, -ões, cf. cães, irmãos, razões.
Library of the Mafra National Palace, Portugal.
Most of the lexicon of Portuguese is derived from Latin. Nevertheless, because of the Moorish occupation of the Iberian Peninsula during the Middle Ages, and the participation of Portugal in the Age of Discovery, it has adopted loanwords from all over the world.
Very few Portuguese words can be traced to the pre-Roman inhabitants of Portugal, which included the Gallaeci, Lusitanians, Celtici and Cynetes. The Phoenicians and Carthaginians, briefly present, also left some scarce traces. Some notable examples are abóbora "pumpkin" and bezerro "year-old calf", from the nearby Celtiberian language (probably through the Celtici); cerveja "beer", from Celtic; and cachorro "dog", from Basque.
In the 5th century, the Iberian Peninsula (the Roman Hispania) was conquered by the Germanic Suebi and Visigoths. As they adopted the Roman civilization and language, however, these people contributed only a few words to the lexicon, mostly related to warfare â such as espora "spur", estaca "stake", and guerra "war", from Gothic *spaúra, *stakka, and *wirro, respectively. The influence also exists in toponymic and patronymic surnames borne by Visigoth sovereigns and their descendants, and it dwells on placenames such has Ermesinde, Esposende and Resende where sinde and sende are derived from the Germanic "sinths" (military expedition) and in the case of Resende, the prefix re comes from Germanic "reths" (council).
Between the 9th and 13th centuries, Portuguese acquired about 800 words from Arabic by influence of Moorish Iberia. They are often recognizable by the initial Arabic article a(l)-, and include many common words such as aldeia "village" from اÙضÙعة aldaya, alface "lettuce" from اÙخس alkhass, armazém "warehouse" from اÙÙ
خز٠almahazan, and azeite "olive oil" from اÙزÙت azzait. From Arabic came also the grammatically peculiar word oxalá إ٠شاء اÙÙÙ "hopefully". The Mozambican currency name metical was derived from the word Ù
تÙا٠mitqÄl, a unit of weight. The word Mozambique itself is from the Arabic name of sultan Muça Alebique (Musa Alibiki).
Starting in the 15th century, the Portuguese maritime explorations led to the introduction of many loanwords from Asian languages. For instance, catana "cutlass" from Japanese katana and chá "tea" from Chinese 'chá'.
From South America came batata "potato", from Taino; ananás and abacaxi, from Tupi-Guarani naná and Tupi ibá cati, respectively (two species of pineapple), and tucano "toucan" from Guarani tucan. See List of Brazil state name etymologies, for some more examples.
From the 16th to the 19th centuries, because of the role of Portugal as intermediary in the Atlantic slave trade, and the establishment of large Portuguese colonies in Angola, Mozambique, and Brazil, Portuguese got several words of African and Amerind origin, especially names for most of the animals and plants found in those territories. While those terms are mostly used in the former colonies, many became current in European Portuguese as well. From Kimbundu, for example, came kifumate â cafuné "head caress", kusula â caçula "youngest child", marimbondo "tropical wasp", and kubungula â bungular "to dance like a wizard".
Finally, it has received a steady influx of loanwords from other European languages. For example, melena "hair lock", fiambre "wet-cured ham" (in contrast with presunto "dry-cured ham" from Latin prae-exsuctus "dehydrated"), and castelhano "Castilian", from Spanish; colchete/crochê "bracket"/"crochet", paletó "jacket", batom "lipstick", and filé/filete "steak"/"slice" respectively, from French crochet, paletot, bâton, filet; macarrão "pasta", piloto "pilot", carroça "carriage", and barraca "barrack", from Italian maccherone, pilota, carrozza, baracca; and bife "steak", futebol, revólver, estoque, folclore, time from English beef,
football, revolver, stock, folklore, and team.
Portuguese belongs to the West Iberian branch of the Romance languages, and it has special ties with the following members of this group:
* Galician and Fala, its closest relatives. See below.
* Spanish, the major language closest to Portuguese. (See also Differences between Spanish and Portuguese.)
* Mirandese and Leonese, two other West Iberian languages spoken in Portugal.
* Judeo-Portuguese and Judeo-Spanish, languages spoken by Sephardic Jews, and which remained close to Portuguese and Spanish.
Despite the obvious lexical and grammatical similarities between Portuguese and other Romance languages, it is not mutually intelligible with them. Apart from Galician, Portuguese speakers will usually need some formal study of basic grammar and vocabulary, before attaining a reasonable level of comprehension of those languages, and vice versa. Native speakers of Portuguese do tend to understand standard Spanish which is spoken clearly, but the reverse is generally not true unless formal education is involved.
The closest language to Portuguese is Galician, spoken in the autonomous community of Galicia (northwestern Spain). The two were at one time a single language, known today as Galician-Portuguese, but since the political separation of Portugal from Galicia they have diverged somewhat, especially in pronunciation and vocabulary. Nevertheless, the core vocabulary and grammar of Galician are still noticeably closer to Portuguese than to those of Spanish. In particular, like Portuguese, it uses the future subjunctive, the personal infinitive, and the synthetic pluperfect (see the section on the grammar of Portuguese, below). Mutual intelligibility (estimated at 85% by R. A. Hall, Jr., 1989) Ethnologue is good between Galicians and northern Portuguese, but poorer between Galicians and speakers from central Portugal.
The Fala language is another descendant of Galician-Portuguese, spoken by a small number of people in the Spanish towns of Valverde del Fresno, Eljas and San MartÃn de Trevejo (autonomous community of Extremadura, near the border with Portugal).
Portuguese has provided loanwords to many languages, such as Indonesian, Manado Malay, Sri Lankan Tamil and Sinhalese (see Sri Lanka Indo-Portuguese), Malay, Bengali, English, Hindi, Konkani, Marathi, Tetum, Xitsonga, Papiamentu, Japanese, Lanc-Patuá (spoken in northern Brazil) and Sranan Tongo (spoken in Suriname). It left a strong influence on the lÃngua brasÃlica, a Tupi-Guarani language which was the most widely spoken in Brazil until the 18th century, and on the language spoken around Sikka in Flores Island, Indonesia. In nearby Larantuka, Portuguese is used for prayers in Holy Week rituals.
The Japanese-Portuguese dictionary Nippo Jisho (1603) was the first dictionary of Japanese in a European language, a product of Jesuit missionary activity in Japan. Building on the work of earlier Portuguese missionaries, the Dictionarium Anamiticum, Lusitanum et Latinum (Annamite-Portuguese-Latin dictionary) of Alexandre de Rhodes (1651) introduced the modern orthography of Vietnamese, which is based on the orthography of 17th-century Portuguese. The Romanization of Chinese was also influenced by the Portuguese language (among others), particularly regarding Chinese surnames; one example is Mei. During 1583-88 Italian Jesuits Michele Ruggieri and Matteo Ricci created a Portuguese-Chinese dictionary - the first ever European-Chinese dictionary. Yves Camus, "Jesuits' Journeys in Chinese Studies" "Dicionário Português-Chinês : Pu Han ci dian : Portuguese-Chinese dictionary", by Michele Ruggieri, Matteo Ricci; edited by John W. Witek. Published 2001, Biblioteca Nacional. ISBN 9725652983. Partial preview available on Google Books
See also List of English words of Portuguese origin, Loan words in Indonesian, Japanese words of Portuguese origin, Borrowed words in Malay, Sinhala words of Portuguese origin, Loan words from Portuguese in Sri Lankan Tamil.
Beginning in the 16th century, the extensive contacts between Portuguese travelers and settlers, African slaves, and local populations led to the appearance of many pidgins with varying amounts of Portuguese influence. As each of these pidgins became the mother tongue of succeeding generations, they evolved into fully fledged creole languages, which remained in use in many parts of Asia and Africa until the 18th century. Some Portuguese-based or Portuguese-influenced creoles are still spoken today, by over 3 million people worldwide, especially people of partial Portuguese ancestry.
There is a growing number of people in the Portuguese-speaking media and the internet who are presenting the case to the CPLP and other organizations to run a debate in the Lusophone community with the purpose of bringing forward a petition to make Portuguese an official language of the United Nations.
In October 2005, during the international Convention of the Elos Club International that took place in Tavira, Portugal, ONU: Petição para tornar português lÃngua oficial a petition was written and unanimously approved whose text can be found on the internet with the title Petição Para Tornar Oficial o Idioma Português na ONU. Romulo Alexandre Soares, president of the Brazil-Portugal Chamber highlights that the positioning of Brazil in the international arena as one of the emergent powers of the 21st century, the size of its population, and the presence of the language around the world provides legitimacy and justifies a petition to the UN to make the Portuguese language an official language of the UN. Português pode ser lÃngua oficial na ONU
Several factors detract from this campaign. The current official languages of the UN are either 1) official/dominant in many countries (English, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, and French) or 2) have several hundreds of millions of speakers (Chinese). English, Spanish, Russian and Arabic fulfill both criteria. Portuguese is a global language in that it is the official tongue of several sovereign countries on four continents. It also has over 200 million speakers. However, it exhibits some noticeable differences when compared to the current 6 UN official languages. For example, English, French, Arabic and Spanish are each official languages of multiple states and of over half of the world's countries. In contrast, four out of every five speakers of the Portuguese-speaking world live in just one country: Brazil. In addition to Brazil, Portuguese is the official language in only 7 other sovereign states; however, English is official in 53 states, French in 29 states, Arabic in 25 states, and Spanish in 20 states.
More significantly, in each part of the world with a Portuguese-speaking country, this language is overshadowed by other powerful languages that are already official languages of the UN. For example, in the Americas, the 190 million Portuguese-speaking Brazilians are overshadowed by the most spoken languages in the Western Hemisphere: Spanish (~360 million speakers) and English (~340 million speakers). Portuguese is overshadowed to an even greater extent in Europe, the continent in which four of the six UN languages originated (English, French, Spanish, and Russian). In the European context, Portuguese is not even among the ten most spoken languages on the continent, with a number of speakers comparable to those of Czech and Bulgarian. In Africa, Portuguese is eclipsed as a continental lingua franca by English and French in countries that surround Cape Verde, São Tomé and PrÃncipe, Guinea-Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique. Finally in Asia, a continent with several languages that have hundreds of millions of speakers, the only sovereign state with Portuguese as an official language is East Timor, which has only a million people. While Brazilian migration has brought 300,000 fluent Portuguese speakers to Japan, Portuguese does not enjoy any official status whatsoever in that country. Therefore, while Portuguese will gain increasing importance as Brazil continues its development as a major economy, it will likely face the same hurdles that prevented Japanese and German (both languages of major global economies with millions of speakers) from becoming both international languages and official ones of the UN.
There is a maximum of 9 oral vowels and 19 consonants, though some varieties of the language have fewer phonemes (Brazilian Portuguese has 8 oral vowels). There are also five nasal vowels, which some linguists regard as allophones of the oral vowels, ten oral diphthongs, and five nasal diphthongs. In total, Brazilian Portuguese has 13 vowel phonemes. /ref> Handbook of the International Phonetic Association'' pg. 126-130; the reference applies to the entire section
Chart of monophthongs of the Portuguese of Lisbon
To the seven vowels of Vulgar Latin, European Portuguese has added two near central vowels, one of which tends to be elided in rapid speech, like the e caduc of French (represented as either , or , or ). The high vowels and the low vowels are four distinct phonemes, and they alternate in various forms of apophony. Like Catalan, Portuguese uses vowel quality to contrast stressed syllables with unstressed syllables: isolated vowels tend to be raised, and in some cases centralized, when unstressed. Nasal diphthongs occur mostly at the ends of words.
The consonant inventory of Portuguese is fairly conservative. The medieval affricates , , , merged with the fricatives , , , , respectively, but not with each other, and there were no other significant changes to the consonant phonemes since then. However, some notable dialectal variants and allophones have appeared, among which:
* In many regions of Brazil, and have the affricate allophones and , respectively, before and . (Quebec French has a similar phenomenon, with alveolar affricates instead of postalveolars. Japanese is another example).
* At the end of a syllable, the phoneme has the allophone in Brazilian Portuguese (L-vocalization).
* In many parts of Brazil and Angola, intervocalic is pronounced as a nasalized palatal approximant which nasalizes the preceding vowel, so that, for instance, is pronounced .
* In most of Brazil, the alveolar sibilants and occur in complementary distribution at the ends of syllables, depending on whether the consonant that follows is voiceless or voiced, as in English. But in most of Portugal and parts of Brazil, sibilants are postalveolar at the ends of syllables, before voiceless consonants, and before voiced consonants (in Judeo-Spanish, is often replaced with at the ends of syllables, too).
* There is considerable dialectal variation in the value of the rhotic phoneme . See Guttural R in Portuguese, for details.
;Excerpt from the Portuguese national epic Os LusÃadas, by author LuÃs de Camões (I, 33)
A notable aspect of the grammar of Portuguese is the verb. Morphologically, more verbal inflections from classical Latin have been preserved by Portuguese than by any other major Romance language. See Romance copula, for a detailed comparison. It has also some innovations not found in other Romance languages (except Galician and the Fala):
* The present perfect tense has an iterative sense unique to Galician-Portuguese language group. It denotes an action or a series of actions which began in the past and are expected to keep repeating in the future. For instance, the sentence Tenho tentado falar com ela would be translated to "I have been trying to talk to her", not "I have tried to talk to her". On the other hand, the correct translation of the question "Have you heard the latest news?" is not *Tem ouvido a última notÃcia?, but Ouviu a última notÃcia?, since no repetition is implied. Squartini, Mario (1998) Verbal Periphrases in Romance â Aspect, Actionality, and Grammaticalization ISBN 3-11-016160-5
* The future subjunctive tense, which was developed by medieval West Iberian Romance, but has now fallen into disuse in Spanish and Galician, is still used in vernacular Portuguese. It appears in dependent clauses that denote a condition which must be fulfilled in the future, so that the independent clause will occur. English normally employs the present tense under the same circumstances:
:Se eu for eleito presidente, mudarei a lei.
:If I am elected president, I will change the law.
:Quando fores mais velho, vais entender.
:When you are older, you will understand.
* The personal infinitive: infinitives can inflect according to their subject in person and number, often showing who is expected to perform a certain action; cf. Ã melhor voltares "It is better [for you] to go back," Ã melhor voltarmos "It is better [for us] to go back." Perhaps for this reason, infinitive clauses replace subjunctive clauses more often in Portuguese than in other Romance languages.
Portuguese is written with 23 or 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, making use of five diacritics to denote stress, vowel height, contraction, nasalization, and other sound changes (acute accent, grave accent, circumflex accent, tilde, and cedilla). Accented characters and digraphs are not counted as separate letters for collation purposes.
* Portuguese literature
* Portuguese poetry
* List of Portuguese language poets
* Brazilian literature
* List of Brazilian poets
* Lusophone
* Geographic distribution of Portuguese
* List of countries where Portuguese is an official language
* Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP)
* Instituto Camões
* International Portuguese Language Institute
* Museum of the Portuguese Language
* Portuguese-based creole languages
* Portuñol
* Portuguese in the United States
* List of English words of Portuguese origin
* Spelling reforms of Portuguese
* História da Lingua Portuguesa Instituto Camões
* A LÃngua Portuguesa in Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil (...)
* Poesia e Prosa Medievais, by Maria Ema Tarracha Ferreira, Ulisseia 1998, 3rd ed., ISBN 978-972-568-124-4.
* Bases Temáticas â LÃngua Portuguesa in Instituto Camões
* Portuguese Literature in The Catholic Encyclopedia
* International Phonetic Association (1999) Handbook of the International Phonetic Association ISBN 0-521-63751-1
* Mateus, Maria Helena & d'Andrade, Ernesto (2000) The Phonology of Portuguese ISBN 0-19-823581-X (Excerpt available at Google Books)
* Bergström, Magnus & Reis, Neves Prontuário Ortográfico Editorial NotÃcias, 2004.
* A pronúncia do português europeu - European Portuguese Pronunciation
* Dialects of Portuguese at the Instituto Camões
* Audio samples of the dialects of Portugal
* Audio samples of the dialects from outside Europe
* Antônio Houaiss (2000), Dicionário Houaiss da LÃngua Portuguesa (228,500 entries).
* Aurélio Buarque de Holanda Ferreira, Novo Dicionário da LÃngua Portuguesa (1809pp)
* English-Portuguese-Chinese Dictionary (Freeware, for Windows/Linux/Mac)
* Lindley Cintra, LuÃs F. Nova Proposta de Classificação dos Dialectos Galego-Portugueses (PDF) Boletim de Filologia, Lisboa, Centro de Estudos Filológicos, 1971.
*Swadesh list in English and Portuguese
* English Portuguese Translation Dictionary for English Portuguese translations
* Learn Portuguese BBC
* Portuguese Language Notes BBC
* AULP - Associação das Universidades de LÃngua Portuguesa Portuguese Language Universities Association.
* Portuguese in East Timor an interview with Dr. Geoffrey Hull.
* Portuguese Dictionary with gender and type of words.
* ABL - Academia Brasileira de letras (em português) - (Brazilian Academy of Letters) (Portuguese)
* Brazilian Portuguese Free resources for Portuguese learners.
* EasyPortuguese Free Portuguese learning site with audio.
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Portuguese_language | Is it derived from the Latin spoken by the romanized pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula (namely the Gallaeci, the Lusitanians, the Celtici and the Conii) around 2000 years ago? | yes | data/set5/a1 | Portuguese_language
Portuguese ( or lÃngua portuguesa) is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia and northern Portugal. It is derived from the Latin spoken by the romanized pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula (namely the Gallaeci, the Lusitanians, the Celtici and the Conii) around 2000 years ago. It spread worldwide in the 15th and 16th centuries as Portugal established a colonial and commercial empire (1415â1999) which spanned from Brazil in the Americas to Goa and other parts of India, Macau in China and Timor (north of Australia). It was used as the exclusive lingua franca on the island of Sri Lanka for almost 350 years. During that time, many creole languages based on Portuguese also appeared around the world, especially in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean.
Today it is one of the world's major languages, ranked seventh according to number of native speakers (between 205 and 230 million). It is the language of about half of South America's population, even though Brazil is the only Portuguese-speaking nation in the Americas. It is also a major lingua franca in Portugal's former colonial possessions in Africa. It is an official language in nine countries (see the table on the right), also being co-official with Cantonese Chinese in Macau and Tetum in East Timor. There are sizeable communities of Portuguese speakers in various regions of North America, notably in the United States (New Jersey, New England, California and south Florida) and in Ontario, Canada.
In various aspects, the system of sounds in Portuguese is more similar to the phonologies of Catalan or French than, say, those of Spanish or Italian. Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes once called Portuguese "the sweet language", /ref> Lope de Vega referred to it as "suave" 'Encyclopedia of Literature' Joseph T. Shipley; Philosophical Library, 1946. 1188 pgs. while Brazilian writer Olavo Bilac poetically described it as a última flor do Lácio, inculta e bela: "the last flower of Latium, wild and beautiful". Portuguese is also termed "the language of Camões", after one of Portugal's best known literary figures, LuÃs Vaz de Camões.
Countries and regions where Portuguese has official status.
Members of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries.
Today, Portuguese is the official language of Angola, Brazil (190.6 million), IBGE Official website Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Portugal (10.6 million), INE Official website São Tomé and PrÃncipe and Mozambique. CPLP Official website It is also one of the official languages of the special administrative region of Macau (with Chinese) and East Timor, (with Tetum). It is the language of most of the population in Portugal (100%) , Brazil (100%) , São Tomé and PrÃncipe (99.8%) and Angola (80%), and is the most widely spoken language in Mozambique (40%), though only 6.5% are native speakers. No data are available for Cape Verde, but almost all the population is bilingual, and the monolingual population speaks Cape Verdean Creole. See the main article Geographic distribution of Portuguese, for references.
Small Portuguese-speaking communities subsist in former overseas colonies of Portugal such as Macau, where it is spoken by 7% of the population, and East Timor (13.6%).
Uruguay gave Portuguese an equal status to Spanish in its educational system at the north border with Brazil. In the rest of the country, it is taught as an obligatory subject beginning in the 6th grade. Uruguay recently adopted Portuguese language in its education system as an obligatory subject /ref>
It is also spoken by substantial immigrant communities, though not official, in Andorra, Australia, The Portuguese-Speaking Community in Australia France, Luxembourg, Jersey (with a statistically significant Portuguese-speaking community of approximately 10,000 people), Paraguay, Namibia, South Africa, Switzerland, Venezuela, Japan JAPÃO: IMIGRANTES BRASILEIROS POPULARIZAM LÃNGUA PORTUGUESA and the U.S. states of California, Connecticut, Where America's Other Languages Are Spoken Florida, Widely spoken but 'minor'? Portuguese seeks respect Massachusetts, New Jersey, Hispanic Reading Room of the U.S. Library of Congress website, Twentieth-Century Arrivals from Portugal Settle in Newark, New Jersey, New York Brazucas (Brazilians living in New York) and Rhode Island. Hispanic Reading Room of the U.S. Library of Congress website, Whaling, Fishing, and Industrial Employment in Southeastern New England
In some parts of India, such as Goa Portuguese Language in Goa and Daman and Diu, The Portuguese Experience: The Case of Goa, Daman and Diu Portuguese is still spoken. There are also significant populations of Portuguese speakers in Canada (mainly concentrated in and around Toronto), Multicultural Canada Bermuda World InfoZone: Bermuda and the Netherlands Antilles.
Portuguese is an official language of several international organizations. The Community of Portuguese Language Countries (with the Portuguese acronym CPLP) consists of the eight independent countries that have Portuguese as an official language. It is also an official language of the European Union, accounting for 3% of its population, EUROPA website Languages in the EU Mercosul, the Organization of American States, the Organization of Ibero-American States, the Union of South American Nations, and the African Union (one of the working languages) and one of the official languages of other organizations. The Portuguese language is gaining popularity in Africa, Asia, and South America as a second language for study.
Estação da Luz, home of the Museum of the Portuguese Language, in São Paulo, Brazil.
Portuguese and Spanish are the fastest-growing European languages (with the exception of English, being the world lingua franca) , and, according to estimates by UNESCO, the Portuguese language has the highest potential for growth as an international language in southern Africa and South America. The Portuguese-speaking African countries are expected to have a combined population of 83 million by 2050. In total, the Portuguese-speaking countries will have 335 million people by the same year. Since 1991, when Brazil signed into the economic market of Mercosul with other South American nations, such as Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay, there has been an increase in interest in the study of Portuguese in those South American countries. The demographic weight of Brazil in the continent will continue to strengthen the presence of the language in the region. Although in the early 21st century, after Macau was ceded to China in 1999, the use of Portuguese was in decline in Asia, it is becoming a language of opportunity there; mostly because of East Timor's boost in the number of speakers in the last five years but also because of increased Chinese diplomatic and financial ties with Portuguese-speaking countries.
In July 2007, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema announced his government's decision to establish Portuguese as Equatorial Guinea's third official language, to meet the requirements to apply for full membership of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries. This upgrading from its current Associate Observer condition would result in Equatorial Guinea being able to access several professional and academic exchange programs and the facilitation of cross-border circulation of citizens. Its application is currently being assessed by other CPLP members. "Obiang convierte al portugués en tercer idioma oficial para entrar en la Comunidad lusófona de Naciones", Terra. 13-07-2007
In March 1994 the Bosque de Portugal (Portugal's Woods) was founded in the Brazilian city of Curitiba. The park houses the Portuguese Language Memorial, which honors the Portuguese immigrants and the countries that adopted the Portuguese language. Originally there were seven nations represented with pillars, but the independence of East Timor brought yet another pillar for that nation in 2007.
In March 2006, the Museum of the Portuguese Language, an interactive museum about the Portuguese language, was founded in São Paulo, Brazil, the city with the greatest number of Portuguese speakers in the world.
Portuguese is a pluricentric language with two main groups of dialects, those of Brazil and those of the Old World. For historical reasons, the dialects of Africa and Asia are generally closer to those of Portugal than the Brazilian dialects, although in some aspects of their phonetics, especially the pronunciation of unstressed vowels, they resemble Brazilian Portuguese more than European Portuguese. They have not been studied as widely as European and Brazilian Portuguese.
Audio samples of some dialects of Portuguese are available below. From Audio samples of the dialects of Portuguese at the Instituto Camões website. There are some differences between the areas but these are the best approximations possible. For example, the caipira dialect has some differences from the one of Minas Gerais, but in general it is very close. A good example of Brazilian Portuguese may be found in the capital city, BrasÃlia, because of the generalized population from all parts of the country.
Portuguese dialects of Angola
# Benguelense â Benguela province.
# 11px Luandense â Luanda province.
# Sulista â South of Angola.
Dialects of Portuguese in Brazil
# Caipira â States of São Paulo (countryside; the city of São Paulo and the eastern areas of the state have their own accent, called paulistano); southern Minas Gerais, northern Paraná, Goiás and Mato Grosso do Sul.
# Cearense â Ceará.
# Baiano â Bahia.
# 11px Fluminense â Variants spoken in the states of Rio de Janeiro (excluding the city of Rio de Janeiro and its adjacent metropolitan areas, which have their own dialect, called carioca).
# Gaúcho â Rio Grande do Sul. (There are many distinct accents in Rio Grande do Sul, mainly due to the heavy influx of European immigrants of diverse origins, those which have settled several colonies throughout the state.)
# Mineiro â Minas Gerais (not prevalent in the Triângulo Mineiro, southern and southeastern Minas Gerais and also excluding the city of Belo Horizonte, which has its own accent.).
# 11px Nordestino â northeastern states of Brazil (Pernambuco, ParaÃba and Rio Grande do Norte have a particular way of speaking). Note: the speaker of this sound file is from Rio, and he is talking about his experience with Nordestino and Nortista accents.
# Nortista â Amazon Basin states.
# Paulistano â Variants spoken around São Paulo city and the eastern areas of São Paulo state.
# Sertanejo â States of Goiás and Mato Grosso (the city of Cuiabá has a particular way of speaking).
# Sulista â Variants spoken in the areas between the northern regions of Rio Grande do Sul and southern regions of São Paulo state. (The cities of Curitiba, Florianópolis, and Itapetininga have fairly distinct accents as well.)
# Carioca â Variants spoken in Rio de Janeiro City and Niteroi
Dialects of Portuguese in Portugal
# 11px Açoriano (Azorean) â Azores.
# 11px Alentejano â Alentejo
# 11px Algarvio â Algarve (there is a particular dialect in a small part of western Algarve).
# 11px Alto-Minhoto â North of Braga (hinterland).
# 11px Baixo-Beirão; Alto-Alentejano â Central Portugal (hinterland).
# 11px Beirão â Central Portugal.
# 11px Estremenho â Regions of Coimbra and Lisbon (the Lisbon dialect has some peculiar features not shared with the one of Coimbra).
# 11px Madeirense (Madeiran) â Madeira.
# 11px Nortenho â Regions of Braga and Porto.
# 11px Transmontano â Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro.
* Cape Verde â 11px Português cabo-verdiano (Cape Verdean Portuguese)
* Daman and Diu, India â Damaense.
* East Timor â 11px Timorense (East Timorese)
* Goa, India â Goês.
* Guinea-Bissau â 11px Guineense (Guinean Portuguese).
* Macau, China â 11px Macaense (Macanese)
* Mozambique â 11px Moçambicano (Mozambican)
* São Tomé and PrÃncipe â 11px Santomense
* Uruguay â Dialectos Portugueses del Uruguay (DPU).
Differences between dialects are mostly of accent and vocabulary, but between the Brazilian dialects and other dialects, especially in their most colloquial forms, there can also be some grammatical differences. The Portuguese-based creoles spoken in various parts of Africa, Asia, and the Americas are independent languages which should not be confused with Portuguese itself.
Baroque Library of the Coimbra University, Portugal.
Arriving in the Iberian Peninsula in 216 BC, the Romans brought with them the Latin language, from which all Romance languages descend. The language was spread by arriving Roman soldiers, settlers, and merchants, who built Roman cities mostly near the settlements of previous civilizations.
Between 409 and 711 AD, as the Roman Empire collapsed in Western Europe, the Iberian Peninsula was conquered by Germanic peoples (Migration Period). The occupiers, mainly Suebi and Visigoths, quickly adopted late Roman culture and the Vulgar Latin dialects of the peninsula. After the Moorish invasion of 711, Arabic became the administrative language in the conquered regions, but most of the population continued to speak a form of Romance commonly known as Mozarabic. The influence exerted by Arabic on the Romance dialects spoken in the Christian kingdoms of the north was small, affecting mainly their lexicon.
The earliest surviving records of a distinctively Portuguese language are administrative documents of the 9th century, still interspersed with many Latin phrases. Today this phase is known as Proto-Portuguese (between the 9th and the 12th centuries). In the first period of Old Portuguese â Galician-Portuguese Period (from the 12th to the 14th century) â the language gradually came into general use. For some time, it was the language of preference for lyric poetry in Christian Hispania, much as Occitan was the language of the poetry of the troubadours. Portugal became an independent kingdom from the Kingdom of Leon in 1139, under king Afonso I of Portugal. In 1290, king Denis of Portugal created the first Portuguese university in Lisbon (the Estudos Gerais, later moved to Coimbra) and decreed that Portuguese, then simply called the "common language" should be known as the Portuguese language and used officially.
In the second period of Old Portuguese, from the 14th to the 16th centuries, with the Portuguese discoveries, the language was taken to many regions of Asia, Africa and the Americas (nowadays, the great majority of Portuguese speakers live in Brazil, in South America). By the 16th century, it had become a lingua franca in Asia and Africa, used not only for colonial administration and trade but also for communication between local officials and Europeans of all nationalities. Its spread was helped by mixed marriages between Portuguese and local people, and by its association with Roman Catholic missionary efforts, which led to the formation of a creole language called Kristang in many parts of Asia (from the word cristão, "Christian"). The language continued to be popular in parts of Asia until the 19th century. Some Portuguese-speaking Christian communities in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Indonesia preserved their language even after they were isolated from Portugal.
The end of the Old Portuguese period was marked by the publication of the Cancioneiro Geral by Garcia de Resende, in 1516. The early times of Modern Portuguese, which spans a period from the 16th century to the present day, were characterized by an increase in the number of learned words borrowed from Classical Latin and Classical Greek since the Renaissance, which greatly enriched the lexicon.
A distinctive feature of Portuguese is that it preserved the stressed vowels of Vulgar Latin, which became diphthongs in other Romance languages; cf. Fr. pierre, Sp. piedra, It. pietra, Ro. piatrÄ, Port. pedra ("stone"), from Lat. petram; or Sp. fuego, It. fuoco, Fr. feu, Ro. foc, Port. fogo, from Lat. focus ("fire"). Another characteristic of early Portuguese was the loss of intervocalic l and n, sometimes followed by the merger of the two surrounding vowels, or by the insertion of an epenthetic vowel between them: cf. Lat. salire ("to leave"), tenere ("to have"), catenam ("chain"), Sp. salir, tener, cadena, Port. sair, ter, cadeia.
When the elided consonant was n, it often nasalized the preceding vowel: cf. Lat. manum ("hand"), ranam ("frog"), bonum ("good"), Port. mão, rãa, bõo (now mão, rã, bom). This process was the source of most of the nasal diphthongs which are typical of Portuguese. In particular, the Latin endings -anem, -anum and -onem became -ão in most cases, cf. Lat. canem ("dog"), germanum ("brother"), rationem ("reason") with Modern Port. cão, irmão, razão, and their plurals -anes, -anos, -ones normally became -ães, -ãos, -ões, cf. cães, irmãos, razões.
Library of the Mafra National Palace, Portugal.
Most of the lexicon of Portuguese is derived from Latin. Nevertheless, because of the Moorish occupation of the Iberian Peninsula during the Middle Ages, and the participation of Portugal in the Age of Discovery, it has adopted loanwords from all over the world.
Very few Portuguese words can be traced to the pre-Roman inhabitants of Portugal, which included the Gallaeci, Lusitanians, Celtici and Cynetes. The Phoenicians and Carthaginians, briefly present, also left some scarce traces. Some notable examples are abóbora "pumpkin" and bezerro "year-old calf", from the nearby Celtiberian language (probably through the Celtici); cerveja "beer", from Celtic; and cachorro "dog", from Basque.
In the 5th century, the Iberian Peninsula (the Roman Hispania) was conquered by the Germanic Suebi and Visigoths. As they adopted the Roman civilization and language, however, these people contributed only a few words to the lexicon, mostly related to warfare â such as espora "spur", estaca "stake", and guerra "war", from Gothic *spaúra, *stakka, and *wirro, respectively. The influence also exists in toponymic and patronymic surnames borne by Visigoth sovereigns and their descendants, and it dwells on placenames such has Ermesinde, Esposende and Resende where sinde and sende are derived from the Germanic "sinths" (military expedition) and in the case of Resende, the prefix re comes from Germanic "reths" (council).
Between the 9th and 13th centuries, Portuguese acquired about 800 words from Arabic by influence of Moorish Iberia. They are often recognizable by the initial Arabic article a(l)-, and include many common words such as aldeia "village" from اÙضÙعة aldaya, alface "lettuce" from اÙخس alkhass, armazém "warehouse" from اÙÙ
خز٠almahazan, and azeite "olive oil" from اÙزÙت azzait. From Arabic came also the grammatically peculiar word oxalá إ٠شاء اÙÙÙ "hopefully". The Mozambican currency name metical was derived from the word Ù
تÙا٠mitqÄl, a unit of weight. The word Mozambique itself is from the Arabic name of sultan Muça Alebique (Musa Alibiki).
Starting in the 15th century, the Portuguese maritime explorations led to the introduction of many loanwords from Asian languages. For instance, catana "cutlass" from Japanese katana and chá "tea" from Chinese 'chá'.
From South America came batata "potato", from Taino; ananás and abacaxi, from Tupi-Guarani naná and Tupi ibá cati, respectively (two species of pineapple), and tucano "toucan" from Guarani tucan. See List of Brazil state name etymologies, for some more examples.
From the 16th to the 19th centuries, because of the role of Portugal as intermediary in the Atlantic slave trade, and the establishment of large Portuguese colonies in Angola, Mozambique, and Brazil, Portuguese got several words of African and Amerind origin, especially names for most of the animals and plants found in those territories. While those terms are mostly used in the former colonies, many became current in European Portuguese as well. From Kimbundu, for example, came kifumate â cafuné "head caress", kusula â caçula "youngest child", marimbondo "tropical wasp", and kubungula â bungular "to dance like a wizard".
Finally, it has received a steady influx of loanwords from other European languages. For example, melena "hair lock", fiambre "wet-cured ham" (in contrast with presunto "dry-cured ham" from Latin prae-exsuctus "dehydrated"), and castelhano "Castilian", from Spanish; colchete/crochê "bracket"/"crochet", paletó "jacket", batom "lipstick", and filé/filete "steak"/"slice" respectively, from French crochet, paletot, bâton, filet; macarrão "pasta", piloto "pilot", carroça "carriage", and barraca "barrack", from Italian maccherone, pilota, carrozza, baracca; and bife "steak", futebol, revólver, estoque, folclore, time from English beef,
football, revolver, stock, folklore, and team.
Portuguese belongs to the West Iberian branch of the Romance languages, and it has special ties with the following members of this group:
* Galician and Fala, its closest relatives. See below.
* Spanish, the major language closest to Portuguese. (See also Differences between Spanish and Portuguese.)
* Mirandese and Leonese, two other West Iberian languages spoken in Portugal.
* Judeo-Portuguese and Judeo-Spanish, languages spoken by Sephardic Jews, and which remained close to Portuguese and Spanish.
Despite the obvious lexical and grammatical similarities between Portuguese and other Romance languages, it is not mutually intelligible with them. Apart from Galician, Portuguese speakers will usually need some formal study of basic grammar and vocabulary, before attaining a reasonable level of comprehension of those languages, and vice versa. Native speakers of Portuguese do tend to understand standard Spanish which is spoken clearly, but the reverse is generally not true unless formal education is involved.
The closest language to Portuguese is Galician, spoken in the autonomous community of Galicia (northwestern Spain). The two were at one time a single language, known today as Galician-Portuguese, but since the political separation of Portugal from Galicia they have diverged somewhat, especially in pronunciation and vocabulary. Nevertheless, the core vocabulary and grammar of Galician are still noticeably closer to Portuguese than to those of Spanish. In particular, like Portuguese, it uses the future subjunctive, the personal infinitive, and the synthetic pluperfect (see the section on the grammar of Portuguese, below). Mutual intelligibility (estimated at 85% by R. A. Hall, Jr., 1989) Ethnologue is good between Galicians and northern Portuguese, but poorer between Galicians and speakers from central Portugal.
The Fala language is another descendant of Galician-Portuguese, spoken by a small number of people in the Spanish towns of Valverde del Fresno, Eljas and San MartÃn de Trevejo (autonomous community of Extremadura, near the border with Portugal).
Portuguese has provided loanwords to many languages, such as Indonesian, Manado Malay, Sri Lankan Tamil and Sinhalese (see Sri Lanka Indo-Portuguese), Malay, Bengali, English, Hindi, Konkani, Marathi, Tetum, Xitsonga, Papiamentu, Japanese, Lanc-Patuá (spoken in northern Brazil) and Sranan Tongo (spoken in Suriname). It left a strong influence on the lÃngua brasÃlica, a Tupi-Guarani language which was the most widely spoken in Brazil until the 18th century, and on the language spoken around Sikka in Flores Island, Indonesia. In nearby Larantuka, Portuguese is used for prayers in Holy Week rituals.
The Japanese-Portuguese dictionary Nippo Jisho (1603) was the first dictionary of Japanese in a European language, a product of Jesuit missionary activity in Japan. Building on the work of earlier Portuguese missionaries, the Dictionarium Anamiticum, Lusitanum et Latinum (Annamite-Portuguese-Latin dictionary) of Alexandre de Rhodes (1651) introduced the modern orthography of Vietnamese, which is based on the orthography of 17th-century Portuguese. The Romanization of Chinese was also influenced by the Portuguese language (among others), particularly regarding Chinese surnames; one example is Mei. During 1583-88 Italian Jesuits Michele Ruggieri and Matteo Ricci created a Portuguese-Chinese dictionary - the first ever European-Chinese dictionary. Yves Camus, "Jesuits' Journeys in Chinese Studies" "Dicionário Português-Chinês : Pu Han ci dian : Portuguese-Chinese dictionary", by Michele Ruggieri, Matteo Ricci; edited by John W. Witek. Published 2001, Biblioteca Nacional. ISBN 9725652983. Partial preview available on Google Books
See also List of English words of Portuguese origin, Loan words in Indonesian, Japanese words of Portuguese origin, Borrowed words in Malay, Sinhala words of Portuguese origin, Loan words from Portuguese in Sri Lankan Tamil.
Beginning in the 16th century, the extensive contacts between Portuguese travelers and settlers, African slaves, and local populations led to the appearance of many pidgins with varying amounts of Portuguese influence. As each of these pidgins became the mother tongue of succeeding generations, they evolved into fully fledged creole languages, which remained in use in many parts of Asia and Africa until the 18th century. Some Portuguese-based or Portuguese-influenced creoles are still spoken today, by over 3 million people worldwide, especially people of partial Portuguese ancestry.
There is a growing number of people in the Portuguese-speaking media and the internet who are presenting the case to the CPLP and other organizations to run a debate in the Lusophone community with the purpose of bringing forward a petition to make Portuguese an official language of the United Nations.
In October 2005, during the international Convention of the Elos Club International that took place in Tavira, Portugal, ONU: Petição para tornar português lÃngua oficial a petition was written and unanimously approved whose text can be found on the internet with the title Petição Para Tornar Oficial o Idioma Português na ONU. Romulo Alexandre Soares, president of the Brazil-Portugal Chamber highlights that the positioning of Brazil in the international arena as one of the emergent powers of the 21st century, the size of its population, and the presence of the language around the world provides legitimacy and justifies a petition to the UN to make the Portuguese language an official language of the UN. Português pode ser lÃngua oficial na ONU
Several factors detract from this campaign. The current official languages of the UN are either 1) official/dominant in many countries (English, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, and French) or 2) have several hundreds of millions of speakers (Chinese). English, Spanish, Russian and Arabic fulfill both criteria. Portuguese is a global language in that it is the official tongue of several sovereign countries on four continents. It also has over 200 million speakers. However, it exhibits some noticeable differences when compared to the current 6 UN official languages. For example, English, French, Arabic and Spanish are each official languages of multiple states and of over half of the world's countries. In contrast, four out of every five speakers of the Portuguese-speaking world live in just one country: Brazil. In addition to Brazil, Portuguese is the official language in only 7 other sovereign states; however, English is official in 53 states, French in 29 states, Arabic in 25 states, and Spanish in 20 states.
More significantly, in each part of the world with a Portuguese-speaking country, this language is overshadowed by other powerful languages that are already official languages of the UN. For example, in the Americas, the 190 million Portuguese-speaking Brazilians are overshadowed by the most spoken languages in the Western Hemisphere: Spanish (~360 million speakers) and English (~340 million speakers). Portuguese is overshadowed to an even greater extent in Europe, the continent in which four of the six UN languages originated (English, French, Spanish, and Russian). In the European context, Portuguese is not even among the ten most spoken languages on the continent, with a number of speakers comparable to those of Czech and Bulgarian. In Africa, Portuguese is eclipsed as a continental lingua franca by English and French in countries that surround Cape Verde, São Tomé and PrÃncipe, Guinea-Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique. Finally in Asia, a continent with several languages that have hundreds of millions of speakers, the only sovereign state with Portuguese as an official language is East Timor, which has only a million people. While Brazilian migration has brought 300,000 fluent Portuguese speakers to Japan, Portuguese does not enjoy any official status whatsoever in that country. Therefore, while Portuguese will gain increasing importance as Brazil continues its development as a major economy, it will likely face the same hurdles that prevented Japanese and German (both languages of major global economies with millions of speakers) from becoming both international languages and official ones of the UN.
There is a maximum of 9 oral vowels and 19 consonants, though some varieties of the language have fewer phonemes (Brazilian Portuguese has 8 oral vowels). There are also five nasal vowels, which some linguists regard as allophones of the oral vowels, ten oral diphthongs, and five nasal diphthongs. In total, Brazilian Portuguese has 13 vowel phonemes. /ref> Handbook of the International Phonetic Association'' pg. 126-130; the reference applies to the entire section
Chart of monophthongs of the Portuguese of Lisbon
To the seven vowels of Vulgar Latin, European Portuguese has added two near central vowels, one of which tends to be elided in rapid speech, like the e caduc of French (represented as either , or , or ). The high vowels and the low vowels are four distinct phonemes, and they alternate in various forms of apophony. Like Catalan, Portuguese uses vowel quality to contrast stressed syllables with unstressed syllables: isolated vowels tend to be raised, and in some cases centralized, when unstressed. Nasal diphthongs occur mostly at the ends of words.
The consonant inventory of Portuguese is fairly conservative. The medieval affricates , , , merged with the fricatives , , , , respectively, but not with each other, and there were no other significant changes to the consonant phonemes since then. However, some notable dialectal variants and allophones have appeared, among which:
* In many regions of Brazil, and have the affricate allophones and , respectively, before and . (Quebec French has a similar phenomenon, with alveolar affricates instead of postalveolars. Japanese is another example).
* At the end of a syllable, the phoneme has the allophone in Brazilian Portuguese (L-vocalization).
* In many parts of Brazil and Angola, intervocalic is pronounced as a nasalized palatal approximant which nasalizes the preceding vowel, so that, for instance, is pronounced .
* In most of Brazil, the alveolar sibilants and occur in complementary distribution at the ends of syllables, depending on whether the consonant that follows is voiceless or voiced, as in English. But in most of Portugal and parts of Brazil, sibilants are postalveolar at the ends of syllables, before voiceless consonants, and before voiced consonants (in Judeo-Spanish, is often replaced with at the ends of syllables, too).
* There is considerable dialectal variation in the value of the rhotic phoneme . See Guttural R in Portuguese, for details.
;Excerpt from the Portuguese national epic Os LusÃadas, by author LuÃs de Camões (I, 33)
A notable aspect of the grammar of Portuguese is the verb. Morphologically, more verbal inflections from classical Latin have been preserved by Portuguese than by any other major Romance language. See Romance copula, for a detailed comparison. It has also some innovations not found in other Romance languages (except Galician and the Fala):
* The present perfect tense has an iterative sense unique to Galician-Portuguese language group. It denotes an action or a series of actions which began in the past and are expected to keep repeating in the future. For instance, the sentence Tenho tentado falar com ela would be translated to "I have been trying to talk to her", not "I have tried to talk to her". On the other hand, the correct translation of the question "Have you heard the latest news?" is not *Tem ouvido a última notÃcia?, but Ouviu a última notÃcia?, since no repetition is implied. Squartini, Mario (1998) Verbal Periphrases in Romance â Aspect, Actionality, and Grammaticalization ISBN 3-11-016160-5
* The future subjunctive tense, which was developed by medieval West Iberian Romance, but has now fallen into disuse in Spanish and Galician, is still used in vernacular Portuguese. It appears in dependent clauses that denote a condition which must be fulfilled in the future, so that the independent clause will occur. English normally employs the present tense under the same circumstances:
:Se eu for eleito presidente, mudarei a lei.
:If I am elected president, I will change the law.
:Quando fores mais velho, vais entender.
:When you are older, you will understand.
* The personal infinitive: infinitives can inflect according to their subject in person and number, often showing who is expected to perform a certain action; cf. Ã melhor voltares "It is better [for you] to go back," Ã melhor voltarmos "It is better [for us] to go back." Perhaps for this reason, infinitive clauses replace subjunctive clauses more often in Portuguese than in other Romance languages.
Portuguese is written with 23 or 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, making use of five diacritics to denote stress, vowel height, contraction, nasalization, and other sound changes (acute accent, grave accent, circumflex accent, tilde, and cedilla). Accented characters and digraphs are not counted as separate letters for collation purposes.
* Portuguese literature
* Portuguese poetry
* List of Portuguese language poets
* Brazilian literature
* List of Brazilian poets
* Lusophone
* Geographic distribution of Portuguese
* List of countries where Portuguese is an official language
* Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP)
* Instituto Camões
* International Portuguese Language Institute
* Museum of the Portuguese Language
* Portuguese-based creole languages
* Portuñol
* Portuguese in the United States
* List of English words of Portuguese origin
* Spelling reforms of Portuguese
* História da Lingua Portuguesa Instituto Camões
* A LÃngua Portuguesa in Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil (...)
* Poesia e Prosa Medievais, by Maria Ema Tarracha Ferreira, Ulisseia 1998, 3rd ed., ISBN 978-972-568-124-4.
* Bases Temáticas â LÃngua Portuguesa in Instituto Camões
* Portuguese Literature in The Catholic Encyclopedia
* International Phonetic Association (1999) Handbook of the International Phonetic Association ISBN 0-521-63751-1
* Mateus, Maria Helena & d'Andrade, Ernesto (2000) The Phonology of Portuguese ISBN 0-19-823581-X (Excerpt available at Google Books)
* Bergström, Magnus & Reis, Neves Prontuário Ortográfico Editorial NotÃcias, 2004.
* A pronúncia do português europeu - European Portuguese Pronunciation
* Dialects of Portuguese at the Instituto Camões
* Audio samples of the dialects of Portugal
* Audio samples of the dialects from outside Europe
* Antônio Houaiss (2000), Dicionário Houaiss da LÃngua Portuguesa (228,500 entries).
* Aurélio Buarque de Holanda Ferreira, Novo Dicionário da LÃngua Portuguesa (1809pp)
* English-Portuguese-Chinese Dictionary (Freeware, for Windows/Linux/Mac)
* Lindley Cintra, LuÃs F. Nova Proposta de Classificação dos Dialectos Galego-Portugueses (PDF) Boletim de Filologia, Lisboa, Centro de Estudos Filológicos, 1971.
*Swadesh list in English and Portuguese
* English Portuguese Translation Dictionary for English Portuguese translations
* Learn Portuguese BBC
* Portuguese Language Notes BBC
* AULP - Associação das Universidades de LÃngua Portuguesa Portuguese Language Universities Association.
* Portuguese in East Timor an interview with Dr. Geoffrey Hull.
* Portuguese Dictionary with gender and type of words.
* ABL - Academia Brasileira de letras (em português) - (Brazilian Academy of Letters) (Portuguese)
* Brazilian Portuguese Free resources for Portuguese learners.
* EasyPortuguese Free Portuguese learning site with audio.
|
Portuguese_language | Was it used as the exclusive lingua franca on the island of Sri Lanka for almost 350 years? | yes | data/set5/a1 | Portuguese_language
Portuguese ( or lÃngua portuguesa) is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia and northern Portugal. It is derived from the Latin spoken by the romanized pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula (namely the Gallaeci, the Lusitanians, the Celtici and the Conii) around 2000 years ago. It spread worldwide in the 15th and 16th centuries as Portugal established a colonial and commercial empire (1415â1999) which spanned from Brazil in the Americas to Goa and other parts of India, Macau in China and Timor (north of Australia). It was used as the exclusive lingua franca on the island of Sri Lanka for almost 350 years. During that time, many creole languages based on Portuguese also appeared around the world, especially in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean.
Today it is one of the world's major languages, ranked seventh according to number of native speakers (between 205 and 230 million). It is the language of about half of South America's population, even though Brazil is the only Portuguese-speaking nation in the Americas. It is also a major lingua franca in Portugal's former colonial possessions in Africa. It is an official language in nine countries (see the table on the right), also being co-official with Cantonese Chinese in Macau and Tetum in East Timor. There are sizeable communities of Portuguese speakers in various regions of North America, notably in the United States (New Jersey, New England, California and south Florida) and in Ontario, Canada.
In various aspects, the system of sounds in Portuguese is more similar to the phonologies of Catalan or French than, say, those of Spanish or Italian. Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes once called Portuguese "the sweet language", /ref> Lope de Vega referred to it as "suave" 'Encyclopedia of Literature' Joseph T. Shipley; Philosophical Library, 1946. 1188 pgs. while Brazilian writer Olavo Bilac poetically described it as a última flor do Lácio, inculta e bela: "the last flower of Latium, wild and beautiful". Portuguese is also termed "the language of Camões", after one of Portugal's best known literary figures, LuÃs Vaz de Camões.
Countries and regions where Portuguese has official status.
Members of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries.
Today, Portuguese is the official language of Angola, Brazil (190.6 million), IBGE Official website Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Portugal (10.6 million), INE Official website São Tomé and PrÃncipe and Mozambique. CPLP Official website It is also one of the official languages of the special administrative region of Macau (with Chinese) and East Timor, (with Tetum). It is the language of most of the population in Portugal (100%) , Brazil (100%) , São Tomé and PrÃncipe (99.8%) and Angola (80%), and is the most widely spoken language in Mozambique (40%), though only 6.5% are native speakers. No data are available for Cape Verde, but almost all the population is bilingual, and the monolingual population speaks Cape Verdean Creole. See the main article Geographic distribution of Portuguese, for references.
Small Portuguese-speaking communities subsist in former overseas colonies of Portugal such as Macau, where it is spoken by 7% of the population, and East Timor (13.6%).
Uruguay gave Portuguese an equal status to Spanish in its educational system at the north border with Brazil. In the rest of the country, it is taught as an obligatory subject beginning in the 6th grade. Uruguay recently adopted Portuguese language in its education system as an obligatory subject /ref>
It is also spoken by substantial immigrant communities, though not official, in Andorra, Australia, The Portuguese-Speaking Community in Australia France, Luxembourg, Jersey (with a statistically significant Portuguese-speaking community of approximately 10,000 people), Paraguay, Namibia, South Africa, Switzerland, Venezuela, Japan JAPÃO: IMIGRANTES BRASILEIROS POPULARIZAM LÃNGUA PORTUGUESA and the U.S. states of California, Connecticut, Where America's Other Languages Are Spoken Florida, Widely spoken but 'minor'? Portuguese seeks respect Massachusetts, New Jersey, Hispanic Reading Room of the U.S. Library of Congress website, Twentieth-Century Arrivals from Portugal Settle in Newark, New Jersey, New York Brazucas (Brazilians living in New York) and Rhode Island. Hispanic Reading Room of the U.S. Library of Congress website, Whaling, Fishing, and Industrial Employment in Southeastern New England
In some parts of India, such as Goa Portuguese Language in Goa and Daman and Diu, The Portuguese Experience: The Case of Goa, Daman and Diu Portuguese is still spoken. There are also significant populations of Portuguese speakers in Canada (mainly concentrated in and around Toronto), Multicultural Canada Bermuda World InfoZone: Bermuda and the Netherlands Antilles.
Portuguese is an official language of several international organizations. The Community of Portuguese Language Countries (with the Portuguese acronym CPLP) consists of the eight independent countries that have Portuguese as an official language. It is also an official language of the European Union, accounting for 3% of its population, EUROPA website Languages in the EU Mercosul, the Organization of American States, the Organization of Ibero-American States, the Union of South American Nations, and the African Union (one of the working languages) and one of the official languages of other organizations. The Portuguese language is gaining popularity in Africa, Asia, and South America as a second language for study.
Estação da Luz, home of the Museum of the Portuguese Language, in São Paulo, Brazil.
Portuguese and Spanish are the fastest-growing European languages (with the exception of English, being the world lingua franca) , and, according to estimates by UNESCO, the Portuguese language has the highest potential for growth as an international language in southern Africa and South America. The Portuguese-speaking African countries are expected to have a combined population of 83 million by 2050. In total, the Portuguese-speaking countries will have 335 million people by the same year. Since 1991, when Brazil signed into the economic market of Mercosul with other South American nations, such as Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay, there has been an increase in interest in the study of Portuguese in those South American countries. The demographic weight of Brazil in the continent will continue to strengthen the presence of the language in the region. Although in the early 21st century, after Macau was ceded to China in 1999, the use of Portuguese was in decline in Asia, it is becoming a language of opportunity there; mostly because of East Timor's boost in the number of speakers in the last five years but also because of increased Chinese diplomatic and financial ties with Portuguese-speaking countries.
In July 2007, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema announced his government's decision to establish Portuguese as Equatorial Guinea's third official language, to meet the requirements to apply for full membership of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries. This upgrading from its current Associate Observer condition would result in Equatorial Guinea being able to access several professional and academic exchange programs and the facilitation of cross-border circulation of citizens. Its application is currently being assessed by other CPLP members. "Obiang convierte al portugués en tercer idioma oficial para entrar en la Comunidad lusófona de Naciones", Terra. 13-07-2007
In March 1994 the Bosque de Portugal (Portugal's Woods) was founded in the Brazilian city of Curitiba. The park houses the Portuguese Language Memorial, which honors the Portuguese immigrants and the countries that adopted the Portuguese language. Originally there were seven nations represented with pillars, but the independence of East Timor brought yet another pillar for that nation in 2007.
In March 2006, the Museum of the Portuguese Language, an interactive museum about the Portuguese language, was founded in São Paulo, Brazil, the city with the greatest number of Portuguese speakers in the world.
Portuguese is a pluricentric language with two main groups of dialects, those of Brazil and those of the Old World. For historical reasons, the dialects of Africa and Asia are generally closer to those of Portugal than the Brazilian dialects, although in some aspects of their phonetics, especially the pronunciation of unstressed vowels, they resemble Brazilian Portuguese more than European Portuguese. They have not been studied as widely as European and Brazilian Portuguese.
Audio samples of some dialects of Portuguese are available below. From Audio samples of the dialects of Portuguese at the Instituto Camões website. There are some differences between the areas but these are the best approximations possible. For example, the caipira dialect has some differences from the one of Minas Gerais, but in general it is very close. A good example of Brazilian Portuguese may be found in the capital city, BrasÃlia, because of the generalized population from all parts of the country.
Portuguese dialects of Angola
# Benguelense â Benguela province.
# 11px Luandense â Luanda province.
# Sulista â South of Angola.
Dialects of Portuguese in Brazil
# Caipira â States of São Paulo (countryside; the city of São Paulo and the eastern areas of the state have their own accent, called paulistano); southern Minas Gerais, northern Paraná, Goiás and Mato Grosso do Sul.
# Cearense â Ceará.
# Baiano â Bahia.
# 11px Fluminense â Variants spoken in the states of Rio de Janeiro (excluding the city of Rio de Janeiro and its adjacent metropolitan areas, which have their own dialect, called carioca).
# Gaúcho â Rio Grande do Sul. (There are many distinct accents in Rio Grande do Sul, mainly due to the heavy influx of European immigrants of diverse origins, those which have settled several colonies throughout the state.)
# Mineiro â Minas Gerais (not prevalent in the Triângulo Mineiro, southern and southeastern Minas Gerais and also excluding the city of Belo Horizonte, which has its own accent.).
# 11px Nordestino â northeastern states of Brazil (Pernambuco, ParaÃba and Rio Grande do Norte have a particular way of speaking). Note: the speaker of this sound file is from Rio, and he is talking about his experience with Nordestino and Nortista accents.
# Nortista â Amazon Basin states.
# Paulistano â Variants spoken around São Paulo city and the eastern areas of São Paulo state.
# Sertanejo â States of Goiás and Mato Grosso (the city of Cuiabá has a particular way of speaking).
# Sulista â Variants spoken in the areas between the northern regions of Rio Grande do Sul and southern regions of São Paulo state. (The cities of Curitiba, Florianópolis, and Itapetininga have fairly distinct accents as well.)
# Carioca â Variants spoken in Rio de Janeiro City and Niteroi
Dialects of Portuguese in Portugal
# 11px Açoriano (Azorean) â Azores.
# 11px Alentejano â Alentejo
# 11px Algarvio â Algarve (there is a particular dialect in a small part of western Algarve).
# 11px Alto-Minhoto â North of Braga (hinterland).
# 11px Baixo-Beirão; Alto-Alentejano â Central Portugal (hinterland).
# 11px Beirão â Central Portugal.
# 11px Estremenho â Regions of Coimbra and Lisbon (the Lisbon dialect has some peculiar features not shared with the one of Coimbra).
# 11px Madeirense (Madeiran) â Madeira.
# 11px Nortenho â Regions of Braga and Porto.
# 11px Transmontano â Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro.
* Cape Verde â 11px Português cabo-verdiano (Cape Verdean Portuguese)
* Daman and Diu, India â Damaense.
* East Timor â 11px Timorense (East Timorese)
* Goa, India â Goês.
* Guinea-Bissau â 11px Guineense (Guinean Portuguese).
* Macau, China â 11px Macaense (Macanese)
* Mozambique â 11px Moçambicano (Mozambican)
* São Tomé and PrÃncipe â 11px Santomense
* Uruguay â Dialectos Portugueses del Uruguay (DPU).
Differences between dialects are mostly of accent and vocabulary, but between the Brazilian dialects and other dialects, especially in their most colloquial forms, there can also be some grammatical differences. The Portuguese-based creoles spoken in various parts of Africa, Asia, and the Americas are independent languages which should not be confused with Portuguese itself.
Baroque Library of the Coimbra University, Portugal.
Arriving in the Iberian Peninsula in 216 BC, the Romans brought with them the Latin language, from which all Romance languages descend. The language was spread by arriving Roman soldiers, settlers, and merchants, who built Roman cities mostly near the settlements of previous civilizations.
Between 409 and 711 AD, as the Roman Empire collapsed in Western Europe, the Iberian Peninsula was conquered by Germanic peoples (Migration Period). The occupiers, mainly Suebi and Visigoths, quickly adopted late Roman culture and the Vulgar Latin dialects of the peninsula. After the Moorish invasion of 711, Arabic became the administrative language in the conquered regions, but most of the population continued to speak a form of Romance commonly known as Mozarabic. The influence exerted by Arabic on the Romance dialects spoken in the Christian kingdoms of the north was small, affecting mainly their lexicon.
The earliest surviving records of a distinctively Portuguese language are administrative documents of the 9th century, still interspersed with many Latin phrases. Today this phase is known as Proto-Portuguese (between the 9th and the 12th centuries). In the first period of Old Portuguese â Galician-Portuguese Period (from the 12th to the 14th century) â the language gradually came into general use. For some time, it was the language of preference for lyric poetry in Christian Hispania, much as Occitan was the language of the poetry of the troubadours. Portugal became an independent kingdom from the Kingdom of Leon in 1139, under king Afonso I of Portugal. In 1290, king Denis of Portugal created the first Portuguese university in Lisbon (the Estudos Gerais, later moved to Coimbra) and decreed that Portuguese, then simply called the "common language" should be known as the Portuguese language and used officially.
In the second period of Old Portuguese, from the 14th to the 16th centuries, with the Portuguese discoveries, the language was taken to many regions of Asia, Africa and the Americas (nowadays, the great majority of Portuguese speakers live in Brazil, in South America). By the 16th century, it had become a lingua franca in Asia and Africa, used not only for colonial administration and trade but also for communication between local officials and Europeans of all nationalities. Its spread was helped by mixed marriages between Portuguese and local people, and by its association with Roman Catholic missionary efforts, which led to the formation of a creole language called Kristang in many parts of Asia (from the word cristão, "Christian"). The language continued to be popular in parts of Asia until the 19th century. Some Portuguese-speaking Christian communities in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Indonesia preserved their language even after they were isolated from Portugal.
The end of the Old Portuguese period was marked by the publication of the Cancioneiro Geral by Garcia de Resende, in 1516. The early times of Modern Portuguese, which spans a period from the 16th century to the present day, were characterized by an increase in the number of learned words borrowed from Classical Latin and Classical Greek since the Renaissance, which greatly enriched the lexicon.
A distinctive feature of Portuguese is that it preserved the stressed vowels of Vulgar Latin, which became diphthongs in other Romance languages; cf. Fr. pierre, Sp. piedra, It. pietra, Ro. piatrÄ, Port. pedra ("stone"), from Lat. petram; or Sp. fuego, It. fuoco, Fr. feu, Ro. foc, Port. fogo, from Lat. focus ("fire"). Another characteristic of early Portuguese was the loss of intervocalic l and n, sometimes followed by the merger of the two surrounding vowels, or by the insertion of an epenthetic vowel between them: cf. Lat. salire ("to leave"), tenere ("to have"), catenam ("chain"), Sp. salir, tener, cadena, Port. sair, ter, cadeia.
When the elided consonant was n, it often nasalized the preceding vowel: cf. Lat. manum ("hand"), ranam ("frog"), bonum ("good"), Port. mão, rãa, bõo (now mão, rã, bom). This process was the source of most of the nasal diphthongs which are typical of Portuguese. In particular, the Latin endings -anem, -anum and -onem became -ão in most cases, cf. Lat. canem ("dog"), germanum ("brother"), rationem ("reason") with Modern Port. cão, irmão, razão, and their plurals -anes, -anos, -ones normally became -ães, -ãos, -ões, cf. cães, irmãos, razões.
Library of the Mafra National Palace, Portugal.
Most of the lexicon of Portuguese is derived from Latin. Nevertheless, because of the Moorish occupation of the Iberian Peninsula during the Middle Ages, and the participation of Portugal in the Age of Discovery, it has adopted loanwords from all over the world.
Very few Portuguese words can be traced to the pre-Roman inhabitants of Portugal, which included the Gallaeci, Lusitanians, Celtici and Cynetes. The Phoenicians and Carthaginians, briefly present, also left some scarce traces. Some notable examples are abóbora "pumpkin" and bezerro "year-old calf", from the nearby Celtiberian language (probably through the Celtici); cerveja "beer", from Celtic; and cachorro "dog", from Basque.
In the 5th century, the Iberian Peninsula (the Roman Hispania) was conquered by the Germanic Suebi and Visigoths. As they adopted the Roman civilization and language, however, these people contributed only a few words to the lexicon, mostly related to warfare â such as espora "spur", estaca "stake", and guerra "war", from Gothic *spaúra, *stakka, and *wirro, respectively. The influence also exists in toponymic and patronymic surnames borne by Visigoth sovereigns and their descendants, and it dwells on placenames such has Ermesinde, Esposende and Resende where sinde and sende are derived from the Germanic "sinths" (military expedition) and in the case of Resende, the prefix re comes from Germanic "reths" (council).
Between the 9th and 13th centuries, Portuguese acquired about 800 words from Arabic by influence of Moorish Iberia. They are often recognizable by the initial Arabic article a(l)-, and include many common words such as aldeia "village" from اÙضÙعة aldaya, alface "lettuce" from اÙخس alkhass, armazém "warehouse" from اÙÙ
خز٠almahazan, and azeite "olive oil" from اÙزÙت azzait. From Arabic came also the grammatically peculiar word oxalá إ٠شاء اÙÙÙ "hopefully". The Mozambican currency name metical was derived from the word Ù
تÙا٠mitqÄl, a unit of weight. The word Mozambique itself is from the Arabic name of sultan Muça Alebique (Musa Alibiki).
Starting in the 15th century, the Portuguese maritime explorations led to the introduction of many loanwords from Asian languages. For instance, catana "cutlass" from Japanese katana and chá "tea" from Chinese 'chá'.
From South America came batata "potato", from Taino; ananás and abacaxi, from Tupi-Guarani naná and Tupi ibá cati, respectively (two species of pineapple), and tucano "toucan" from Guarani tucan. See List of Brazil state name etymologies, for some more examples.
From the 16th to the 19th centuries, because of the role of Portugal as intermediary in the Atlantic slave trade, and the establishment of large Portuguese colonies in Angola, Mozambique, and Brazil, Portuguese got several words of African and Amerind origin, especially names for most of the animals and plants found in those territories. While those terms are mostly used in the former colonies, many became current in European Portuguese as well. From Kimbundu, for example, came kifumate â cafuné "head caress", kusula â caçula "youngest child", marimbondo "tropical wasp", and kubungula â bungular "to dance like a wizard".
Finally, it has received a steady influx of loanwords from other European languages. For example, melena "hair lock", fiambre "wet-cured ham" (in contrast with presunto "dry-cured ham" from Latin prae-exsuctus "dehydrated"), and castelhano "Castilian", from Spanish; colchete/crochê "bracket"/"crochet", paletó "jacket", batom "lipstick", and filé/filete "steak"/"slice" respectively, from French crochet, paletot, bâton, filet; macarrão "pasta", piloto "pilot", carroça "carriage", and barraca "barrack", from Italian maccherone, pilota, carrozza, baracca; and bife "steak", futebol, revólver, estoque, folclore, time from English beef,
football, revolver, stock, folklore, and team.
Portuguese belongs to the West Iberian branch of the Romance languages, and it has special ties with the following members of this group:
* Galician and Fala, its closest relatives. See below.
* Spanish, the major language closest to Portuguese. (See also Differences between Spanish and Portuguese.)
* Mirandese and Leonese, two other West Iberian languages spoken in Portugal.
* Judeo-Portuguese and Judeo-Spanish, languages spoken by Sephardic Jews, and which remained close to Portuguese and Spanish.
Despite the obvious lexical and grammatical similarities between Portuguese and other Romance languages, it is not mutually intelligible with them. Apart from Galician, Portuguese speakers will usually need some formal study of basic grammar and vocabulary, before attaining a reasonable level of comprehension of those languages, and vice versa. Native speakers of Portuguese do tend to understand standard Spanish which is spoken clearly, but the reverse is generally not true unless formal education is involved.
The closest language to Portuguese is Galician, spoken in the autonomous community of Galicia (northwestern Spain). The two were at one time a single language, known today as Galician-Portuguese, but since the political separation of Portugal from Galicia they have diverged somewhat, especially in pronunciation and vocabulary. Nevertheless, the core vocabulary and grammar of Galician are still noticeably closer to Portuguese than to those of Spanish. In particular, like Portuguese, it uses the future subjunctive, the personal infinitive, and the synthetic pluperfect (see the section on the grammar of Portuguese, below). Mutual intelligibility (estimated at 85% by R. A. Hall, Jr., 1989) Ethnologue is good between Galicians and northern Portuguese, but poorer between Galicians and speakers from central Portugal.
The Fala language is another descendant of Galician-Portuguese, spoken by a small number of people in the Spanish towns of Valverde del Fresno, Eljas and San MartÃn de Trevejo (autonomous community of Extremadura, near the border with Portugal).
Portuguese has provided loanwords to many languages, such as Indonesian, Manado Malay, Sri Lankan Tamil and Sinhalese (see Sri Lanka Indo-Portuguese), Malay, Bengali, English, Hindi, Konkani, Marathi, Tetum, Xitsonga, Papiamentu, Japanese, Lanc-Patuá (spoken in northern Brazil) and Sranan Tongo (spoken in Suriname). It left a strong influence on the lÃngua brasÃlica, a Tupi-Guarani language which was the most widely spoken in Brazil until the 18th century, and on the language spoken around Sikka in Flores Island, Indonesia. In nearby Larantuka, Portuguese is used for prayers in Holy Week rituals.
The Japanese-Portuguese dictionary Nippo Jisho (1603) was the first dictionary of Japanese in a European language, a product of Jesuit missionary activity in Japan. Building on the work of earlier Portuguese missionaries, the Dictionarium Anamiticum, Lusitanum et Latinum (Annamite-Portuguese-Latin dictionary) of Alexandre de Rhodes (1651) introduced the modern orthography of Vietnamese, which is based on the orthography of 17th-century Portuguese. The Romanization of Chinese was also influenced by the Portuguese language (among others), particularly regarding Chinese surnames; one example is Mei. During 1583-88 Italian Jesuits Michele Ruggieri and Matteo Ricci created a Portuguese-Chinese dictionary - the first ever European-Chinese dictionary. Yves Camus, "Jesuits' Journeys in Chinese Studies" "Dicionário Português-Chinês : Pu Han ci dian : Portuguese-Chinese dictionary", by Michele Ruggieri, Matteo Ricci; edited by John W. Witek. Published 2001, Biblioteca Nacional. ISBN 9725652983. Partial preview available on Google Books
See also List of English words of Portuguese origin, Loan words in Indonesian, Japanese words of Portuguese origin, Borrowed words in Malay, Sinhala words of Portuguese origin, Loan words from Portuguese in Sri Lankan Tamil.
Beginning in the 16th century, the extensive contacts between Portuguese travelers and settlers, African slaves, and local populations led to the appearance of many pidgins with varying amounts of Portuguese influence. As each of these pidgins became the mother tongue of succeeding generations, they evolved into fully fledged creole languages, which remained in use in many parts of Asia and Africa until the 18th century. Some Portuguese-based or Portuguese-influenced creoles are still spoken today, by over 3 million people worldwide, especially people of partial Portuguese ancestry.
There is a growing number of people in the Portuguese-speaking media and the internet who are presenting the case to the CPLP and other organizations to run a debate in the Lusophone community with the purpose of bringing forward a petition to make Portuguese an official language of the United Nations.
In October 2005, during the international Convention of the Elos Club International that took place in Tavira, Portugal, ONU: Petição para tornar português lÃngua oficial a petition was written and unanimously approved whose text can be found on the internet with the title Petição Para Tornar Oficial o Idioma Português na ONU. Romulo Alexandre Soares, president of the Brazil-Portugal Chamber highlights that the positioning of Brazil in the international arena as one of the emergent powers of the 21st century, the size of its population, and the presence of the language around the world provides legitimacy and justifies a petition to the UN to make the Portuguese language an official language of the UN. Português pode ser lÃngua oficial na ONU
Several factors detract from this campaign. The current official languages of the UN are either 1) official/dominant in many countries (English, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, and French) or 2) have several hundreds of millions of speakers (Chinese). English, Spanish, Russian and Arabic fulfill both criteria. Portuguese is a global language in that it is the official tongue of several sovereign countries on four continents. It also has over 200 million speakers. However, it exhibits some noticeable differences when compared to the current 6 UN official languages. For example, English, French, Arabic and Spanish are each official languages of multiple states and of over half of the world's countries. In contrast, four out of every five speakers of the Portuguese-speaking world live in just one country: Brazil. In addition to Brazil, Portuguese is the official language in only 7 other sovereign states; however, English is official in 53 states, French in 29 states, Arabic in 25 states, and Spanish in 20 states.
More significantly, in each part of the world with a Portuguese-speaking country, this language is overshadowed by other powerful languages that are already official languages of the UN. For example, in the Americas, the 190 million Portuguese-speaking Brazilians are overshadowed by the most spoken languages in the Western Hemisphere: Spanish (~360 million speakers) and English (~340 million speakers). Portuguese is overshadowed to an even greater extent in Europe, the continent in which four of the six UN languages originated (English, French, Spanish, and Russian). In the European context, Portuguese is not even among the ten most spoken languages on the continent, with a number of speakers comparable to those of Czech and Bulgarian. In Africa, Portuguese is eclipsed as a continental lingua franca by English and French in countries that surround Cape Verde, São Tomé and PrÃncipe, Guinea-Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique. Finally in Asia, a continent with several languages that have hundreds of millions of speakers, the only sovereign state with Portuguese as an official language is East Timor, which has only a million people. While Brazilian migration has brought 300,000 fluent Portuguese speakers to Japan, Portuguese does not enjoy any official status whatsoever in that country. Therefore, while Portuguese will gain increasing importance as Brazil continues its development as a major economy, it will likely face the same hurdles that prevented Japanese and German (both languages of major global economies with millions of speakers) from becoming both international languages and official ones of the UN.
There is a maximum of 9 oral vowels and 19 consonants, though some varieties of the language have fewer phonemes (Brazilian Portuguese has 8 oral vowels). There are also five nasal vowels, which some linguists regard as allophones of the oral vowels, ten oral diphthongs, and five nasal diphthongs. In total, Brazilian Portuguese has 13 vowel phonemes. /ref> Handbook of the International Phonetic Association'' pg. 126-130; the reference applies to the entire section
Chart of monophthongs of the Portuguese of Lisbon
To the seven vowels of Vulgar Latin, European Portuguese has added two near central vowels, one of which tends to be elided in rapid speech, like the e caduc of French (represented as either , or , or ). The high vowels and the low vowels are four distinct phonemes, and they alternate in various forms of apophony. Like Catalan, Portuguese uses vowel quality to contrast stressed syllables with unstressed syllables: isolated vowels tend to be raised, and in some cases centralized, when unstressed. Nasal diphthongs occur mostly at the ends of words.
The consonant inventory of Portuguese is fairly conservative. The medieval affricates , , , merged with the fricatives , , , , respectively, but not with each other, and there were no other significant changes to the consonant phonemes since then. However, some notable dialectal variants and allophones have appeared, among which:
* In many regions of Brazil, and have the affricate allophones and , respectively, before and . (Quebec French has a similar phenomenon, with alveolar affricates instead of postalveolars. Japanese is another example).
* At the end of a syllable, the phoneme has the allophone in Brazilian Portuguese (L-vocalization).
* In many parts of Brazil and Angola, intervocalic is pronounced as a nasalized palatal approximant which nasalizes the preceding vowel, so that, for instance, is pronounced .
* In most of Brazil, the alveolar sibilants and occur in complementary distribution at the ends of syllables, depending on whether the consonant that follows is voiceless or voiced, as in English. But in most of Portugal and parts of Brazil, sibilants are postalveolar at the ends of syllables, before voiceless consonants, and before voiced consonants (in Judeo-Spanish, is often replaced with at the ends of syllables, too).
* There is considerable dialectal variation in the value of the rhotic phoneme . See Guttural R in Portuguese, for details.
;Excerpt from the Portuguese national epic Os LusÃadas, by author LuÃs de Camões (I, 33)
A notable aspect of the grammar of Portuguese is the verb. Morphologically, more verbal inflections from classical Latin have been preserved by Portuguese than by any other major Romance language. See Romance copula, for a detailed comparison. It has also some innovations not found in other Romance languages (except Galician and the Fala):
* The present perfect tense has an iterative sense unique to Galician-Portuguese language group. It denotes an action or a series of actions which began in the past and are expected to keep repeating in the future. For instance, the sentence Tenho tentado falar com ela would be translated to "I have been trying to talk to her", not "I have tried to talk to her". On the other hand, the correct translation of the question "Have you heard the latest news?" is not *Tem ouvido a última notÃcia?, but Ouviu a última notÃcia?, since no repetition is implied. Squartini, Mario (1998) Verbal Periphrases in Romance â Aspect, Actionality, and Grammaticalization ISBN 3-11-016160-5
* The future subjunctive tense, which was developed by medieval West Iberian Romance, but has now fallen into disuse in Spanish and Galician, is still used in vernacular Portuguese. It appears in dependent clauses that denote a condition which must be fulfilled in the future, so that the independent clause will occur. English normally employs the present tense under the same circumstances:
:Se eu for eleito presidente, mudarei a lei.
:If I am elected president, I will change the law.
:Quando fores mais velho, vais entender.
:When you are older, you will understand.
* The personal infinitive: infinitives can inflect according to their subject in person and number, often showing who is expected to perform a certain action; cf. Ã melhor voltares "It is better [for you] to go back," Ã melhor voltarmos "It is better [for us] to go back." Perhaps for this reason, infinitive clauses replace subjunctive clauses more often in Portuguese than in other Romance languages.
Portuguese is written with 23 or 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, making use of five diacritics to denote stress, vowel height, contraction, nasalization, and other sound changes (acute accent, grave accent, circumflex accent, tilde, and cedilla). Accented characters and digraphs are not counted as separate letters for collation purposes.
* Portuguese literature
* Portuguese poetry
* List of Portuguese language poets
* Brazilian literature
* List of Brazilian poets
* Lusophone
* Geographic distribution of Portuguese
* List of countries where Portuguese is an official language
* Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP)
* Instituto Camões
* International Portuguese Language Institute
* Museum of the Portuguese Language
* Portuguese-based creole languages
* Portuñol
* Portuguese in the United States
* List of English words of Portuguese origin
* Spelling reforms of Portuguese
* História da Lingua Portuguesa Instituto Camões
* A LÃngua Portuguesa in Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil (...)
* Poesia e Prosa Medievais, by Maria Ema Tarracha Ferreira, Ulisseia 1998, 3rd ed., ISBN 978-972-568-124-4.
* Bases Temáticas â LÃngua Portuguesa in Instituto Camões
* Portuguese Literature in The Catholic Encyclopedia
* International Phonetic Association (1999) Handbook of the International Phonetic Association ISBN 0-521-63751-1
* Mateus, Maria Helena & d'Andrade, Ernesto (2000) The Phonology of Portuguese ISBN 0-19-823581-X (Excerpt available at Google Books)
* Bergström, Magnus & Reis, Neves Prontuário Ortográfico Editorial NotÃcias, 2004.
* A pronúncia do português europeu - European Portuguese Pronunciation
* Dialects of Portuguese at the Instituto Camões
* Audio samples of the dialects of Portugal
* Audio samples of the dialects from outside Europe
* Antônio Houaiss (2000), Dicionário Houaiss da LÃngua Portuguesa (228,500 entries).
* Aurélio Buarque de Holanda Ferreira, Novo Dicionário da LÃngua Portuguesa (1809pp)
* English-Portuguese-Chinese Dictionary (Freeware, for Windows/Linux/Mac)
* Lindley Cintra, LuÃs F. Nova Proposta de Classificação dos Dialectos Galego-Portugueses (PDF) Boletim de Filologia, Lisboa, Centro de Estudos Filológicos, 1971.
*Swadesh list in English and Portuguese
* English Portuguese Translation Dictionary for English Portuguese translations
* Learn Portuguese BBC
* Portuguese Language Notes BBC
* AULP - Associação das Universidades de LÃngua Portuguesa Portuguese Language Universities Association.
* Portuguese in East Timor an interview with Dr. Geoffrey Hull.
* Portuguese Dictionary with gender and type of words.
* ABL - Academia Brasileira de letras (em português) - (Brazilian Academy of Letters) (Portuguese)
* Brazilian Portuguese Free resources for Portuguese learners.
* EasyPortuguese Free Portuguese learning site with audio.
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Saint_Petersburg | Is the city named after the apostle Saint Peter? | yes | data/set3/a10 | Saint_Petersburg
Saint Petersburg ( , ) is a city and a federal subject (a federal city) of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The city's other names were Petrograd ( , 1914â1924) and Leningrad ( , 1924â1991). It is often called just Petersburg ( ) and is informally known as Piter ( ).
Founded by Tsar Peter I of Russia on 27 May 1703, it was the capital of the Russian Empire for more than two hundred years (1713â1728, 1732â1918). Saint Petersburg ceased being the capital in 1918 after the Russian Revolution of 1917. Nicholas and Alexandra: An Intimate Account of the Last of the Romanovs and the Fall of Imperial Russia (Athenum, 1967) by Robert K. Massie, ASIN B000CGP8M2 (also, Ballantine Books, 2000, ISBN 0-345-43831-0 and Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, 2005, ISBN 1-57912-433-X) It is Russia's second largest city after Moscow with 4.6 million inhabitants, and over 6 million people live in its vicinity. Saint Petersburg is a major European cultural centre, and an important Russian port on the Baltic Sea.
Saint Petersburg is often described as the most Western city of Russia. V. Morozov. The Discourses of Saint Petersburg and the Shaping of a Wider Europe. Copenhagen Peace Research Institute. 2002. Ciaonet.org Among cities of the world with over one million people, Saint Petersburg is the northernmost. The Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments constitute a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Saint Petersburg is also home to The Hermitage, the largest art museum in the world. /ref> Russia's political and cultural centre for 200 years, the city is sometimes referred to in Russia as the northern capital. A large number of foreign consulates, international corporations, banks and other businesses are located in Saint Petersburg.
On 1 May 1703 (Julian calendar), during the Great Northern War, Peter the Great captured the Swedish fortress of Nyenskans on the Neva river in Ingria. A few weeks later, on 27 May 1703 (May 16, Old Style), lower on the river, on Zayachy (Hare) Island, three miles (5 km) inland from the gulf, he laid down the Peter and Paul Fortress, which became the first brick and stone building of the new city. He named the city after his patron saint, Saint Peter, the apostle. The original name was meant to sound like Dutch due to Peter's obsession with the Dutch culture. Peter the Great: His Life and World (Knopf, 1980) by Robert K. Massie, ISBN 0-394-50032-6
The city was built by conscripted serfs from all over Russia and also by Swedish prisoners of war under the supervision of Alexander Menshikov and later became the centre of Saint Petersburg Governorate. Peter moved the capital from Moscow to Saint Petersburg in 1712, before the Treaty of Nystad of 1721 ended the war.
The Bronze Horseman, monument to Peter the Great.
Palace Square, as the main square of the Russian Empire it was the setting of many events of great historical significance
Lenin statue outside the Finland station. Between 1924 and 1991 the city was known as Leningrad.
Map of Saint Petersburg, 1903.
Church of the Savior on Blood.
During the first few years of its existence the city grew spontaneously around Trinity Square on the right bank of the Neva, near the Peter and Paul Fortress. However, Saint Petersburg soon started to develop according to a plan. By 1716 Domenico Trezzini had elaborated a project whereby the city centre would be located on Vasilievsky Island and shaped by a rectangular grid of canals. The project was not completed, but is still evident in the layout of the streets. In 1716 Jean-Baptiste Alexandre Le Blond was appointed chief architect of Saint Petersburg by Peter the Great.
The style of Petrine Baroque, developed by Trezzini and other architects and exemplified by such buildings as the Menshikov Palace, Kunstkamera, Peter and Paul Cathedral, Twelve Collegia, became prominent in the city architecture of the early 18th century. In 1724 the Academy of Sciences, University and Academic Gymnasium were established in Saint Petersburg by Peter the Great.
However, in 1725 Peter died. His near-lifelong autocratic push for modernisation of Russia had met with considerable opposition from the old-fashioned Russian nobility â resulting in several attempts on his life and a treason case involving his own son. Matthew S. Anderson, Peter the Great (London: Thames and Hudson, 1978) Thus, in 1728, Peter II of Russia moved his seat back to Moscow. But four years later, in 1732, under Empress Anna of Russia, Saint Petersburg again became the capital of the Russian Empire and remained the seat of the government for 186 years.
In 1736-1737 the city suffered from catastrophic fires. In order to rebuild the damaged boroughs, in 1737 a new plan was commissioned by a committee under Burkhard Christoph von Munnich. The city was divided into five boroughs, and the city centre was moved to the Admiralty borough, situated on the east bank between the Neva and Fontanka.
It developed along three radial streets, which meet at the Admiralty and are now known as Nevsky Prospekt (which is now perceived as the main street of the city), Gorokhovaya Street and Voznesensky Prospekt. The style of Baroque dominated the city architecture during the first sixty years, culminating in the Elizabethan Baroque, represented most notably by Bartolomeo Rastrelli with such buildings as the Winter Palace. In the 1760s the Baroque architecture was succeeded by the neoclassical architecture.
The Commission of Stone Buildings of Moscow and Saint Petersburg established in 1762 ruled that no structure in the city be higher than the Winter Palace and prohibited spacing between buildings. During the reign of Catherine the Great in the 1760s-1780s the banks of the Neva were lined with granite embankments.
However, it wasn't until 1850 that it was allowed to open the first permanent bridge across the Neva, Blagoveshchensky Bridge. Before that, only pontoon bridges were allowed. Obvodny Canal (dug in 1769-1833) became the southern limit of the city.
Some of the most important neoclassical architects in Saint Petersburg (including those working within the Empire style) were Jean-Baptiste Vallin de la Mothe (Imperial Academy of Arts, Small Hermitage, Gostiny Dvor, New Holland Arch, Catholic Church of St. Catherine), Antonio Rinaldi (Marble Palace), Yury Felten (Old Hermitage, Chesme Church), Giacomo Quarenghi (Academy of Sciences, Hermitage Theatre, Yusupov Palace), Andrey Voronikhin (Mining Institute, Kazan Cathedral), Andreyan Zakharov (Admiralty building), Jean-François Thomas de Thomon (Spit of Vasilievsky Island), Carlo Rossi (Yelagin Palace, Mikhailovsky Palace, Alexandrine Theatre, Senate and Synod Buildings, General Staff Building, design of many streets and squares), Vasily Stasov (Moscow Triumphal Gate, Trinity Cathedral), Auguste de Montferrand (Saint Isaac's Cathedral, Alexander Column). The victory over Napoleonic France in the Patriotic War of 1812 was commemorated with many monuments, including Alexander Column by Montferrand, erected in 1834, and Narva Triumphal Gate.
In 1825 the suppressed Decembrist revolt against Nicholas I of Russia took place on the Senate Square in the city, a day after he assumed the throne.
By the 1840s the neoclassical architecture had given place to various romanticist styles, which were dominant until the 1890s, represented by such architects as Andrei Stackenschneider (Mariinsky Palace, Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace, Nicholas Palace, New Michael Palace) and Konstantin Thon (Moskovsky Rail Terminal). The Church of the Savior on Blood designed in the Russian revival style commemorated the place where Alexander II of Russia was assassinated in 1881.
With the emancipation of the serfs undertaken by Alexander II in 1861 and the industrial revolution the influx of former peasants into the capital increased greatly. Poor boroughs spontaneously emerged on the outskirts of the city. Saint Petersburg surpassed Moscow in population and industrial growth and grew into one of the largest industrial hubs and cities in Europe.
The Revolution of 1905 began in Saint Petersburg and spread rapidly into the provinces. With the start of World War I, the name Saint Petersburg was perceived to be too German, so in 1914 the city was renamed Petrograd. The Romanovs: The Final Chapter (Random House, 1995) by Robert K. Massie, ISBN 0-394-58048-6 and ISBN 0-679-43572-7 In 1917 the February Revolution, which put an end to the Russian monarchy, and the October Revolution, which ultimately brought Vladimir Lenin to power, broke out in Petrograd. Rex A. Wade The Russian Revolution, 1917 2005 Cambridge University Press ISBN 0521841550 The city's proximity to the border and anti-Soviet armies forced the Bolsheviks under Lenin to transfer the capital to Moscow on March 12, 1918.
In 1919 during the ensuing Russian Civil War Nikolay Yudenich advancing from Estonia was about to capture the city from the Bolsheviks, but Leon Trotsky ultimately managed to mobilise the population and make him retreat. Many people fled the city in 1917-1920 or were repressed in the Red Terror, Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe. By Robert Gellately, 2007, Random House, 720 pages. ISBN 1400040051 so its population decreased dramatically. On January 26, 1924, three days after Lenin's death, Petrograd was renamed Leningrad. For decades Leningrad was glorified by the Soviet propaganda as "the cradle of the revolution" and "the city of three revolutions", many spots related to Lenin and the revolutions, such as the cruiser Aurora, were carefully preserved. Many streets and other toponyms were renamed accordingly.
In the 1920s-1930s the poor outskirts were reconstructed into regularly planned boroughs. The constructivist architecture flourished around that time. The Soviets nationalised housing and forced many residents to share communal apartments (kommunalkas). With 68% living in shared apartments in the 1930s, Leningrad was the city with the largest number of kommunalkas. In 1935 a new general plan was outlined, whereby the city should expand to the south and its centre should move there. The constructivism was rejected in favor of the pompous Stalinist architecture. Stalin ordered the construction of the new city hall on Moskovsky Prospect thus making it the new main street of Leningrad during the Soviet rule.
Since December 1931 Leningrad has been administratively separate from Leningrad Oblast. At that time it included Leningrad Suburban District, some parts of which were transferred back to Leningrad Oblast in 1936 and turned into Vsevolozhsky District, Krasnoselsky District, Pargolovsky District and Slutsky District (renamed Pavlovsky District in 1944).
On December 1, 1934, Sergey Kirov, popular communist leader of Leningrad, was assassinated, which was used to start the Great Purge. Stalin's Terror: High Politics and Mass Repression in the Soviet Union by Barry McLoughlin and Kevin McDermott (eds). Palgrave Macmillan, 2002, p. 6 The sizeable minorities of Germans, Poles, Finns, Estonians and Latvians were almost completely expelled from Leningrad by the Soviet government during the 1930s. Martin, Terry (1998). The Origins of Soviet Ethnic Cleansing. The Journal of Modern History 70.4, 813-861.
During World War II, Leningrad was besieged by Nazi Germany and co-belligerent Finland. Siege of Leningrad. Encyclopædia Britannica The siege lasted 872 days from September 1941 to January 1944. Baldack, Richard H. "Leningrad, Siege of" World Book Encyclopedia, Chicago, 2002, vol.12, page 195 The Siege of Leningrad was one of the longest, most destructive, and most lethal sieges of major cities in modern history. It isolated the city from most supplies except those provided through the Road of Life across Lake Ladoga, and more than a million civilians died, mainly from starvation. Many others were eventually evacuated or escaped by themselves, so the city became largely depopulated. For the heroic resistance of the city and tenacity of the survivors of the Siege, in 1945 Leningrad became the first city in the Soviet Union awarded the title Hero City. In October 1946 some former Finnish territories along the northern coast of the Gulf of Finland captured in the Winter War and Continuation War were transferred from Leningrad Oblast to Leningrad and divided into Sestroretsky District and Kurortny District, including the town of Terijoki (renamed Zelenogorsk in 1948).
Leningrad and many of its suburbs were rebuilt over the post-war decades, partially according to the pre-war plans. The 1948 general plan of Leningrad featured radial urban development in the north as well as in the south. The Leningrad Metro, underground rapid transit system which was designed before the war in the 1930s, was opened in 1955 with its first seven stations decorated with marble and bronze. Meanwhile, in 1949-1951 a large number of prominent Leningrad members of the Communist Party and their families were charged with treason and intention to create an anti-Soviet organization out of their local party cell. Many were imprisoned or executed in the Leningrad Affair fabricated by the central Soviet leadership. Dmitri Volkogonov. Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy, 1996, ISBN 0761507183 Russian publication: ÐенингÑадÑкое дело â надо ли ÑÑавиÑÑ ÐºÐ°Ð²ÑÑки?: Contr-tv.ru
In 1953 Pavlovsky District of Leningrad Oblast was abolished, and parts of its territory including Pavlovsk merged with Leningrad. In 1954 the settlements Levashovo, Pargolovo and Pesochny merged with Leningrad.
After the death of Stalin the perceived ornamental excesses of the Stalinist architecture were abandoned. In the 1960s-1980s, as many new residential boroughs were built on the outskirts with few series of functionalist apartment blocks identical to each other, many families moved there from kommunalkas in the city centre in order to live in separate apartments. Uritsk was re-named Ligovo and merged with Leningrad in 1963, Lomonosov merged in 1978.
On June 12, 1991, in a referendum held on the same day as the first Russian presidential election, 54% of voters chose to restore the name "Saint Petersburg" (the change officially took effect on September 6, 1991). Many other Soviet-era toponyms in the city were also renamed soon afterwards. In the same election Anatoly Sobchak became the first democratically elected mayor of the city. Jack F. Matlock, Jr., Autopsy on an Empire: The American Ambassador's Account of the Collapse of the Soviet Union, Random House, 1995, ISBN 0679413766
By the end of 1991 the deteriorating planned economy of the collapsing Soviet Union had put the city on the verge of starvation. For the first time since World War II food rationing was introduced, and the city received humanitarian food aid from abroad. The city somewhat recovered with the market reforms in Russia. In 1995-2004 a northern section of the Metro's Kirovsko-Vyborgskaya Line was cut off by underground flooding, which was a major obstacle to the city development.
In 1996, Vladimir Yakovlev was elected as head of the Saint Petersburg City Administration. The title of the city head was changed in advance from "mayor" to "governor". In 2003, Yakovlev resigned a year before his second term expired. Valentina Matviyenko was elected governor. In 2006 she was reapproved as governor by the city legislature. The residential building had intensified again, real estate prices inflated greatly, and this situation causes many new problems for the historical part of the city.
In spite of the fact that the central part of the city is watched by UNESCO, the safety of its historical and architectural environment is in danger. Sergey Zagraevsky. Will Saint Petersburg share the same fate as Moscow? Zagraevsky.com There are still about 8000 architectural monuments in Saint Petersburg, but since 2005 the destruction of older buildings in the historical centre has continued. A number of new building projects are underway, including the Gazprom skyscraper in Okhta.
Territory of the federal subject of Saint Petersburg.
The area of Saint Petersburg city proper is . The area of the federal subject is , which contains the Saint Petersburg proper (consisting of 81 okrugs), nine suburban towns (Kolpino, Krasnoye Selo, Kronstadt, Lomonosov, Pavlovsk, Peterhof, Pushkin, Sestroretsk and Zelenogorsk) and 21 municipal settlements.
Saint Petersburg is situated on the middle taiga lowlands along the shores of the Neva Bay of the Gulf of Finland, and islands of the river delta. The largest are Vasilyevsky island (besides the artificial island between Obvodny canal and Fontanka, and Kotlin in the Neva Bay), Petrogradsky, Dekabristov and Krestovsky. The latter together with Yelagin and Kamenny island are covered mostly by parks. The Karelian Isthmus, North of the city, is a popular resort area. In the south Saint Petersburg crosses the Baltic-Ladoga Klint and meets the Izhora Plateau.
The elevation of Saint Petersburg ranges from the sea level to its highest point of at the Orekhovaya Hill in the Duderhof Heights in the south. Part of the city's territory west of Liteyny Prospekt is no higher than above sea level, and has suffered from numerous floods. Floods in Saint Petersburg are triggered by a long wave in the Baltic Sea, caused by meteorological conditions, winds and shallowness of the Neva Bay. The four most disastrous floods occurred in 1824 ( above sea-level, during which over 300 buildings were destroyed The level of flooding is measured near Saint Petersburg Mining Institute, which is normally a.s.l. ), 1924 , 1777 , 1955 and 1975 . To prevent floods, the Saint Petersburg Dam has been under construction since 1979. ÐежиÑ
овÑкий Ð . Ð. Река Ðева и ÐевÑÐºÐ°Ñ Ð³Ñба, Leningrad: ÐидÑомеÑеоиздаÑ, 1981.
Since the 18th century the terrain in the city has been raised artificially, at some places by more than , making mergers of several islands, and changing the hydrology of the city. Besides the Neva and its distributaries, other important rivers of the federal subject of Saint Petersburg are Sestra, Okhta and Izhora. The largest lake is Sestroretsky Razliv in the north, followed by Lakhtinsky Razliv, Suzdal Lakes and other smaller lakes.
Saint Petersburg's position on the latitude of ca. 60° N causes variation in day length across seasons, ranging from 5:53 to 18:50. Twilight may last all night in early summer, from mid-May to mid-July, the celebrated phenomenon known as the white nights.
Snow falling on the morning of May 14, 2008 at Srednyaya Rogatka (district in the south of St. Petersburg)
Saint Petersburg experiences a humid continental climate of the cool summer subtype (Köppen: Dfb), due to the distinct moderating influence of the Baltic Sea cyclones, with warm, humid and short summers and long, cold winters.
The average daily temperature in July is ; summer maximum is about , winter minimum is about . The record low temperature is , recorded in 1883. The average annual temperature is . The River Neva within the city limits usually freezes up in November-December, break-up occurs in April. From December to March there are 123 days average with snow cover, which reaches the average of by February. The frost-free period in the city lasts on average for about 135 days. The city has a climate slightly warmer than its suburbs. Weather conditions are quite variable all year round. See Historical weather records for Saint Petersburg (since 1932) and Historical weather in Saint Petersburg for further information.
Average annual precipitation varies across the city, averaging per year and reaching maximum in late summer. Soil moisture is almost always high because of lower evapotranspiration due to the cool climate. Air humidity is 78% on average, while overcast is 165 days a year on average.
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Saint Petersburg is the second largest city in Russia. The 2002 census recorded a population of the federal subject of 4,661,219, or 3.21% of the total population of Russia. The 2002 census recorded twenty-two ethnic groups of more than two thousand persons each. The ethnic composition was: Russian 84.72%, Ukrainian 1.87%, Belarusians 1.17%, Jewish 0.78%, Tatar 0.76%, Armenian 0.41%, Azeri 0.36%, Georgian 0.22%, Chuvash 0.13%, Polish 0.10%, and many other smaller ethnic groups, while 7.89% of the inhabitants declined to state their ethnicity.
The 20th century saw hectic ups and downs in population. From 2.4 million in 1916 it had dropped to less than 740,000 by 1920 during the Russian Revolution of 1917 and Russian Civil War. The sizeable minorities of Germans, Poles, Finns, Estonians and Latvians were almost completely expelled from Leningrad by the Soviet government during the 1930s. From 1941 to the end of 1943, population dropped from 3 million to less than 700,000, as people died in battles, starved to death during the Siege of Leningrad, or were evacuated. After the siege, some of the evacuees returned, but most influx was due to migration from other parts of the Soviet Union. The city absorbed about 3 million people in the 1950s and grew to over 5 million in the 1980s. From 1991 to 2006 the city's population decreased to the current 4.6 million, while the suburban population increased due to privatization of land and massive move to suburbs. ЧиÑÑÑкова Ð. ТÑеÑÑе ÑокÑаÑение ÑиÑленноÑÑи наÑелениÑ... и поÑледнее? ÐемоÑкоп Weekly 163 â 164, August 1â15, 2004. Russian source: "Encyclopedia of Saint Petersburg" ЧиÑÑÑков Ð. Ю. ÐаÑеление (обзоÑÐ½Ð°Ñ ÑÑаÑÑÑ). ÐнÑÐ¸ÐºÐ»Ð¾Ð¿ÐµÐ´Ð¸Ñ Ð¡Ð°Ð½ÐºÑ-ÐеÑеÑбÑÑга The birth rate remains lower than the death rate; people over 65 constitute more than twenty percent of the population; and the median age is about 40 years. Russian statistics ÐÑновнÑе показаÑели ÑоÑиалÑно-демогÑаÑиÑеÑкой ÑиÑÑаÑии в СанкÑ-ÐеÑеÑбÑÑге
People in urban Saint Petersburg live mostly in apartments. Between 1918 and the 1990s, the Soviets nationalised housing and forced residents to share communal apartments (kommunalkas). With 68% living in shared flats in the 1930s, Leningrad was the city in the USSR with the largest number of kommunalkas. Resettling residents of kommunalkas is now on the way out, albeit shared apartments are still not uncommon. As new boroughs were built on the outskirts in the 1950s-1980s, over half a million low income families eventually received free apartments, and about an additional hundred thousand condos were purchased. While economic and social activity is concentrated in the historic city centre, the richest part of Saint Petersburg, most people live in commuter areas. For the first half of 2007, the birth rate was 9.1 per 1000.
Smolny Institute, the seat of the governor.
Saint Petersburg is a federal subject of Russia. The political life of Saint Petersburg is regulated by the city charter adopted by the city legislature in 1998. The superior executive body is the Saint Petersburg City Administration, led by the governor (mayor before 1996). Saint Petersburg has a single-chamber legislature, the Saint Petersburg Legislative Assembly.
According to the federal law passed in 2004, heads of federal subjects, including the governor of Saint Petersburg, are nominated by the President of Russia and approved by local legislatures. If the legislature disapproves the nominee, it is dissolved. The current governor, Valentina Matviyenko, was approved according to the new system in December 2006. She is currently the only woman governor in the whole of Russia.
Saint Petersburg city is currently divided into eighteen districts. Saint Petersburg is also the administrative centre of Leningrad Oblast, and of the Northwestern Federal District. The Constitutional Court of Russia moved to Saint Petersburg from Moscow in May 2008.
Saint Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast, being two different federal subjects, share a number of local departments of federal executive agencies and courts, such as court of arbitration, police, FSB, postal service, drug enforcement administration, penitentiary service, federal registration service, and other federal services.
The Old Saint Petersburg Stock Exchange, or Bourse, houses the Central Naval Museum
Saint Petersburg is a major trade gateway, financial and industrial centre of Russia specialising in oil and gas trade, shipbuilding yards, aerospace industry, radio and electronics, software and computers; machine building, heavy machinery and transport, including tanks and other military equipment, mining, instrument manufacture, ferrous and nonferrous metallurgy (production of aluminium alloys), chemicals, pharmaceuticals, medical equipment, publishing and printing, food and catering, wholesale and retail, textile and apparel industries, and many other businesses. It was also home to Lessner, one of Russia's two pioneering automobile manufacturers (along with Russo-Baltic), Lessner; founded by machine tool and boiler maker G. A. Lessner in 1904, with designs by Boris Loutsky, it survived until 1910. Georgano, G. N. Cars: Early and Vintage, 1886-1930. (London: Grange-Universal, 1985)
10% of the world's power turbines are made there at the LMZ, which built over two thousand turbines for power plants across the world. Major local industries are Admiralty Shipyard, Baltic Shipyard, LOMO, Kirov Plant, Elektrosila, Izhorsky Zavod; also registered in Saint Petersburg are Sovkomflot, Petersburg Fuel Company and SIBUR among other major Russian and international companies.
The Saint Petersburg docks at dawn.
Saint Petersburg has three large cargo seaports: Bolshoi Port Saint Petersburg, Kronstadt, and Lomonosov. International cruise liners have been served at the passenger port at Morskoy Vokzal on the south-west of Vasilevsky Island. In 2008 the first two berths were opened at the New Passenger Port on the west of the island. Discoverthebaltic.com Discover the Baltic online guide to Baltic cruise ports The new port is part of the city's "Marine Facade" development project Mfspb.ru St Petersburg "Marine Facade" development project and is due to have seven berths in operation by 2010.
A complex system of riverports on both banks of the Neva river are interconnected with the system of seaports, thus making Saint Petersburg the main link between the Baltic sea and the rest of Russia through the Volga-Baltic Waterway.
The Saint Petersburg Mint (Monetny Dvor), founded in 1724, is one of the largest mints in the world, it mints Russian coins, medals and badges. Saint Petersburg is also home to the oldest and largest Russian foundry, Monumentskulptura, which made thousands of sculptures and statues that are now gracing public parks of Saint Petersburg, as well as many other cities. Monuments and bronze statues of the Czars, as well as other important historic figures and dignitaries, and other world famous monuments, such as the sculptures by Peter Clodt von Jürgensburg, Paolo Troubetzkoy, Pavel Antokolsky, and others, were made there.
In 2007 Toyota opened a Camry plant after investing 5 billion dollars in Shushary, one of the southern suburbs of Saint Petersburg. General Motors, Hyundai and Nissan have signed deals with the Russian government to build their automotive plants in Saint Petersburg too. Automotive and auto-parts industry is on the rise there during the last decade. Saint Petersburg is also known as the "beer capital" of Russia, due to the supply and quality of local water, contributing over 30% of the domestic production of beer with its five large-scale breweries including Europe's second largest brewery Baltika, Vena (both operated by BBH), Heineken Brewery, Stepan Razin (both by Heineken) and Tinkoff brewery (SUN-InBev). Saint Petersburg has the second largest construction industry in Russia, including commercial, housing and road construction.
In 2006 Saint Petersburg's city budget was 179,9 billion rubles, and is planned to double by 2012. The federal subject's gross regional product as of 2005 was 667,905.4 million Russian rubles, ranked 4th in Russia, after Moscow, Tyumen Oblast, and Moscow Oblast, or 145,503.3 rubles per capita, ranked 12th among Russia's federal subjects, contributed mostly by wholesale and retail trade and repair services (24.7%) as well as processing industry (20.9%) and transportation and telecommunications (15.1%).
The Kresty prison.
Russia historically had a high level of crime that increased significantly after the October revolution. Edward Hallett Carr The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1923, 1985 ISBN 0393301990 Google preview Perestroika-time turmoils saw additional increase of the crime level.
Saint Petersburg experiences significant levels of street crime and bribery. In addition, in recent years there has been a notable increase in racially motivated violence, especially towards tourists and foreign students. One of the well known white supremacist groups Belaya Energia (White Energy, originally comes from White Power), has reportedly been one of the main gangs involved in murdering foreign university students. Russia: Racist Attacks Plague St. Petersburg Radio Free Europe September 30, 2005
At the end of the 1980s â beginning of the 1990s, Leningrad became home to a number of organised criminal groups as Tambov Gang, Malyshev Gang, Kazan Gang and ethnic criminal groups, engaged in a racket, extortion, paying off local government, and violent clashes with each other. Russian Mafia Shakes Down the Country by Steven R. Van Hook, Santa Barbara News-Press, November 20, 1994
In 2008, a car bomb killed three people (including a four-year old child), and injured one.
After the assassinations of City Property Committee Chairman and vice-Governor Mikhail Manevich(1997), State Duma deputy Galina Starovoytova (1998), acting City Legislature Speaker Viktor Novosyolov (1999) and a number of prominent businesspeople, Saint Petersburg was dubbed Capital of Crime in the Russian press. Trumbull, Nathaniel S. (2003) The impacts of globalization on Saint Petersburg: A secondary world city in from the cold? The Annals of Regional Science 37:533â546 Powell, Bill & Brian Whitmore. The Capital Of Crime.(Saint Petersburg, Russia). Newsweek International, May 15, 2000. There were a number of movies filmed in Saint Petersburg about the life of crime; , Brother (1997) reinforcing its image as the Crime Capital of Russia.
One of the oldest and most infamous remand facilities in Saint Petersburg, Kresty prison is located near downtown.
However, crime rates in St. Petersburg have declined since the end of the 1990s; the aforementioned criminal gangs have mostly dispersed. Even the Kresty prison is no longer in use, as more modern penal institutions are being built farther from the city centre.
The decoration of Saint Petersburg Metro (Kirovsky Zavod Station).
Saint Petersburg is a major transport hub. The first Russian railway was built here, in 1837. Today, the city is the final destination of a web of intercity and suburban railways, served by five different railway terminals (Baltiysky, Finlyandsky, Ladozhsky, Moskovsky, and Vitebsky), Until 2001, the Varshavsky Rail Terminal served as a major station; it now is a railway museum. Reconstruction of the Warsaw Railway Station as well as dozens of non-terminal railway stations within the federal subject. Saint Petersburg has international railway connections to Helsinki, Finland, Berlin, Germany, and all former republics of the USSR. The Helsinki railway was built in 1870, , commutes three times a day, in a journey lasting about five and a half hours. The Moscow-Saint Petersburg Railway opened in 1851, ; the commute to Moscow now requires about four and a half to nine hours. Saint Petersburg is also served by Pulkovo International Airport, Rossiya (Pulkovo): Pulkovo Aviation Enterprise and by three smaller commercial and cargo airports in the suburbs. There is a regular, 24/7, rapid-bus transit connection between Pulkovo airport and the city centre.
The city is also served by the passenger and cargo seaports in the Neva Bay of the Gulf of Finland, Baltic Sea, the river port higher up the Neva, and tens of smaller passenger stations on both banks of the Neva river. It is a terminus of the Volga-Baltic and White Sea-Baltic waterways. In 2004 the first high bridge that doesn't need to be drawn, a long Big Obukhovsky Bridge, was opened. Meteor hydrofoils link the city centre to the coastal towns of Kronstadt, Lomonosov, Peterhof, Sestroretsk and Zelenogorsk from May through October.
Pulkovo International Airport.
Saint Petersburg has an extensive city-funded network of public transport (buses, trams, trolleybuses) and several hundred routes served by marshrutkas. Trams in Saint Petersburg used to be the main transport; in the 1980s, Leningrad had the largest tramway network in the world, but many tramway rail tracks were dismantled in the 2000s. Buses carry up to 3 million passengers daily, serving over 250 urban and a number of suburban bus routes. Saint Petersburg Metro underground rapid transit system was opened in 1955; it now has five lines with 63 stations, connecting all five railway terminals, and carrying 3.4 million passengers daily. Metro stations are decorated in marble and bronze.
Traffic jams are common in the city, because of high daily traffic volumes between the commuter boroughs and the city centre, intercity traffic, and at times excessive snow in winter. Five segments of the Saint Petersburg Ring Road were opened between 2002 and 2006, and full ring is planned to open in 2010.
Saint Petersburg is part of the important transport corridor linking Scandinavia to Russia and Eastern Europe. The city is a node of the international European routes E18 towards Helsinki, E20 towards Tallinn, E95 towards Pskov, Kiev and Odessa and E105 towards Petrozavodsk, Murmansk and Kirkenes (north) and towards Moscow and Kharkiv (south).
Kazan Cathedral
Griboyedov Canal
A bridge over the river Neva
As of now, Saint Petersburg has no skyscrapers and a relatively low skyline. Current regulations forbid construction of high buildings in the city centre. The 310 metre tall Saint Petersburg TV Tower is the tallest structure in the city, while the 122.5 m Peter and Paul Cathedral is by far the highest building. However, there is a controversial project endorsed by the city authorities and known as the Ohkta Centre to build a 396 m supertall skyscraper. In 2008 the World Monuments Fund included the Saint Petersburg historic skyline within the watch list of 100 most endangered sites due to the expected construction, which threatens to alter it drastically.
Unlike in Moscow, in Saint Petersburg the historic architecture of the city centre, mostly consisting of Baroque and neoclassical buildings of the 18th and 19th centuries, has been largely preserved, although a number of buildings were demolished after the Bolsheviks' seizure of power, during the Siege of Leningrad and in recent years. The oldest of the remaining building is a wooden house built for Peter I in 1703 on the shore of the Neva near Trinity Square. Since 1991 the Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments in Saint Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast have been listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.
The ensemble of Peter and Paul Fortress with the Peter and Paul Cathedral takes dominant position on Zayachy Island along the right bank of the River Neva. Each noon a cannon fires a blank shot from the fortress. The Saint Petersburg Mosque, the largest mosque in Europe when opened in 1913, is situated on the right bank nearby. The spit of Vasilievsky Island, which splits the river into two largest armlets, the Bolshaya Neva and Malaya Neva, is connected to the northern bank (Petrogradsky Island) via the Exchange Bridge and occupied by the Old Saint Petersburg Stock Exchange and Rostral Columns. The southern coast of Vasilievsky Island along the Bolshaya Neva features some of the city's oldest buildings, dating from the 18th century, including the Kunstkamera, Twelve Collegia, Menshikov Palace and Imperial Academy of Arts. It hosts one of two campuses of Saint Petersburg State University.
On the southern, left bank of the Neva, connected to the spit of Vasilievsky Island via the Palace Bridge, lie the Admiralty Building, the vast Hermitage Museum complex stretching along the Palace Embankment, which includes the baroque Winter Palace, former official residence of Russian emperors, as well as the neoclassical Marble Palace. The Winter Palace faces Palace Square, the city's main square with the Alexander Column.
Nevsky Prospekt, also situated on the left bank of the Neva, is the main avenue in the city. It starts at the Admiralty and runs eastwards next to Palace Square. Nevsky Prospekt crosses the Moika (Green Bridge), Griboyedov Canal (Kazansky Bridge), Garden Street, the Fontanka (Anichkov Bridge), meets Liteyny Prospekt and proceeds to Uprising Square near the Moskovsky railway station, where it meets Ligovsky Prospekt and turns to the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. The Passage, Catholic Church of St. Catherine, Book House (former Singer Manufacturing Company Building in the Art Nouveau style), Grand Hotel Europe, Lutheran Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, Gostiny Dvor, Russian National Library, Alexandrine Theatre behind Mikeshin's statue of Catherine the Great, Kazan Cathedral, Stroganov Palace, Anichkov Palace and Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace are all situated along that avenue.
The Alexander Nevsky Lavra, intended to house the relics of St. Alexander Nevsky, is an important centre of Christian education in Russia. It also contains the Tikhvin Cemetery with graves of many notable Petersburgers.
On the territory between the Neva and Nevsky Prospekt the Church of the Savior on Blood, Mikhailovsky Palace housing the Russian Museum, Field of Mars, St. Michael's Castle, Summer Garden, Tauride Palace, Smolny Institute and Smolny Convent are located.
Many notable landmarks are situated to the west and south of the Admiralty Building, including the Trinity Cathedral, Mariinsky Palace, Hotel Astoria, famous Mariinsky Theatre, New Holland Island, Saint Isaac's Cathedral, the largest in the city, and Decembrists Square with the Bronze Horseman, 18th century equestrian monument to Peter the Great, which is considered among the city's most recognisable symbols.
Other symbols of Saint Petersburg include the weather vane in the shape of a small ship on top of the Admiralty's golden spire and the golden angel on top of the Peter and Paul Cathedral. The Palace Bridge drawn at night is yet another symbol of the city. Every night during the navigation period from April to November, 22 bridges across the Neva and main canals are drawn to let ships pass in and out of the Baltic Sea according to a schedule. Schedule for main drawbridges across the Neva river (Official Russian schedule): Mr-spb.ru It wasn't until 2004 that the first high bridge across the Neva, which doesn't need to be drawn, Big Obukhovsky Bridge, was opened. There are hundreds of smaller bridges in Saint Petersburg spanning across numerous canals and distributaries of the Neva, some of the most important of which are the Moika, Fontanka, Griboyedov Canal, Obvodny Canal, Karpovka and Smolenka. Due to the intricate web of canals, Saint Petersburg is often called Venice of the North. The rivers and canals in the city centre are lined with granite embankments. The embankments and bridges are separated from rivers and canals by granite or cast iron parapets.
Southern suburbs of the city feature former imperial residences, including Peterhof, with majestic fountain cascades and parks, Tsarskoe Selo, with the baroque Catherine Palace and the neoclassical Alexander Palace, and Pavlovsk, which contains a domed palace of Emperor Paul and one of the largest English-style parks in Europe. Some other residences situated nearby and making part of the world heritage site, including a castle and park in Gatchina, actually belong to Leningrad Oblast rather than Saint Petersburg. Another notable suburb is Kronstadt with its 19th century fortifications and naval monuments, occupying the Kotlin Island in the Gulf of Finland.
From XX century end in a city active building and reorganisation of old historical city districts is conducted.
The authorities are compelled to transfer control of private residences in city centre to private lessors.
Also sealing building and a superstructure of buildings is spent by penthouses.
Some of these structures, such as the Saint Petersburg Commodity and Stock Exchange" have been recognised as town-planning errors.
Interior of the Hermitage Museum.
Saint Petersburg is home to more than two hundred museums, many of them hosted in historic buildings. The largest of the museums is the Hermitage Museum, featuring interiors of the former imperial residence and a vast collection of art. The Russian Museum is a large museum devoted to the Russian fine art specifically. The apartments of some famous Petersburgers, including Alexander Pushkin, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Feodor Chaliapin, Alexander Blok, Vladimir Nabokov, Anna Akhmatova, Mikhail Zoshchenko, Joseph Brodsky, as well as some palace and park ensembles of the southern suburbs and notable architectural monuments such as St. Isaac's Cathedral, have also been turned into public museums.
The Kunstkamera, with its collection established in 1714 by Peter the Great to collect curiosities from all over the world, is sometimes considered the first museum in Russia, which has evolved into the present-day Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography. The Russian Ethnography Museum, which has been split from the Russian Museum, is devoted to the cultures of the people of Russia, the former Soviet Union and Russian Empire.
Other notable museums include the Central Naval Museum hosted in the building of the former stock exchange and Zoological Museum, the Railway Museum, Museum of the Siege of Leningrad, Saint Petersburg Museum of History in the Peter and Paul Fortress and Artillery Museum, which in fact includes not only artillery items, but also a huge collection of other military equipment, uniform and decorations.
The Grand Cascade.
Saint Petersburg is home to numerous parks and gardens, some of the most famous of which are situated in the southern suburbs, including one of the largest English gardens of Europe in Pavlovsk. Sosnovka is the largest park within the limits of the city proper, occupying 240 ha. The Summer Garden is the oldest one, dating back to the early 18th century and designed in the regular style. It is situated on the southern bank of the Neva at the head of the Fontanka and is famous for its cast iron railing and marble sculptures.
Among other notable parks are the Maritime Victory Park on Krestovsky Island and the Moscow Victory Park in the south, both commemorating the victory over Nazi Germany in the Second World War, as well as the Central Park of Culture and Leisure occupying Yelagin Island and the Tauride Garden around the Tauride Palace. The most common trees grown in the parks are the English oak, Norway maple, green ash, silver birch, Siberian larch, blue spruce, crack willow, limes and poplars. Important dendrological collections dating back to the 19th century are hosted by the Saint Petersburg Botanical Garden and the Park of the Forestry Academy.
Among the city's more than fifty theaters is the world-famous Mariinsky Theater (also known as the Kirov Theater in the USSR ), home to the Mariinsky Ballet company and opera. Leading ballet dancers, such as Vaslav Nijinsky, Anna Pavlova, Rudolph Nureyev, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Galina Ulanova and Natalia Makarova, were principal stars of the Mariinsky ballet.
Dmitri Shostakovich was born and brought up in Saint Petersburg, and dedicated his Seventh Symphony to the city, calling it the "Leningrad Symphony." He wrote the symphony while in Leningrad during the German siege. The 7th symphony was premiered in 1942; its performance in the besieged Leningrad at the Bolshoy Philharmonic Hall under the baton of conductor Karl Eliasberg was heard over the radio and lifted the spirits of the survivors. In 1992 a reunion performance of the 7th Symphony by the (then) 14 survivors was played in the same hall as they done half a century ago. The Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra remained one of the best known symphony orchestras in the world under the leadership of conductors Yevgeny Mravinsky and Yuri Temirkanov.
The Imperial Choral Capella was founded and modeled after the royal courts of other European capitals.
Saint Petersburg has been home to the newest movements in popular music in the country. The first jazz band in the Soviet Union was founded here by Leonid Utyosov in the 1920s, under the patronage of Isaak Dunayevsky. The first jazz club in the Soviet Union was founded here in the 1950s, and later was named jazz club Kvadrat. In 1956 the popular ensemble Druzhba was founded by Aleksandr Bronevitsky and Edita Piekha, becoming the first popular band in the 1950s USSR. In the 1960s student rock-groups Argonavty, Kochevniki and others pioneered a series of unofficial and underground rock concerts and festivals. In 1972 Boris Grebenshchikov founded the band Aquarium, that later grew to huge popularity. Since then "Peter's rock" music style was formed.
In the 1970s many bands came out from "underground" and eventually founded the Leningrad rock club which has been providing stage to such bands as Piknik, DDT, Kino, headed by the legendary Viktor Tsoi, Igry, Mify, Zemlyane, Alisa and many other popular groups. The first Russian-style happening show Pop mekhanika, mixing over 300 people and animals on stage, was directed by the multi-talented Sergey Kuryokhin in the 1980s.
Today's Saint Petersburg boasts many notable musicians of various genres, from popular Leningrad's Sergei Shnurov and Tequilajazzz, to rock veterans Yuri Shevchuk, Vyacheslav Butusov and Mikhail Boyarsky.
The White Nights Festival in Saint Petersburg is famous for spectacular fireworks and massive show celebrating the end of school year.
Over 250 international and Russian movies were filmed in Saint Petersburg. International Movie Database Well over a thousand feature films about tsars, revolution, people and stories set in Saint Petersburg were produced worldwide, but were not filmed in the city. First film studios were founded in Saint Petersburg in the 1900s, and since the 1920s Lenfilm has been the largest film studio based in Saint Petersburg. The first foreign feature movie filmed entirely in Saint Petersburg was the 1997 production of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, starring Sophie Marceau and Sean Bean, and made by international team of British, American, French and Russian filmmakers.
The cult comedy Irony of Fate (also ÐÑÐ¾Ð½Ð¸Ñ ÑÑдÑбÑ, или С лÑгким паÑом!) is set in Saint Petersburg and pokes fun at Soviet city planning. The 1985 film White Nights received considerable Western attention for having captured genuine Leningrad street scenes at a time when filming in the Soviet Union by Western production companies was generally unheard of. Other movies include GoldenEye (1995), Midnight in Saint Petersburg (1996), and Brother (1997). Onegin (1999) is based on the Pushkin poem and showcases many tourist attractions. In addition, the Russian romantic comedy, ÐиÑÐµÑ FM, showcases the cityscape significantly, almost as if it was a main character in the film.
Several international film festivals are held annually, such as the Festival of Festivals, St. Petersburg, as well as the Message to Man International Documentary Film Festival, since its inauguration in 1988 during the White Nights.
Saint Petersburg has a longstanding and world famous tradition in literature. Dostoyevsky called it âThe most abstract and intentional city in the world," emphasizing its artificiality, but it was also a symbol of modern disorder in a changing Russia. It frequently appeared to Russian writers as a menacing and inhuman mechanism. The grotesque and often nightmarish image of the city is featured in Pushkin's last poems, the Petersburg stories of Gogol, the novels of Dostoyevsky, the verse of Alexander Blok and Osip Mandelshtam, and in the symbolist novel Petersburg by Andrey Bely. According to Lotman in his chapter, 'The Symbolism of Saint Petersburg' in Universe and the Mind, these writers were inspired from symbolism from within the city itself. The effect of life in Saint Petersburg on the plight of the poor clerk in a society obsessed with hierarchy and status also became an important theme for authors such as Pushkin, Gogol, and Dostoyevsky. Another important feature of early Saint Petersburg literature is its mythical element, which incorporates urban legends and popular ghost stories, as the stories of Pushkin and Gogol included ghosts returning to Saint Petersburg to haunt other characters as well as other fantastical elements, creating a surreal and abstract image of Saint Petersburg.
Twentieth century writers from Saint Petersburg, such as Vladimir Nabokov, Ayn Rand, Andrey Bely and Yevgeny Zamyatin, along with his apprentices, The Serapion Brothers, created entire new styles in literature and contributed new insights to the understanding of society through their experience in this city. Anna Akhmatova became an important leader for Russian poetry. Her poem Requiem focuses on the tragedies of living during the time of the Stalinist terror. Another notable 20th century writer from Saint Petersburg is Joseph Brodsky, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1987). While living in the United States, his writings in English reflected on life in Saint Petersburg from the unique perspective of being both an insider and an outsider to the city in essays such as, "A Guide to a Renamed City" and the nostalgic "In a Room and a Half". Joseph Brodsky. Less Than One: Selected Essays, 1986
FC Zenit's home Petrovsky stadium
Leningrad hosted part of the football tournament during the 1980 Summer Olympics. The 1994 Goodwill Games were held here.
The first competition here was the 1703 rowing event initiated by Peter the Great, after the victory over the Swedish fleet. Yachting events were held by the Russian Navy since the foundation of the city. Yacht clubs: St. Petersburg River Yacht Club, Neva Yacht Club, the latter is the oldest yacht club in the world. In the winter, when the sea and lake surfaces are frozen and yachts and dinghies cannot be used, local people sail on ice boats.
Equestrianism has been a long tradition, popular among the Tsars and aristocracy, as well as part of the military training. Several historic sports arenas were built for Equestrianism since the 18th century, to maintain training all year round, such as the Zimny Stadion and Konnogvardeisky Manezh among others.
Chess tradition was highlighted by the 1914 international tournament, in which the title "Grandmaster" was first formally conferred by Russian Tsar Nicholas II to five players: Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine, Tarrasch and Marshall, and which the Tsar had partially funded.
Kirov Stadium (now demolished) was one of the largest stadiums anywhere in the world, and the home to FC Zenit St. Petersburg in 1950-1993 and 1995. In 1951 the attendance of 110,000 set the record for the Soviet football. In 2007 Zenit became champions of the Russian Premier League, won the UEFA Cup 2007â08 season and the 2008 UEFA Supercup. Zenit now plays their home games at Petrovsky Stadium.
As of 2006/2007 there were 1024 kindergartens, 716 public schools and 80 vocational schools in Saint Petersburg. SPB.ru The largest of the higher education institutions are Saint Petersburg State University, enrolling approximately 32,000 undergraduate students, Saint Petersburg Polytechnical University and Herzen University. However, the universities are all federal property and don't belong to the city.
*List of consulates in Saint Petersburg
*List of museums in Saint Petersburg
*List of notable people from Saint Petersburg
*List of Saint Petersburg sister cities
*Amery, Colin, Brian Curran & Yuri Molodkovets. St. Petersburg. London: Frances Lincoln, 2006. ISBN 0711224927.
*Bater, James H. St. Petersburg: Industrialization and Change. Montreal: McGuill-Queenâs University Press, 1976. ISBN 0773502661.
*Berelowitch, Wladimir & Olga Medvedkova. Histoire de Saint-Pétersbourg. Paris: Fayard, 1996. ISBN 2213596018.
*Buckler, Julie. Mapping St. Petersburg: Imperial Text and Cityshape. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005 ISBN0691113491.
*Clark, Katerina, Petersburg, Crucible of Revolution. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995.
*Cross, Anthony (ed.). St. Petersburg, 1703-1825. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. ISBN 1403915709.
*George, Arthur L. & Elena George. St. Petersburg: Russia's Window to the Future, The First Three Centuries. Lanham: Taylor Trade Publishing, 2003. ISBN 1589790170.
*Glantz, David M. The Battle for Leningrad, 1941-1944. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002. ISBN 0700612084.
*Hellberg-Hirn, Elena. Imperial Imprints: Post-Soviet St. Petersburg. Helsinki: SKS Finnish Literature Society, 2003. ISBN 9517464916.
*Knopf Guide: Sat. Petersburg. New York: Knopf, 1995. ISBN 0679762027.
*Eyewitness Guide: St. Petersburg.
*Lincoln, W. Bruce. Sunlight at Midnight: St. Petersburg and the Rise of Modern Russia. New York: Basic Books, 2000. ISBN 0465083234.
*Orttung, Robert W. From Leningrad to St. Petersburg: Democratization in a Russian City. New York: St. Martinâs, 1995. ISBN 0312175612.
*Ruble, Blair A. Leningrad: Shaping a Soviet City. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. ISBN 0877723478.
*Shvidkovsky, Dmitry O. & Alexander Orloff. St. Petersburg: Architecture of the Tsars. New York: Abbeville Press, 1996. ISBN 0789202174.
*Volkov, Solomon. St. Petersburg: A Cultural History. New York: Free Press, 1995. ISBN 0028740521.
*St. Petersburg:Architecture of the Tsars. 360 pages. Abbeville Press, 1996. ISBN 0789202174
*Saint Petersburg: Museums, Palaces, and Historic Collections: A Guide to the Lesser Known Treasures of St. Petersburg. 2003. ISBN 1593730004.
*ÐежиÑ
овÑкий Ð . Ð. Река Ðева и ÐевÑÐºÐ°Ñ Ð³Ñба, Leningrad, ÐидÑомеÑеоиздаÑ, 1981.
* Official presentation of Saint Petersburg
* Official Portal of the City Government: Saint Petersburg
* Encyclopaedia of Saint Petersburg
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* Saint Petersburg in 1900
* Saint Petersburg, entry in the World Monuments Fund's 2008 watchlist
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Saint_Petersburg | Is the city named after the apostle Saint Peter? | Yes. | data/set3/a10 | Saint_Petersburg
Saint Petersburg ( , ) is a city and a federal subject (a federal city) of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The city's other names were Petrograd ( , 1914â1924) and Leningrad ( , 1924â1991). It is often called just Petersburg ( ) and is informally known as Piter ( ).
Founded by Tsar Peter I of Russia on 27 May 1703, it was the capital of the Russian Empire for more than two hundred years (1713â1728, 1732â1918). Saint Petersburg ceased being the capital in 1918 after the Russian Revolution of 1917. Nicholas and Alexandra: An Intimate Account of the Last of the Romanovs and the Fall of Imperial Russia (Athenum, 1967) by Robert K. Massie, ASIN B000CGP8M2 (also, Ballantine Books, 2000, ISBN 0-345-43831-0 and Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, 2005, ISBN 1-57912-433-X) It is Russia's second largest city after Moscow with 4.6 million inhabitants, and over 6 million people live in its vicinity. Saint Petersburg is a major European cultural centre, and an important Russian port on the Baltic Sea.
Saint Petersburg is often described as the most Western city of Russia. V. Morozov. The Discourses of Saint Petersburg and the Shaping of a Wider Europe. Copenhagen Peace Research Institute. 2002. Ciaonet.org Among cities of the world with over one million people, Saint Petersburg is the northernmost. The Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments constitute a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Saint Petersburg is also home to The Hermitage, the largest art museum in the world. /ref> Russia's political and cultural centre for 200 years, the city is sometimes referred to in Russia as the northern capital. A large number of foreign consulates, international corporations, banks and other businesses are located in Saint Petersburg.
On 1 May 1703 (Julian calendar), during the Great Northern War, Peter the Great captured the Swedish fortress of Nyenskans on the Neva river in Ingria. A few weeks later, on 27 May 1703 (May 16, Old Style), lower on the river, on Zayachy (Hare) Island, three miles (5 km) inland from the gulf, he laid down the Peter and Paul Fortress, which became the first brick and stone building of the new city. He named the city after his patron saint, Saint Peter, the apostle. The original name was meant to sound like Dutch due to Peter's obsession with the Dutch culture. Peter the Great: His Life and World (Knopf, 1980) by Robert K. Massie, ISBN 0-394-50032-6
The city was built by conscripted serfs from all over Russia and also by Swedish prisoners of war under the supervision of Alexander Menshikov and later became the centre of Saint Petersburg Governorate. Peter moved the capital from Moscow to Saint Petersburg in 1712, before the Treaty of Nystad of 1721 ended the war.
The Bronze Horseman, monument to Peter the Great.
Palace Square, as the main square of the Russian Empire it was the setting of many events of great historical significance
Lenin statue outside the Finland station. Between 1924 and 1991 the city was known as Leningrad.
Map of Saint Petersburg, 1903.
Church of the Savior on Blood.
During the first few years of its existence the city grew spontaneously around Trinity Square on the right bank of the Neva, near the Peter and Paul Fortress. However, Saint Petersburg soon started to develop according to a plan. By 1716 Domenico Trezzini had elaborated a project whereby the city centre would be located on Vasilievsky Island and shaped by a rectangular grid of canals. The project was not completed, but is still evident in the layout of the streets. In 1716 Jean-Baptiste Alexandre Le Blond was appointed chief architect of Saint Petersburg by Peter the Great.
The style of Petrine Baroque, developed by Trezzini and other architects and exemplified by such buildings as the Menshikov Palace, Kunstkamera, Peter and Paul Cathedral, Twelve Collegia, became prominent in the city architecture of the early 18th century. In 1724 the Academy of Sciences, University and Academic Gymnasium were established in Saint Petersburg by Peter the Great.
However, in 1725 Peter died. His near-lifelong autocratic push for modernisation of Russia had met with considerable opposition from the old-fashioned Russian nobility â resulting in several attempts on his life and a treason case involving his own son. Matthew S. Anderson, Peter the Great (London: Thames and Hudson, 1978) Thus, in 1728, Peter II of Russia moved his seat back to Moscow. But four years later, in 1732, under Empress Anna of Russia, Saint Petersburg again became the capital of the Russian Empire and remained the seat of the government for 186 years.
In 1736-1737 the city suffered from catastrophic fires. In order to rebuild the damaged boroughs, in 1737 a new plan was commissioned by a committee under Burkhard Christoph von Munnich. The city was divided into five boroughs, and the city centre was moved to the Admiralty borough, situated on the east bank between the Neva and Fontanka.
It developed along three radial streets, which meet at the Admiralty and are now known as Nevsky Prospekt (which is now perceived as the main street of the city), Gorokhovaya Street and Voznesensky Prospekt. The style of Baroque dominated the city architecture during the first sixty years, culminating in the Elizabethan Baroque, represented most notably by Bartolomeo Rastrelli with such buildings as the Winter Palace. In the 1760s the Baroque architecture was succeeded by the neoclassical architecture.
The Commission of Stone Buildings of Moscow and Saint Petersburg established in 1762 ruled that no structure in the city be higher than the Winter Palace and prohibited spacing between buildings. During the reign of Catherine the Great in the 1760s-1780s the banks of the Neva were lined with granite embankments.
However, it wasn't until 1850 that it was allowed to open the first permanent bridge across the Neva, Blagoveshchensky Bridge. Before that, only pontoon bridges were allowed. Obvodny Canal (dug in 1769-1833) became the southern limit of the city.
Some of the most important neoclassical architects in Saint Petersburg (including those working within the Empire style) were Jean-Baptiste Vallin de la Mothe (Imperial Academy of Arts, Small Hermitage, Gostiny Dvor, New Holland Arch, Catholic Church of St. Catherine), Antonio Rinaldi (Marble Palace), Yury Felten (Old Hermitage, Chesme Church), Giacomo Quarenghi (Academy of Sciences, Hermitage Theatre, Yusupov Palace), Andrey Voronikhin (Mining Institute, Kazan Cathedral), Andreyan Zakharov (Admiralty building), Jean-François Thomas de Thomon (Spit of Vasilievsky Island), Carlo Rossi (Yelagin Palace, Mikhailovsky Palace, Alexandrine Theatre, Senate and Synod Buildings, General Staff Building, design of many streets and squares), Vasily Stasov (Moscow Triumphal Gate, Trinity Cathedral), Auguste de Montferrand (Saint Isaac's Cathedral, Alexander Column). The victory over Napoleonic France in the Patriotic War of 1812 was commemorated with many monuments, including Alexander Column by Montferrand, erected in 1834, and Narva Triumphal Gate.
In 1825 the suppressed Decembrist revolt against Nicholas I of Russia took place on the Senate Square in the city, a day after he assumed the throne.
By the 1840s the neoclassical architecture had given place to various romanticist styles, which were dominant until the 1890s, represented by such architects as Andrei Stackenschneider (Mariinsky Palace, Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace, Nicholas Palace, New Michael Palace) and Konstantin Thon (Moskovsky Rail Terminal). The Church of the Savior on Blood designed in the Russian revival style commemorated the place where Alexander II of Russia was assassinated in 1881.
With the emancipation of the serfs undertaken by Alexander II in 1861 and the industrial revolution the influx of former peasants into the capital increased greatly. Poor boroughs spontaneously emerged on the outskirts of the city. Saint Petersburg surpassed Moscow in population and industrial growth and grew into one of the largest industrial hubs and cities in Europe.
The Revolution of 1905 began in Saint Petersburg and spread rapidly into the provinces. With the start of World War I, the name Saint Petersburg was perceived to be too German, so in 1914 the city was renamed Petrograd. The Romanovs: The Final Chapter (Random House, 1995) by Robert K. Massie, ISBN 0-394-58048-6 and ISBN 0-679-43572-7 In 1917 the February Revolution, which put an end to the Russian monarchy, and the October Revolution, which ultimately brought Vladimir Lenin to power, broke out in Petrograd. Rex A. Wade The Russian Revolution, 1917 2005 Cambridge University Press ISBN 0521841550 The city's proximity to the border and anti-Soviet armies forced the Bolsheviks under Lenin to transfer the capital to Moscow on March 12, 1918.
In 1919 during the ensuing Russian Civil War Nikolay Yudenich advancing from Estonia was about to capture the city from the Bolsheviks, but Leon Trotsky ultimately managed to mobilise the population and make him retreat. Many people fled the city in 1917-1920 or were repressed in the Red Terror, Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe. By Robert Gellately, 2007, Random House, 720 pages. ISBN 1400040051 so its population decreased dramatically. On January 26, 1924, three days after Lenin's death, Petrograd was renamed Leningrad. For decades Leningrad was glorified by the Soviet propaganda as "the cradle of the revolution" and "the city of three revolutions", many spots related to Lenin and the revolutions, such as the cruiser Aurora, were carefully preserved. Many streets and other toponyms were renamed accordingly.
In the 1920s-1930s the poor outskirts were reconstructed into regularly planned boroughs. The constructivist architecture flourished around that time. The Soviets nationalised housing and forced many residents to share communal apartments (kommunalkas). With 68% living in shared apartments in the 1930s, Leningrad was the city with the largest number of kommunalkas. In 1935 a new general plan was outlined, whereby the city should expand to the south and its centre should move there. The constructivism was rejected in favor of the pompous Stalinist architecture. Stalin ordered the construction of the new city hall on Moskovsky Prospect thus making it the new main street of Leningrad during the Soviet rule.
Since December 1931 Leningrad has been administratively separate from Leningrad Oblast. At that time it included Leningrad Suburban District, some parts of which were transferred back to Leningrad Oblast in 1936 and turned into Vsevolozhsky District, Krasnoselsky District, Pargolovsky District and Slutsky District (renamed Pavlovsky District in 1944).
On December 1, 1934, Sergey Kirov, popular communist leader of Leningrad, was assassinated, which was used to start the Great Purge. Stalin's Terror: High Politics and Mass Repression in the Soviet Union by Barry McLoughlin and Kevin McDermott (eds). Palgrave Macmillan, 2002, p. 6 The sizeable minorities of Germans, Poles, Finns, Estonians and Latvians were almost completely expelled from Leningrad by the Soviet government during the 1930s. Martin, Terry (1998). The Origins of Soviet Ethnic Cleansing. The Journal of Modern History 70.4, 813-861.
During World War II, Leningrad was besieged by Nazi Germany and co-belligerent Finland. Siege of Leningrad. Encyclopædia Britannica The siege lasted 872 days from September 1941 to January 1944. Baldack, Richard H. "Leningrad, Siege of" World Book Encyclopedia, Chicago, 2002, vol.12, page 195 The Siege of Leningrad was one of the longest, most destructive, and most lethal sieges of major cities in modern history. It isolated the city from most supplies except those provided through the Road of Life across Lake Ladoga, and more than a million civilians died, mainly from starvation. Many others were eventually evacuated or escaped by themselves, so the city became largely depopulated. For the heroic resistance of the city and tenacity of the survivors of the Siege, in 1945 Leningrad became the first city in the Soviet Union awarded the title Hero City. In October 1946 some former Finnish territories along the northern coast of the Gulf of Finland captured in the Winter War and Continuation War were transferred from Leningrad Oblast to Leningrad and divided into Sestroretsky District and Kurortny District, including the town of Terijoki (renamed Zelenogorsk in 1948).
Leningrad and many of its suburbs were rebuilt over the post-war decades, partially according to the pre-war plans. The 1948 general plan of Leningrad featured radial urban development in the north as well as in the south. The Leningrad Metro, underground rapid transit system which was designed before the war in the 1930s, was opened in 1955 with its first seven stations decorated with marble and bronze. Meanwhile, in 1949-1951 a large number of prominent Leningrad members of the Communist Party and their families were charged with treason and intention to create an anti-Soviet organization out of their local party cell. Many were imprisoned or executed in the Leningrad Affair fabricated by the central Soviet leadership. Dmitri Volkogonov. Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy, 1996, ISBN 0761507183 Russian publication: ÐенингÑадÑкое дело â надо ли ÑÑавиÑÑ ÐºÐ°Ð²ÑÑки?: Contr-tv.ru
In 1953 Pavlovsky District of Leningrad Oblast was abolished, and parts of its territory including Pavlovsk merged with Leningrad. In 1954 the settlements Levashovo, Pargolovo and Pesochny merged with Leningrad.
After the death of Stalin the perceived ornamental excesses of the Stalinist architecture were abandoned. In the 1960s-1980s, as many new residential boroughs were built on the outskirts with few series of functionalist apartment blocks identical to each other, many families moved there from kommunalkas in the city centre in order to live in separate apartments. Uritsk was re-named Ligovo and merged with Leningrad in 1963, Lomonosov merged in 1978.
On June 12, 1991, in a referendum held on the same day as the first Russian presidential election, 54% of voters chose to restore the name "Saint Petersburg" (the change officially took effect on September 6, 1991). Many other Soviet-era toponyms in the city were also renamed soon afterwards. In the same election Anatoly Sobchak became the first democratically elected mayor of the city. Jack F. Matlock, Jr., Autopsy on an Empire: The American Ambassador's Account of the Collapse of the Soviet Union, Random House, 1995, ISBN 0679413766
By the end of 1991 the deteriorating planned economy of the collapsing Soviet Union had put the city on the verge of starvation. For the first time since World War II food rationing was introduced, and the city received humanitarian food aid from abroad. The city somewhat recovered with the market reforms in Russia. In 1995-2004 a northern section of the Metro's Kirovsko-Vyborgskaya Line was cut off by underground flooding, which was a major obstacle to the city development.
In 1996, Vladimir Yakovlev was elected as head of the Saint Petersburg City Administration. The title of the city head was changed in advance from "mayor" to "governor". In 2003, Yakovlev resigned a year before his second term expired. Valentina Matviyenko was elected governor. In 2006 she was reapproved as governor by the city legislature. The residential building had intensified again, real estate prices inflated greatly, and this situation causes many new problems for the historical part of the city.
In spite of the fact that the central part of the city is watched by UNESCO, the safety of its historical and architectural environment is in danger. Sergey Zagraevsky. Will Saint Petersburg share the same fate as Moscow? Zagraevsky.com There are still about 8000 architectural monuments in Saint Petersburg, but since 2005 the destruction of older buildings in the historical centre has continued. A number of new building projects are underway, including the Gazprom skyscraper in Okhta.
Territory of the federal subject of Saint Petersburg.
The area of Saint Petersburg city proper is . The area of the federal subject is , which contains the Saint Petersburg proper (consisting of 81 okrugs), nine suburban towns (Kolpino, Krasnoye Selo, Kronstadt, Lomonosov, Pavlovsk, Peterhof, Pushkin, Sestroretsk and Zelenogorsk) and 21 municipal settlements.
Saint Petersburg is situated on the middle taiga lowlands along the shores of the Neva Bay of the Gulf of Finland, and islands of the river delta. The largest are Vasilyevsky island (besides the artificial island between Obvodny canal and Fontanka, and Kotlin in the Neva Bay), Petrogradsky, Dekabristov and Krestovsky. The latter together with Yelagin and Kamenny island are covered mostly by parks. The Karelian Isthmus, North of the city, is a popular resort area. In the south Saint Petersburg crosses the Baltic-Ladoga Klint and meets the Izhora Plateau.
The elevation of Saint Petersburg ranges from the sea level to its highest point of at the Orekhovaya Hill in the Duderhof Heights in the south. Part of the city's territory west of Liteyny Prospekt is no higher than above sea level, and has suffered from numerous floods. Floods in Saint Petersburg are triggered by a long wave in the Baltic Sea, caused by meteorological conditions, winds and shallowness of the Neva Bay. The four most disastrous floods occurred in 1824 ( above sea-level, during which over 300 buildings were destroyed The level of flooding is measured near Saint Petersburg Mining Institute, which is normally a.s.l. ), 1924 , 1777 , 1955 and 1975 . To prevent floods, the Saint Petersburg Dam has been under construction since 1979. ÐежиÑ
овÑкий Ð . Ð. Река Ðева и ÐевÑÐºÐ°Ñ Ð³Ñба, Leningrad: ÐидÑомеÑеоиздаÑ, 1981.
Since the 18th century the terrain in the city has been raised artificially, at some places by more than , making mergers of several islands, and changing the hydrology of the city. Besides the Neva and its distributaries, other important rivers of the federal subject of Saint Petersburg are Sestra, Okhta and Izhora. The largest lake is Sestroretsky Razliv in the north, followed by Lakhtinsky Razliv, Suzdal Lakes and other smaller lakes.
Saint Petersburg's position on the latitude of ca. 60° N causes variation in day length across seasons, ranging from 5:53 to 18:50. Twilight may last all night in early summer, from mid-May to mid-July, the celebrated phenomenon known as the white nights.
Snow falling on the morning of May 14, 2008 at Srednyaya Rogatka (district in the south of St. Petersburg)
Saint Petersburg experiences a humid continental climate of the cool summer subtype (Köppen: Dfb), due to the distinct moderating influence of the Baltic Sea cyclones, with warm, humid and short summers and long, cold winters.
The average daily temperature in July is ; summer maximum is about , winter minimum is about . The record low temperature is , recorded in 1883. The average annual temperature is . The River Neva within the city limits usually freezes up in November-December, break-up occurs in April. From December to March there are 123 days average with snow cover, which reaches the average of by February. The frost-free period in the city lasts on average for about 135 days. The city has a climate slightly warmer than its suburbs. Weather conditions are quite variable all year round. See Historical weather records for Saint Petersburg (since 1932) and Historical weather in Saint Petersburg for further information.
Average annual precipitation varies across the city, averaging per year and reaching maximum in late summer. Soil moisture is almost always high because of lower evapotranspiration due to the cool climate. Air humidity is 78% on average, while overcast is 165 days a year on average.
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Saint Petersburg is the second largest city in Russia. The 2002 census recorded a population of the federal subject of 4,661,219, or 3.21% of the total population of Russia. The 2002 census recorded twenty-two ethnic groups of more than two thousand persons each. The ethnic composition was: Russian 84.72%, Ukrainian 1.87%, Belarusians 1.17%, Jewish 0.78%, Tatar 0.76%, Armenian 0.41%, Azeri 0.36%, Georgian 0.22%, Chuvash 0.13%, Polish 0.10%, and many other smaller ethnic groups, while 7.89% of the inhabitants declined to state their ethnicity.
The 20th century saw hectic ups and downs in population. From 2.4 million in 1916 it had dropped to less than 740,000 by 1920 during the Russian Revolution of 1917 and Russian Civil War. The sizeable minorities of Germans, Poles, Finns, Estonians and Latvians were almost completely expelled from Leningrad by the Soviet government during the 1930s. From 1941 to the end of 1943, population dropped from 3 million to less than 700,000, as people died in battles, starved to death during the Siege of Leningrad, or were evacuated. After the siege, some of the evacuees returned, but most influx was due to migration from other parts of the Soviet Union. The city absorbed about 3 million people in the 1950s and grew to over 5 million in the 1980s. From 1991 to 2006 the city's population decreased to the current 4.6 million, while the suburban population increased due to privatization of land and massive move to suburbs. ЧиÑÑÑкова Ð. ТÑеÑÑе ÑокÑаÑение ÑиÑленноÑÑи наÑелениÑ... и поÑледнее? ÐемоÑкоп Weekly 163 â 164, August 1â15, 2004. Russian source: "Encyclopedia of Saint Petersburg" ЧиÑÑÑков Ð. Ю. ÐаÑеление (обзоÑÐ½Ð°Ñ ÑÑаÑÑÑ). ÐнÑÐ¸ÐºÐ»Ð¾Ð¿ÐµÐ´Ð¸Ñ Ð¡Ð°Ð½ÐºÑ-ÐеÑеÑбÑÑга The birth rate remains lower than the death rate; people over 65 constitute more than twenty percent of the population; and the median age is about 40 years. Russian statistics ÐÑновнÑе показаÑели ÑоÑиалÑно-демогÑаÑиÑеÑкой ÑиÑÑаÑии в СанкÑ-ÐеÑеÑбÑÑге
People in urban Saint Petersburg live mostly in apartments. Between 1918 and the 1990s, the Soviets nationalised housing and forced residents to share communal apartments (kommunalkas). With 68% living in shared flats in the 1930s, Leningrad was the city in the USSR with the largest number of kommunalkas. Resettling residents of kommunalkas is now on the way out, albeit shared apartments are still not uncommon. As new boroughs were built on the outskirts in the 1950s-1980s, over half a million low income families eventually received free apartments, and about an additional hundred thousand condos were purchased. While economic and social activity is concentrated in the historic city centre, the richest part of Saint Petersburg, most people live in commuter areas. For the first half of 2007, the birth rate was 9.1 per 1000.
Smolny Institute, the seat of the governor.
Saint Petersburg is a federal subject of Russia. The political life of Saint Petersburg is regulated by the city charter adopted by the city legislature in 1998. The superior executive body is the Saint Petersburg City Administration, led by the governor (mayor before 1996). Saint Petersburg has a single-chamber legislature, the Saint Petersburg Legislative Assembly.
According to the federal law passed in 2004, heads of federal subjects, including the governor of Saint Petersburg, are nominated by the President of Russia and approved by local legislatures. If the legislature disapproves the nominee, it is dissolved. The current governor, Valentina Matviyenko, was approved according to the new system in December 2006. She is currently the only woman governor in the whole of Russia.
Saint Petersburg city is currently divided into eighteen districts. Saint Petersburg is also the administrative centre of Leningrad Oblast, and of the Northwestern Federal District. The Constitutional Court of Russia moved to Saint Petersburg from Moscow in May 2008.
Saint Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast, being two different federal subjects, share a number of local departments of federal executive agencies and courts, such as court of arbitration, police, FSB, postal service, drug enforcement administration, penitentiary service, federal registration service, and other federal services.
The Old Saint Petersburg Stock Exchange, or Bourse, houses the Central Naval Museum
Saint Petersburg is a major trade gateway, financial and industrial centre of Russia specialising in oil and gas trade, shipbuilding yards, aerospace industry, radio and electronics, software and computers; machine building, heavy machinery and transport, including tanks and other military equipment, mining, instrument manufacture, ferrous and nonferrous metallurgy (production of aluminium alloys), chemicals, pharmaceuticals, medical equipment, publishing and printing, food and catering, wholesale and retail, textile and apparel industries, and many other businesses. It was also home to Lessner, one of Russia's two pioneering automobile manufacturers (along with Russo-Baltic), Lessner; founded by machine tool and boiler maker G. A. Lessner in 1904, with designs by Boris Loutsky, it survived until 1910. Georgano, G. N. Cars: Early and Vintage, 1886-1930. (London: Grange-Universal, 1985)
10% of the world's power turbines are made there at the LMZ, which built over two thousand turbines for power plants across the world. Major local industries are Admiralty Shipyard, Baltic Shipyard, LOMO, Kirov Plant, Elektrosila, Izhorsky Zavod; also registered in Saint Petersburg are Sovkomflot, Petersburg Fuel Company and SIBUR among other major Russian and international companies.
The Saint Petersburg docks at dawn.
Saint Petersburg has three large cargo seaports: Bolshoi Port Saint Petersburg, Kronstadt, and Lomonosov. International cruise liners have been served at the passenger port at Morskoy Vokzal on the south-west of Vasilevsky Island. In 2008 the first two berths were opened at the New Passenger Port on the west of the island. Discoverthebaltic.com Discover the Baltic online guide to Baltic cruise ports The new port is part of the city's "Marine Facade" development project Mfspb.ru St Petersburg "Marine Facade" development project and is due to have seven berths in operation by 2010.
A complex system of riverports on both banks of the Neva river are interconnected with the system of seaports, thus making Saint Petersburg the main link between the Baltic sea and the rest of Russia through the Volga-Baltic Waterway.
The Saint Petersburg Mint (Monetny Dvor), founded in 1724, is one of the largest mints in the world, it mints Russian coins, medals and badges. Saint Petersburg is also home to the oldest and largest Russian foundry, Monumentskulptura, which made thousands of sculptures and statues that are now gracing public parks of Saint Petersburg, as well as many other cities. Monuments and bronze statues of the Czars, as well as other important historic figures and dignitaries, and other world famous monuments, such as the sculptures by Peter Clodt von Jürgensburg, Paolo Troubetzkoy, Pavel Antokolsky, and others, were made there.
In 2007 Toyota opened a Camry plant after investing 5 billion dollars in Shushary, one of the southern suburbs of Saint Petersburg. General Motors, Hyundai and Nissan have signed deals with the Russian government to build their automotive plants in Saint Petersburg too. Automotive and auto-parts industry is on the rise there during the last decade. Saint Petersburg is also known as the "beer capital" of Russia, due to the supply and quality of local water, contributing over 30% of the domestic production of beer with its five large-scale breweries including Europe's second largest brewery Baltika, Vena (both operated by BBH), Heineken Brewery, Stepan Razin (both by Heineken) and Tinkoff brewery (SUN-InBev). Saint Petersburg has the second largest construction industry in Russia, including commercial, housing and road construction.
In 2006 Saint Petersburg's city budget was 179,9 billion rubles, and is planned to double by 2012. The federal subject's gross regional product as of 2005 was 667,905.4 million Russian rubles, ranked 4th in Russia, after Moscow, Tyumen Oblast, and Moscow Oblast, or 145,503.3 rubles per capita, ranked 12th among Russia's federal subjects, contributed mostly by wholesale and retail trade and repair services (24.7%) as well as processing industry (20.9%) and transportation and telecommunications (15.1%).
The Kresty prison.
Russia historically had a high level of crime that increased significantly after the October revolution. Edward Hallett Carr The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1923, 1985 ISBN 0393301990 Google preview Perestroika-time turmoils saw additional increase of the crime level.
Saint Petersburg experiences significant levels of street crime and bribery. In addition, in recent years there has been a notable increase in racially motivated violence, especially towards tourists and foreign students. One of the well known white supremacist groups Belaya Energia (White Energy, originally comes from White Power), has reportedly been one of the main gangs involved in murdering foreign university students. Russia: Racist Attacks Plague St. Petersburg Radio Free Europe September 30, 2005
At the end of the 1980s â beginning of the 1990s, Leningrad became home to a number of organised criminal groups as Tambov Gang, Malyshev Gang, Kazan Gang and ethnic criminal groups, engaged in a racket, extortion, paying off local government, and violent clashes with each other. Russian Mafia Shakes Down the Country by Steven R. Van Hook, Santa Barbara News-Press, November 20, 1994
In 2008, a car bomb killed three people (including a four-year old child), and injured one.
After the assassinations of City Property Committee Chairman and vice-Governor Mikhail Manevich(1997), State Duma deputy Galina Starovoytova (1998), acting City Legislature Speaker Viktor Novosyolov (1999) and a number of prominent businesspeople, Saint Petersburg was dubbed Capital of Crime in the Russian press. Trumbull, Nathaniel S. (2003) The impacts of globalization on Saint Petersburg: A secondary world city in from the cold? The Annals of Regional Science 37:533â546 Powell, Bill & Brian Whitmore. The Capital Of Crime.(Saint Petersburg, Russia). Newsweek International, May 15, 2000. There were a number of movies filmed in Saint Petersburg about the life of crime; , Brother (1997) reinforcing its image as the Crime Capital of Russia.
One of the oldest and most infamous remand facilities in Saint Petersburg, Kresty prison is located near downtown.
However, crime rates in St. Petersburg have declined since the end of the 1990s; the aforementioned criminal gangs have mostly dispersed. Even the Kresty prison is no longer in use, as more modern penal institutions are being built farther from the city centre.
The decoration of Saint Petersburg Metro (Kirovsky Zavod Station).
Saint Petersburg is a major transport hub. The first Russian railway was built here, in 1837. Today, the city is the final destination of a web of intercity and suburban railways, served by five different railway terminals (Baltiysky, Finlyandsky, Ladozhsky, Moskovsky, and Vitebsky), Until 2001, the Varshavsky Rail Terminal served as a major station; it now is a railway museum. Reconstruction of the Warsaw Railway Station as well as dozens of non-terminal railway stations within the federal subject. Saint Petersburg has international railway connections to Helsinki, Finland, Berlin, Germany, and all former republics of the USSR. The Helsinki railway was built in 1870, , commutes three times a day, in a journey lasting about five and a half hours. The Moscow-Saint Petersburg Railway opened in 1851, ; the commute to Moscow now requires about four and a half to nine hours. Saint Petersburg is also served by Pulkovo International Airport, Rossiya (Pulkovo): Pulkovo Aviation Enterprise and by three smaller commercial and cargo airports in the suburbs. There is a regular, 24/7, rapid-bus transit connection between Pulkovo airport and the city centre.
The city is also served by the passenger and cargo seaports in the Neva Bay of the Gulf of Finland, Baltic Sea, the river port higher up the Neva, and tens of smaller passenger stations on both banks of the Neva river. It is a terminus of the Volga-Baltic and White Sea-Baltic waterways. In 2004 the first high bridge that doesn't need to be drawn, a long Big Obukhovsky Bridge, was opened. Meteor hydrofoils link the city centre to the coastal towns of Kronstadt, Lomonosov, Peterhof, Sestroretsk and Zelenogorsk from May through October.
Pulkovo International Airport.
Saint Petersburg has an extensive city-funded network of public transport (buses, trams, trolleybuses) and several hundred routes served by marshrutkas. Trams in Saint Petersburg used to be the main transport; in the 1980s, Leningrad had the largest tramway network in the world, but many tramway rail tracks were dismantled in the 2000s. Buses carry up to 3 million passengers daily, serving over 250 urban and a number of suburban bus routes. Saint Petersburg Metro underground rapid transit system was opened in 1955; it now has five lines with 63 stations, connecting all five railway terminals, and carrying 3.4 million passengers daily. Metro stations are decorated in marble and bronze.
Traffic jams are common in the city, because of high daily traffic volumes between the commuter boroughs and the city centre, intercity traffic, and at times excessive snow in winter. Five segments of the Saint Petersburg Ring Road were opened between 2002 and 2006, and full ring is planned to open in 2010.
Saint Petersburg is part of the important transport corridor linking Scandinavia to Russia and Eastern Europe. The city is a node of the international European routes E18 towards Helsinki, E20 towards Tallinn, E95 towards Pskov, Kiev and Odessa and E105 towards Petrozavodsk, Murmansk and Kirkenes (north) and towards Moscow and Kharkiv (south).
Kazan Cathedral
Griboyedov Canal
A bridge over the river Neva
As of now, Saint Petersburg has no skyscrapers and a relatively low skyline. Current regulations forbid construction of high buildings in the city centre. The 310 metre tall Saint Petersburg TV Tower is the tallest structure in the city, while the 122.5 m Peter and Paul Cathedral is by far the highest building. However, there is a controversial project endorsed by the city authorities and known as the Ohkta Centre to build a 396 m supertall skyscraper. In 2008 the World Monuments Fund included the Saint Petersburg historic skyline within the watch list of 100 most endangered sites due to the expected construction, which threatens to alter it drastically.
Unlike in Moscow, in Saint Petersburg the historic architecture of the city centre, mostly consisting of Baroque and neoclassical buildings of the 18th and 19th centuries, has been largely preserved, although a number of buildings were demolished after the Bolsheviks' seizure of power, during the Siege of Leningrad and in recent years. The oldest of the remaining building is a wooden house built for Peter I in 1703 on the shore of the Neva near Trinity Square. Since 1991 the Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments in Saint Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast have been listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.
The ensemble of Peter and Paul Fortress with the Peter and Paul Cathedral takes dominant position on Zayachy Island along the right bank of the River Neva. Each noon a cannon fires a blank shot from the fortress. The Saint Petersburg Mosque, the largest mosque in Europe when opened in 1913, is situated on the right bank nearby. The spit of Vasilievsky Island, which splits the river into two largest armlets, the Bolshaya Neva and Malaya Neva, is connected to the northern bank (Petrogradsky Island) via the Exchange Bridge and occupied by the Old Saint Petersburg Stock Exchange and Rostral Columns. The southern coast of Vasilievsky Island along the Bolshaya Neva features some of the city's oldest buildings, dating from the 18th century, including the Kunstkamera, Twelve Collegia, Menshikov Palace and Imperial Academy of Arts. It hosts one of two campuses of Saint Petersburg State University.
On the southern, left bank of the Neva, connected to the spit of Vasilievsky Island via the Palace Bridge, lie the Admiralty Building, the vast Hermitage Museum complex stretching along the Palace Embankment, which includes the baroque Winter Palace, former official residence of Russian emperors, as well as the neoclassical Marble Palace. The Winter Palace faces Palace Square, the city's main square with the Alexander Column.
Nevsky Prospekt, also situated on the left bank of the Neva, is the main avenue in the city. It starts at the Admiralty and runs eastwards next to Palace Square. Nevsky Prospekt crosses the Moika (Green Bridge), Griboyedov Canal (Kazansky Bridge), Garden Street, the Fontanka (Anichkov Bridge), meets Liteyny Prospekt and proceeds to Uprising Square near the Moskovsky railway station, where it meets Ligovsky Prospekt and turns to the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. The Passage, Catholic Church of St. Catherine, Book House (former Singer Manufacturing Company Building in the Art Nouveau style), Grand Hotel Europe, Lutheran Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, Gostiny Dvor, Russian National Library, Alexandrine Theatre behind Mikeshin's statue of Catherine the Great, Kazan Cathedral, Stroganov Palace, Anichkov Palace and Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace are all situated along that avenue.
The Alexander Nevsky Lavra, intended to house the relics of St. Alexander Nevsky, is an important centre of Christian education in Russia. It also contains the Tikhvin Cemetery with graves of many notable Petersburgers.
On the territory between the Neva and Nevsky Prospekt the Church of the Savior on Blood, Mikhailovsky Palace housing the Russian Museum, Field of Mars, St. Michael's Castle, Summer Garden, Tauride Palace, Smolny Institute and Smolny Convent are located.
Many notable landmarks are situated to the west and south of the Admiralty Building, including the Trinity Cathedral, Mariinsky Palace, Hotel Astoria, famous Mariinsky Theatre, New Holland Island, Saint Isaac's Cathedral, the largest in the city, and Decembrists Square with the Bronze Horseman, 18th century equestrian monument to Peter the Great, which is considered among the city's most recognisable symbols.
Other symbols of Saint Petersburg include the weather vane in the shape of a small ship on top of the Admiralty's golden spire and the golden angel on top of the Peter and Paul Cathedral. The Palace Bridge drawn at night is yet another symbol of the city. Every night during the navigation period from April to November, 22 bridges across the Neva and main canals are drawn to let ships pass in and out of the Baltic Sea according to a schedule. Schedule for main drawbridges across the Neva river (Official Russian schedule): Mr-spb.ru It wasn't until 2004 that the first high bridge across the Neva, which doesn't need to be drawn, Big Obukhovsky Bridge, was opened. There are hundreds of smaller bridges in Saint Petersburg spanning across numerous canals and distributaries of the Neva, some of the most important of which are the Moika, Fontanka, Griboyedov Canal, Obvodny Canal, Karpovka and Smolenka. Due to the intricate web of canals, Saint Petersburg is often called Venice of the North. The rivers and canals in the city centre are lined with granite embankments. The embankments and bridges are separated from rivers and canals by granite or cast iron parapets.
Southern suburbs of the city feature former imperial residences, including Peterhof, with majestic fountain cascades and parks, Tsarskoe Selo, with the baroque Catherine Palace and the neoclassical Alexander Palace, and Pavlovsk, which contains a domed palace of Emperor Paul and one of the largest English-style parks in Europe. Some other residences situated nearby and making part of the world heritage site, including a castle and park in Gatchina, actually belong to Leningrad Oblast rather than Saint Petersburg. Another notable suburb is Kronstadt with its 19th century fortifications and naval monuments, occupying the Kotlin Island in the Gulf of Finland.
From XX century end in a city active building and reorganisation of old historical city districts is conducted.
The authorities are compelled to transfer control of private residences in city centre to private lessors.
Also sealing building and a superstructure of buildings is spent by penthouses.
Some of these structures, such as the Saint Petersburg Commodity and Stock Exchange" have been recognised as town-planning errors.
Interior of the Hermitage Museum.
Saint Petersburg is home to more than two hundred museums, many of them hosted in historic buildings. The largest of the museums is the Hermitage Museum, featuring interiors of the former imperial residence and a vast collection of art. The Russian Museum is a large museum devoted to the Russian fine art specifically. The apartments of some famous Petersburgers, including Alexander Pushkin, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Feodor Chaliapin, Alexander Blok, Vladimir Nabokov, Anna Akhmatova, Mikhail Zoshchenko, Joseph Brodsky, as well as some palace and park ensembles of the southern suburbs and notable architectural monuments such as St. Isaac's Cathedral, have also been turned into public museums.
The Kunstkamera, with its collection established in 1714 by Peter the Great to collect curiosities from all over the world, is sometimes considered the first museum in Russia, which has evolved into the present-day Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography. The Russian Ethnography Museum, which has been split from the Russian Museum, is devoted to the cultures of the people of Russia, the former Soviet Union and Russian Empire.
Other notable museums include the Central Naval Museum hosted in the building of the former stock exchange and Zoological Museum, the Railway Museum, Museum of the Siege of Leningrad, Saint Petersburg Museum of History in the Peter and Paul Fortress and Artillery Museum, which in fact includes not only artillery items, but also a huge collection of other military equipment, uniform and decorations.
The Grand Cascade.
Saint Petersburg is home to numerous parks and gardens, some of the most famous of which are situated in the southern suburbs, including one of the largest English gardens of Europe in Pavlovsk. Sosnovka is the largest park within the limits of the city proper, occupying 240 ha. The Summer Garden is the oldest one, dating back to the early 18th century and designed in the regular style. It is situated on the southern bank of the Neva at the head of the Fontanka and is famous for its cast iron railing and marble sculptures.
Among other notable parks are the Maritime Victory Park on Krestovsky Island and the Moscow Victory Park in the south, both commemorating the victory over Nazi Germany in the Second World War, as well as the Central Park of Culture and Leisure occupying Yelagin Island and the Tauride Garden around the Tauride Palace. The most common trees grown in the parks are the English oak, Norway maple, green ash, silver birch, Siberian larch, blue spruce, crack willow, limes and poplars. Important dendrological collections dating back to the 19th century are hosted by the Saint Petersburg Botanical Garden and the Park of the Forestry Academy.
Among the city's more than fifty theaters is the world-famous Mariinsky Theater (also known as the Kirov Theater in the USSR ), home to the Mariinsky Ballet company and opera. Leading ballet dancers, such as Vaslav Nijinsky, Anna Pavlova, Rudolph Nureyev, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Galina Ulanova and Natalia Makarova, were principal stars of the Mariinsky ballet.
Dmitri Shostakovich was born and brought up in Saint Petersburg, and dedicated his Seventh Symphony to the city, calling it the "Leningrad Symphony." He wrote the symphony while in Leningrad during the German siege. The 7th symphony was premiered in 1942; its performance in the besieged Leningrad at the Bolshoy Philharmonic Hall under the baton of conductor Karl Eliasberg was heard over the radio and lifted the spirits of the survivors. In 1992 a reunion performance of the 7th Symphony by the (then) 14 survivors was played in the same hall as they done half a century ago. The Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra remained one of the best known symphony orchestras in the world under the leadership of conductors Yevgeny Mravinsky and Yuri Temirkanov.
The Imperial Choral Capella was founded and modeled after the royal courts of other European capitals.
Saint Petersburg has been home to the newest movements in popular music in the country. The first jazz band in the Soviet Union was founded here by Leonid Utyosov in the 1920s, under the patronage of Isaak Dunayevsky. The first jazz club in the Soviet Union was founded here in the 1950s, and later was named jazz club Kvadrat. In 1956 the popular ensemble Druzhba was founded by Aleksandr Bronevitsky and Edita Piekha, becoming the first popular band in the 1950s USSR. In the 1960s student rock-groups Argonavty, Kochevniki and others pioneered a series of unofficial and underground rock concerts and festivals. In 1972 Boris Grebenshchikov founded the band Aquarium, that later grew to huge popularity. Since then "Peter's rock" music style was formed.
In the 1970s many bands came out from "underground" and eventually founded the Leningrad rock club which has been providing stage to such bands as Piknik, DDT, Kino, headed by the legendary Viktor Tsoi, Igry, Mify, Zemlyane, Alisa and many other popular groups. The first Russian-style happening show Pop mekhanika, mixing over 300 people and animals on stage, was directed by the multi-talented Sergey Kuryokhin in the 1980s.
Today's Saint Petersburg boasts many notable musicians of various genres, from popular Leningrad's Sergei Shnurov and Tequilajazzz, to rock veterans Yuri Shevchuk, Vyacheslav Butusov and Mikhail Boyarsky.
The White Nights Festival in Saint Petersburg is famous for spectacular fireworks and massive show celebrating the end of school year.
Over 250 international and Russian movies were filmed in Saint Petersburg. International Movie Database Well over a thousand feature films about tsars, revolution, people and stories set in Saint Petersburg were produced worldwide, but were not filmed in the city. First film studios were founded in Saint Petersburg in the 1900s, and since the 1920s Lenfilm has been the largest film studio based in Saint Petersburg. The first foreign feature movie filmed entirely in Saint Petersburg was the 1997 production of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, starring Sophie Marceau and Sean Bean, and made by international team of British, American, French and Russian filmmakers.
The cult comedy Irony of Fate (also ÐÑÐ¾Ð½Ð¸Ñ ÑÑдÑбÑ, или С лÑгким паÑом!) is set in Saint Petersburg and pokes fun at Soviet city planning. The 1985 film White Nights received considerable Western attention for having captured genuine Leningrad street scenes at a time when filming in the Soviet Union by Western production companies was generally unheard of. Other movies include GoldenEye (1995), Midnight in Saint Petersburg (1996), and Brother (1997). Onegin (1999) is based on the Pushkin poem and showcases many tourist attractions. In addition, the Russian romantic comedy, ÐиÑÐµÑ FM, showcases the cityscape significantly, almost as if it was a main character in the film.
Several international film festivals are held annually, such as the Festival of Festivals, St. Petersburg, as well as the Message to Man International Documentary Film Festival, since its inauguration in 1988 during the White Nights.
Saint Petersburg has a longstanding and world famous tradition in literature. Dostoyevsky called it âThe most abstract and intentional city in the world," emphasizing its artificiality, but it was also a symbol of modern disorder in a changing Russia. It frequently appeared to Russian writers as a menacing and inhuman mechanism. The grotesque and often nightmarish image of the city is featured in Pushkin's last poems, the Petersburg stories of Gogol, the novels of Dostoyevsky, the verse of Alexander Blok and Osip Mandelshtam, and in the symbolist novel Petersburg by Andrey Bely. According to Lotman in his chapter, 'The Symbolism of Saint Petersburg' in Universe and the Mind, these writers were inspired from symbolism from within the city itself. The effect of life in Saint Petersburg on the plight of the poor clerk in a society obsessed with hierarchy and status also became an important theme for authors such as Pushkin, Gogol, and Dostoyevsky. Another important feature of early Saint Petersburg literature is its mythical element, which incorporates urban legends and popular ghost stories, as the stories of Pushkin and Gogol included ghosts returning to Saint Petersburg to haunt other characters as well as other fantastical elements, creating a surreal and abstract image of Saint Petersburg.
Twentieth century writers from Saint Petersburg, such as Vladimir Nabokov, Ayn Rand, Andrey Bely and Yevgeny Zamyatin, along with his apprentices, The Serapion Brothers, created entire new styles in literature and contributed new insights to the understanding of society through their experience in this city. Anna Akhmatova became an important leader for Russian poetry. Her poem Requiem focuses on the tragedies of living during the time of the Stalinist terror. Another notable 20th century writer from Saint Petersburg is Joseph Brodsky, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1987). While living in the United States, his writings in English reflected on life in Saint Petersburg from the unique perspective of being both an insider and an outsider to the city in essays such as, "A Guide to a Renamed City" and the nostalgic "In a Room and a Half". Joseph Brodsky. Less Than One: Selected Essays, 1986
FC Zenit's home Petrovsky stadium
Leningrad hosted part of the football tournament during the 1980 Summer Olympics. The 1994 Goodwill Games were held here.
The first competition here was the 1703 rowing event initiated by Peter the Great, after the victory over the Swedish fleet. Yachting events were held by the Russian Navy since the foundation of the city. Yacht clubs: St. Petersburg River Yacht Club, Neva Yacht Club, the latter is the oldest yacht club in the world. In the winter, when the sea and lake surfaces are frozen and yachts and dinghies cannot be used, local people sail on ice boats.
Equestrianism has been a long tradition, popular among the Tsars and aristocracy, as well as part of the military training. Several historic sports arenas were built for Equestrianism since the 18th century, to maintain training all year round, such as the Zimny Stadion and Konnogvardeisky Manezh among others.
Chess tradition was highlighted by the 1914 international tournament, in which the title "Grandmaster" was first formally conferred by Russian Tsar Nicholas II to five players: Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine, Tarrasch and Marshall, and which the Tsar had partially funded.
Kirov Stadium (now demolished) was one of the largest stadiums anywhere in the world, and the home to FC Zenit St. Petersburg in 1950-1993 and 1995. In 1951 the attendance of 110,000 set the record for the Soviet football. In 2007 Zenit became champions of the Russian Premier League, won the UEFA Cup 2007â08 season and the 2008 UEFA Supercup. Zenit now plays their home games at Petrovsky Stadium.
As of 2006/2007 there were 1024 kindergartens, 716 public schools and 80 vocational schools in Saint Petersburg. SPB.ru The largest of the higher education institutions are Saint Petersburg State University, enrolling approximately 32,000 undergraduate students, Saint Petersburg Polytechnical University and Herzen University. However, the universities are all federal property and don't belong to the city.
*List of consulates in Saint Petersburg
*List of museums in Saint Petersburg
*List of notable people from Saint Petersburg
*List of Saint Petersburg sister cities
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*Glantz, David M. The Battle for Leningrad, 1941-1944. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002. ISBN 0700612084.
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*Eyewitness Guide: St. Petersburg.
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*Orttung, Robert W. From Leningrad to St. Petersburg: Democratization in a Russian City. New York: St. Martinâs, 1995. ISBN 0312175612.
*Ruble, Blair A. Leningrad: Shaping a Soviet City. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. ISBN 0877723478.
*Shvidkovsky, Dmitry O. & Alexander Orloff. St. Petersburg: Architecture of the Tsars. New York: Abbeville Press, 1996. ISBN 0789202174.
*Volkov, Solomon. St. Petersburg: A Cultural History. New York: Free Press, 1995. ISBN 0028740521.
*St. Petersburg:Architecture of the Tsars. 360 pages. Abbeville Press, 1996. ISBN 0789202174
*Saint Petersburg: Museums, Palaces, and Historic Collections: A Guide to the Lesser Known Treasures of St. Petersburg. 2003. ISBN 1593730004.
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овÑкий Ð . Ð. Река Ðева и ÐевÑÐºÐ°Ñ Ð³Ñба, Leningrad, ÐидÑомеÑеоиздаÑ, 1981.
* Official presentation of Saint Petersburg
* Official Portal of the City Government: Saint Petersburg
* Encyclopaedia of Saint Petersburg
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* Saint Petersburg in 1900
* Saint Petersburg, entry in the World Monuments Fund's 2008 watchlist
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Saint_Petersburg | Has the terrain in the city been artificially raised? | yes | data/set3/a10 | Saint_Petersburg
Saint Petersburg ( , ) is a city and a federal subject (a federal city) of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The city's other names were Petrograd ( , 1914â1924) and Leningrad ( , 1924â1991). It is often called just Petersburg ( ) and is informally known as Piter ( ).
Founded by Tsar Peter I of Russia on 27 May 1703, it was the capital of the Russian Empire for more than two hundred years (1713â1728, 1732â1918). Saint Petersburg ceased being the capital in 1918 after the Russian Revolution of 1917. Nicholas and Alexandra: An Intimate Account of the Last of the Romanovs and the Fall of Imperial Russia (Athenum, 1967) by Robert K. Massie, ASIN B000CGP8M2 (also, Ballantine Books, 2000, ISBN 0-345-43831-0 and Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, 2005, ISBN 1-57912-433-X) It is Russia's second largest city after Moscow with 4.6 million inhabitants, and over 6 million people live in its vicinity. Saint Petersburg is a major European cultural centre, and an important Russian port on the Baltic Sea.
Saint Petersburg is often described as the most Western city of Russia. V. Morozov. The Discourses of Saint Petersburg and the Shaping of a Wider Europe. Copenhagen Peace Research Institute. 2002. Ciaonet.org Among cities of the world with over one million people, Saint Petersburg is the northernmost. The Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments constitute a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Saint Petersburg is also home to The Hermitage, the largest art museum in the world. /ref> Russia's political and cultural centre for 200 years, the city is sometimes referred to in Russia as the northern capital. A large number of foreign consulates, international corporations, banks and other businesses are located in Saint Petersburg.
On 1 May 1703 (Julian calendar), during the Great Northern War, Peter the Great captured the Swedish fortress of Nyenskans on the Neva river in Ingria. A few weeks later, on 27 May 1703 (May 16, Old Style), lower on the river, on Zayachy (Hare) Island, three miles (5 km) inland from the gulf, he laid down the Peter and Paul Fortress, which became the first brick and stone building of the new city. He named the city after his patron saint, Saint Peter, the apostle. The original name was meant to sound like Dutch due to Peter's obsession with the Dutch culture. Peter the Great: His Life and World (Knopf, 1980) by Robert K. Massie, ISBN 0-394-50032-6
The city was built by conscripted serfs from all over Russia and also by Swedish prisoners of war under the supervision of Alexander Menshikov and later became the centre of Saint Petersburg Governorate. Peter moved the capital from Moscow to Saint Petersburg in 1712, before the Treaty of Nystad of 1721 ended the war.
The Bronze Horseman, monument to Peter the Great.
Palace Square, as the main square of the Russian Empire it was the setting of many events of great historical significance
Lenin statue outside the Finland station. Between 1924 and 1991 the city was known as Leningrad.
Map of Saint Petersburg, 1903.
Church of the Savior on Blood.
During the first few years of its existence the city grew spontaneously around Trinity Square on the right bank of the Neva, near the Peter and Paul Fortress. However, Saint Petersburg soon started to develop according to a plan. By 1716 Domenico Trezzini had elaborated a project whereby the city centre would be located on Vasilievsky Island and shaped by a rectangular grid of canals. The project was not completed, but is still evident in the layout of the streets. In 1716 Jean-Baptiste Alexandre Le Blond was appointed chief architect of Saint Petersburg by Peter the Great.
The style of Petrine Baroque, developed by Trezzini and other architects and exemplified by such buildings as the Menshikov Palace, Kunstkamera, Peter and Paul Cathedral, Twelve Collegia, became prominent in the city architecture of the early 18th century. In 1724 the Academy of Sciences, University and Academic Gymnasium were established in Saint Petersburg by Peter the Great.
However, in 1725 Peter died. His near-lifelong autocratic push for modernisation of Russia had met with considerable opposition from the old-fashioned Russian nobility â resulting in several attempts on his life and a treason case involving his own son. Matthew S. Anderson, Peter the Great (London: Thames and Hudson, 1978) Thus, in 1728, Peter II of Russia moved his seat back to Moscow. But four years later, in 1732, under Empress Anna of Russia, Saint Petersburg again became the capital of the Russian Empire and remained the seat of the government for 186 years.
In 1736-1737 the city suffered from catastrophic fires. In order to rebuild the damaged boroughs, in 1737 a new plan was commissioned by a committee under Burkhard Christoph von Munnich. The city was divided into five boroughs, and the city centre was moved to the Admiralty borough, situated on the east bank between the Neva and Fontanka.
It developed along three radial streets, which meet at the Admiralty and are now known as Nevsky Prospekt (which is now perceived as the main street of the city), Gorokhovaya Street and Voznesensky Prospekt. The style of Baroque dominated the city architecture during the first sixty years, culminating in the Elizabethan Baroque, represented most notably by Bartolomeo Rastrelli with such buildings as the Winter Palace. In the 1760s the Baroque architecture was succeeded by the neoclassical architecture.
The Commission of Stone Buildings of Moscow and Saint Petersburg established in 1762 ruled that no structure in the city be higher than the Winter Palace and prohibited spacing between buildings. During the reign of Catherine the Great in the 1760s-1780s the banks of the Neva were lined with granite embankments.
However, it wasn't until 1850 that it was allowed to open the first permanent bridge across the Neva, Blagoveshchensky Bridge. Before that, only pontoon bridges were allowed. Obvodny Canal (dug in 1769-1833) became the southern limit of the city.
Some of the most important neoclassical architects in Saint Petersburg (including those working within the Empire style) were Jean-Baptiste Vallin de la Mothe (Imperial Academy of Arts, Small Hermitage, Gostiny Dvor, New Holland Arch, Catholic Church of St. Catherine), Antonio Rinaldi (Marble Palace), Yury Felten (Old Hermitage, Chesme Church), Giacomo Quarenghi (Academy of Sciences, Hermitage Theatre, Yusupov Palace), Andrey Voronikhin (Mining Institute, Kazan Cathedral), Andreyan Zakharov (Admiralty building), Jean-François Thomas de Thomon (Spit of Vasilievsky Island), Carlo Rossi (Yelagin Palace, Mikhailovsky Palace, Alexandrine Theatre, Senate and Synod Buildings, General Staff Building, design of many streets and squares), Vasily Stasov (Moscow Triumphal Gate, Trinity Cathedral), Auguste de Montferrand (Saint Isaac's Cathedral, Alexander Column). The victory over Napoleonic France in the Patriotic War of 1812 was commemorated with many monuments, including Alexander Column by Montferrand, erected in 1834, and Narva Triumphal Gate.
In 1825 the suppressed Decembrist revolt against Nicholas I of Russia took place on the Senate Square in the city, a day after he assumed the throne.
By the 1840s the neoclassical architecture had given place to various romanticist styles, which were dominant until the 1890s, represented by such architects as Andrei Stackenschneider (Mariinsky Palace, Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace, Nicholas Palace, New Michael Palace) and Konstantin Thon (Moskovsky Rail Terminal). The Church of the Savior on Blood designed in the Russian revival style commemorated the place where Alexander II of Russia was assassinated in 1881.
With the emancipation of the serfs undertaken by Alexander II in 1861 and the industrial revolution the influx of former peasants into the capital increased greatly. Poor boroughs spontaneously emerged on the outskirts of the city. Saint Petersburg surpassed Moscow in population and industrial growth and grew into one of the largest industrial hubs and cities in Europe.
The Revolution of 1905 began in Saint Petersburg and spread rapidly into the provinces. With the start of World War I, the name Saint Petersburg was perceived to be too German, so in 1914 the city was renamed Petrograd. The Romanovs: The Final Chapter (Random House, 1995) by Robert K. Massie, ISBN 0-394-58048-6 and ISBN 0-679-43572-7 In 1917 the February Revolution, which put an end to the Russian monarchy, and the October Revolution, which ultimately brought Vladimir Lenin to power, broke out in Petrograd. Rex A. Wade The Russian Revolution, 1917 2005 Cambridge University Press ISBN 0521841550 The city's proximity to the border and anti-Soviet armies forced the Bolsheviks under Lenin to transfer the capital to Moscow on March 12, 1918.
In 1919 during the ensuing Russian Civil War Nikolay Yudenich advancing from Estonia was about to capture the city from the Bolsheviks, but Leon Trotsky ultimately managed to mobilise the population and make him retreat. Many people fled the city in 1917-1920 or were repressed in the Red Terror, Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe. By Robert Gellately, 2007, Random House, 720 pages. ISBN 1400040051 so its population decreased dramatically. On January 26, 1924, three days after Lenin's death, Petrograd was renamed Leningrad. For decades Leningrad was glorified by the Soviet propaganda as "the cradle of the revolution" and "the city of three revolutions", many spots related to Lenin and the revolutions, such as the cruiser Aurora, were carefully preserved. Many streets and other toponyms were renamed accordingly.
In the 1920s-1930s the poor outskirts were reconstructed into regularly planned boroughs. The constructivist architecture flourished around that time. The Soviets nationalised housing and forced many residents to share communal apartments (kommunalkas). With 68% living in shared apartments in the 1930s, Leningrad was the city with the largest number of kommunalkas. In 1935 a new general plan was outlined, whereby the city should expand to the south and its centre should move there. The constructivism was rejected in favor of the pompous Stalinist architecture. Stalin ordered the construction of the new city hall on Moskovsky Prospect thus making it the new main street of Leningrad during the Soviet rule.
Since December 1931 Leningrad has been administratively separate from Leningrad Oblast. At that time it included Leningrad Suburban District, some parts of which were transferred back to Leningrad Oblast in 1936 and turned into Vsevolozhsky District, Krasnoselsky District, Pargolovsky District and Slutsky District (renamed Pavlovsky District in 1944).
On December 1, 1934, Sergey Kirov, popular communist leader of Leningrad, was assassinated, which was used to start the Great Purge. Stalin's Terror: High Politics and Mass Repression in the Soviet Union by Barry McLoughlin and Kevin McDermott (eds). Palgrave Macmillan, 2002, p. 6 The sizeable minorities of Germans, Poles, Finns, Estonians and Latvians were almost completely expelled from Leningrad by the Soviet government during the 1930s. Martin, Terry (1998). The Origins of Soviet Ethnic Cleansing. The Journal of Modern History 70.4, 813-861.
During World War II, Leningrad was besieged by Nazi Germany and co-belligerent Finland. Siege of Leningrad. Encyclopædia Britannica The siege lasted 872 days from September 1941 to January 1944. Baldack, Richard H. "Leningrad, Siege of" World Book Encyclopedia, Chicago, 2002, vol.12, page 195 The Siege of Leningrad was one of the longest, most destructive, and most lethal sieges of major cities in modern history. It isolated the city from most supplies except those provided through the Road of Life across Lake Ladoga, and more than a million civilians died, mainly from starvation. Many others were eventually evacuated or escaped by themselves, so the city became largely depopulated. For the heroic resistance of the city and tenacity of the survivors of the Siege, in 1945 Leningrad became the first city in the Soviet Union awarded the title Hero City. In October 1946 some former Finnish territories along the northern coast of the Gulf of Finland captured in the Winter War and Continuation War were transferred from Leningrad Oblast to Leningrad and divided into Sestroretsky District and Kurortny District, including the town of Terijoki (renamed Zelenogorsk in 1948).
Leningrad and many of its suburbs were rebuilt over the post-war decades, partially according to the pre-war plans. The 1948 general plan of Leningrad featured radial urban development in the north as well as in the south. The Leningrad Metro, underground rapid transit system which was designed before the war in the 1930s, was opened in 1955 with its first seven stations decorated with marble and bronze. Meanwhile, in 1949-1951 a large number of prominent Leningrad members of the Communist Party and their families were charged with treason and intention to create an anti-Soviet organization out of their local party cell. Many were imprisoned or executed in the Leningrad Affair fabricated by the central Soviet leadership. Dmitri Volkogonov. Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy, 1996, ISBN 0761507183 Russian publication: ÐенингÑадÑкое дело â надо ли ÑÑавиÑÑ ÐºÐ°Ð²ÑÑки?: Contr-tv.ru
In 1953 Pavlovsky District of Leningrad Oblast was abolished, and parts of its territory including Pavlovsk merged with Leningrad. In 1954 the settlements Levashovo, Pargolovo and Pesochny merged with Leningrad.
After the death of Stalin the perceived ornamental excesses of the Stalinist architecture were abandoned. In the 1960s-1980s, as many new residential boroughs were built on the outskirts with few series of functionalist apartment blocks identical to each other, many families moved there from kommunalkas in the city centre in order to live in separate apartments. Uritsk was re-named Ligovo and merged with Leningrad in 1963, Lomonosov merged in 1978.
On June 12, 1991, in a referendum held on the same day as the first Russian presidential election, 54% of voters chose to restore the name "Saint Petersburg" (the change officially took effect on September 6, 1991). Many other Soviet-era toponyms in the city were also renamed soon afterwards. In the same election Anatoly Sobchak became the first democratically elected mayor of the city. Jack F. Matlock, Jr., Autopsy on an Empire: The American Ambassador's Account of the Collapse of the Soviet Union, Random House, 1995, ISBN 0679413766
By the end of 1991 the deteriorating planned economy of the collapsing Soviet Union had put the city on the verge of starvation. For the first time since World War II food rationing was introduced, and the city received humanitarian food aid from abroad. The city somewhat recovered with the market reforms in Russia. In 1995-2004 a northern section of the Metro's Kirovsko-Vyborgskaya Line was cut off by underground flooding, which was a major obstacle to the city development.
In 1996, Vladimir Yakovlev was elected as head of the Saint Petersburg City Administration. The title of the city head was changed in advance from "mayor" to "governor". In 2003, Yakovlev resigned a year before his second term expired. Valentina Matviyenko was elected governor. In 2006 she was reapproved as governor by the city legislature. The residential building had intensified again, real estate prices inflated greatly, and this situation causes many new problems for the historical part of the city.
In spite of the fact that the central part of the city is watched by UNESCO, the safety of its historical and architectural environment is in danger. Sergey Zagraevsky. Will Saint Petersburg share the same fate as Moscow? Zagraevsky.com There are still about 8000 architectural monuments in Saint Petersburg, but since 2005 the destruction of older buildings in the historical centre has continued. A number of new building projects are underway, including the Gazprom skyscraper in Okhta.
Territory of the federal subject of Saint Petersburg.
The area of Saint Petersburg city proper is . The area of the federal subject is , which contains the Saint Petersburg proper (consisting of 81 okrugs), nine suburban towns (Kolpino, Krasnoye Selo, Kronstadt, Lomonosov, Pavlovsk, Peterhof, Pushkin, Sestroretsk and Zelenogorsk) and 21 municipal settlements.
Saint Petersburg is situated on the middle taiga lowlands along the shores of the Neva Bay of the Gulf of Finland, and islands of the river delta. The largest are Vasilyevsky island (besides the artificial island between Obvodny canal and Fontanka, and Kotlin in the Neva Bay), Petrogradsky, Dekabristov and Krestovsky. The latter together with Yelagin and Kamenny island are covered mostly by parks. The Karelian Isthmus, North of the city, is a popular resort area. In the south Saint Petersburg crosses the Baltic-Ladoga Klint and meets the Izhora Plateau.
The elevation of Saint Petersburg ranges from the sea level to its highest point of at the Orekhovaya Hill in the Duderhof Heights in the south. Part of the city's territory west of Liteyny Prospekt is no higher than above sea level, and has suffered from numerous floods. Floods in Saint Petersburg are triggered by a long wave in the Baltic Sea, caused by meteorological conditions, winds and shallowness of the Neva Bay. The four most disastrous floods occurred in 1824 ( above sea-level, during which over 300 buildings were destroyed The level of flooding is measured near Saint Petersburg Mining Institute, which is normally a.s.l. ), 1924 , 1777 , 1955 and 1975 . To prevent floods, the Saint Petersburg Dam has been under construction since 1979. ÐежиÑ
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Since the 18th century the terrain in the city has been raised artificially, at some places by more than , making mergers of several islands, and changing the hydrology of the city. Besides the Neva and its distributaries, other important rivers of the federal subject of Saint Petersburg are Sestra, Okhta and Izhora. The largest lake is Sestroretsky Razliv in the north, followed by Lakhtinsky Razliv, Suzdal Lakes and other smaller lakes.
Saint Petersburg's position on the latitude of ca. 60° N causes variation in day length across seasons, ranging from 5:53 to 18:50. Twilight may last all night in early summer, from mid-May to mid-July, the celebrated phenomenon known as the white nights.
Snow falling on the morning of May 14, 2008 at Srednyaya Rogatka (district in the south of St. Petersburg)
Saint Petersburg experiences a humid continental climate of the cool summer subtype (Köppen: Dfb), due to the distinct moderating influence of the Baltic Sea cyclones, with warm, humid and short summers and long, cold winters.
The average daily temperature in July is ; summer maximum is about , winter minimum is about . The record low temperature is , recorded in 1883. The average annual temperature is . The River Neva within the city limits usually freezes up in November-December, break-up occurs in April. From December to March there are 123 days average with snow cover, which reaches the average of by February. The frost-free period in the city lasts on average for about 135 days. The city has a climate slightly warmer than its suburbs. Weather conditions are quite variable all year round. See Historical weather records for Saint Petersburg (since 1932) and Historical weather in Saint Petersburg for further information.
Average annual precipitation varies across the city, averaging per year and reaching maximum in late summer. Soil moisture is almost always high because of lower evapotranspiration due to the cool climate. Air humidity is 78% on average, while overcast is 165 days a year on average.
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Saint Petersburg is the second largest city in Russia. The 2002 census recorded a population of the federal subject of 4,661,219, or 3.21% of the total population of Russia. The 2002 census recorded twenty-two ethnic groups of more than two thousand persons each. The ethnic composition was: Russian 84.72%, Ukrainian 1.87%, Belarusians 1.17%, Jewish 0.78%, Tatar 0.76%, Armenian 0.41%, Azeri 0.36%, Georgian 0.22%, Chuvash 0.13%, Polish 0.10%, and many other smaller ethnic groups, while 7.89% of the inhabitants declined to state their ethnicity.
The 20th century saw hectic ups and downs in population. From 2.4 million in 1916 it had dropped to less than 740,000 by 1920 during the Russian Revolution of 1917 and Russian Civil War. The sizeable minorities of Germans, Poles, Finns, Estonians and Latvians were almost completely expelled from Leningrad by the Soviet government during the 1930s. From 1941 to the end of 1943, population dropped from 3 million to less than 700,000, as people died in battles, starved to death during the Siege of Leningrad, or were evacuated. After the siege, some of the evacuees returned, but most influx was due to migration from other parts of the Soviet Union. The city absorbed about 3 million people in the 1950s and grew to over 5 million in the 1980s. From 1991 to 2006 the city's population decreased to the current 4.6 million, while the suburban population increased due to privatization of land and massive move to suburbs. ЧиÑÑÑкова Ð. ТÑеÑÑе ÑокÑаÑение ÑиÑленноÑÑи наÑелениÑ... и поÑледнее? ÐемоÑкоп Weekly 163 â 164, August 1â15, 2004. Russian source: "Encyclopedia of Saint Petersburg" ЧиÑÑÑков Ð. Ю. ÐаÑеление (обзоÑÐ½Ð°Ñ ÑÑаÑÑÑ). ÐнÑÐ¸ÐºÐ»Ð¾Ð¿ÐµÐ´Ð¸Ñ Ð¡Ð°Ð½ÐºÑ-ÐеÑеÑбÑÑга The birth rate remains lower than the death rate; people over 65 constitute more than twenty percent of the population; and the median age is about 40 years. Russian statistics ÐÑновнÑе показаÑели ÑоÑиалÑно-демогÑаÑиÑеÑкой ÑиÑÑаÑии в СанкÑ-ÐеÑеÑбÑÑге
People in urban Saint Petersburg live mostly in apartments. Between 1918 and the 1990s, the Soviets nationalised housing and forced residents to share communal apartments (kommunalkas). With 68% living in shared flats in the 1930s, Leningrad was the city in the USSR with the largest number of kommunalkas. Resettling residents of kommunalkas is now on the way out, albeit shared apartments are still not uncommon. As new boroughs were built on the outskirts in the 1950s-1980s, over half a million low income families eventually received free apartments, and about an additional hundred thousand condos were purchased. While economic and social activity is concentrated in the historic city centre, the richest part of Saint Petersburg, most people live in commuter areas. For the first half of 2007, the birth rate was 9.1 per 1000.
Smolny Institute, the seat of the governor.
Saint Petersburg is a federal subject of Russia. The political life of Saint Petersburg is regulated by the city charter adopted by the city legislature in 1998. The superior executive body is the Saint Petersburg City Administration, led by the governor (mayor before 1996). Saint Petersburg has a single-chamber legislature, the Saint Petersburg Legislative Assembly.
According to the federal law passed in 2004, heads of federal subjects, including the governor of Saint Petersburg, are nominated by the President of Russia and approved by local legislatures. If the legislature disapproves the nominee, it is dissolved. The current governor, Valentina Matviyenko, was approved according to the new system in December 2006. She is currently the only woman governor in the whole of Russia.
Saint Petersburg city is currently divided into eighteen districts. Saint Petersburg is also the administrative centre of Leningrad Oblast, and of the Northwestern Federal District. The Constitutional Court of Russia moved to Saint Petersburg from Moscow in May 2008.
Saint Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast, being two different federal subjects, share a number of local departments of federal executive agencies and courts, such as court of arbitration, police, FSB, postal service, drug enforcement administration, penitentiary service, federal registration service, and other federal services.
The Old Saint Petersburg Stock Exchange, or Bourse, houses the Central Naval Museum
Saint Petersburg is a major trade gateway, financial and industrial centre of Russia specialising in oil and gas trade, shipbuilding yards, aerospace industry, radio and electronics, software and computers; machine building, heavy machinery and transport, including tanks and other military equipment, mining, instrument manufacture, ferrous and nonferrous metallurgy (production of aluminium alloys), chemicals, pharmaceuticals, medical equipment, publishing and printing, food and catering, wholesale and retail, textile and apparel industries, and many other businesses. It was also home to Lessner, one of Russia's two pioneering automobile manufacturers (along with Russo-Baltic), Lessner; founded by machine tool and boiler maker G. A. Lessner in 1904, with designs by Boris Loutsky, it survived until 1910. Georgano, G. N. Cars: Early and Vintage, 1886-1930. (London: Grange-Universal, 1985)
10% of the world's power turbines are made there at the LMZ, which built over two thousand turbines for power plants across the world. Major local industries are Admiralty Shipyard, Baltic Shipyard, LOMO, Kirov Plant, Elektrosila, Izhorsky Zavod; also registered in Saint Petersburg are Sovkomflot, Petersburg Fuel Company and SIBUR among other major Russian and international companies.
The Saint Petersburg docks at dawn.
Saint Petersburg has three large cargo seaports: Bolshoi Port Saint Petersburg, Kronstadt, and Lomonosov. International cruise liners have been served at the passenger port at Morskoy Vokzal on the south-west of Vasilevsky Island. In 2008 the first two berths were opened at the New Passenger Port on the west of the island. Discoverthebaltic.com Discover the Baltic online guide to Baltic cruise ports The new port is part of the city's "Marine Facade" development project Mfspb.ru St Petersburg "Marine Facade" development project and is due to have seven berths in operation by 2010.
A complex system of riverports on both banks of the Neva river are interconnected with the system of seaports, thus making Saint Petersburg the main link between the Baltic sea and the rest of Russia through the Volga-Baltic Waterway.
The Saint Petersburg Mint (Monetny Dvor), founded in 1724, is one of the largest mints in the world, it mints Russian coins, medals and badges. Saint Petersburg is also home to the oldest and largest Russian foundry, Monumentskulptura, which made thousands of sculptures and statues that are now gracing public parks of Saint Petersburg, as well as many other cities. Monuments and bronze statues of the Czars, as well as other important historic figures and dignitaries, and other world famous monuments, such as the sculptures by Peter Clodt von Jürgensburg, Paolo Troubetzkoy, Pavel Antokolsky, and others, were made there.
In 2007 Toyota opened a Camry plant after investing 5 billion dollars in Shushary, one of the southern suburbs of Saint Petersburg. General Motors, Hyundai and Nissan have signed deals with the Russian government to build their automotive plants in Saint Petersburg too. Automotive and auto-parts industry is on the rise there during the last decade. Saint Petersburg is also known as the "beer capital" of Russia, due to the supply and quality of local water, contributing over 30% of the domestic production of beer with its five large-scale breweries including Europe's second largest brewery Baltika, Vena (both operated by BBH), Heineken Brewery, Stepan Razin (both by Heineken) and Tinkoff brewery (SUN-InBev). Saint Petersburg has the second largest construction industry in Russia, including commercial, housing and road construction.
In 2006 Saint Petersburg's city budget was 179,9 billion rubles, and is planned to double by 2012. The federal subject's gross regional product as of 2005 was 667,905.4 million Russian rubles, ranked 4th in Russia, after Moscow, Tyumen Oblast, and Moscow Oblast, or 145,503.3 rubles per capita, ranked 12th among Russia's federal subjects, contributed mostly by wholesale and retail trade and repair services (24.7%) as well as processing industry (20.9%) and transportation and telecommunications (15.1%).
The Kresty prison.
Russia historically had a high level of crime that increased significantly after the October revolution. Edward Hallett Carr The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1923, 1985 ISBN 0393301990 Google preview Perestroika-time turmoils saw additional increase of the crime level.
Saint Petersburg experiences significant levels of street crime and bribery. In addition, in recent years there has been a notable increase in racially motivated violence, especially towards tourists and foreign students. One of the well known white supremacist groups Belaya Energia (White Energy, originally comes from White Power), has reportedly been one of the main gangs involved in murdering foreign university students. Russia: Racist Attacks Plague St. Petersburg Radio Free Europe September 30, 2005
At the end of the 1980s â beginning of the 1990s, Leningrad became home to a number of organised criminal groups as Tambov Gang, Malyshev Gang, Kazan Gang and ethnic criminal groups, engaged in a racket, extortion, paying off local government, and violent clashes with each other. Russian Mafia Shakes Down the Country by Steven R. Van Hook, Santa Barbara News-Press, November 20, 1994
In 2008, a car bomb killed three people (including a four-year old child), and injured one.
After the assassinations of City Property Committee Chairman and vice-Governor Mikhail Manevich(1997), State Duma deputy Galina Starovoytova (1998), acting City Legislature Speaker Viktor Novosyolov (1999) and a number of prominent businesspeople, Saint Petersburg was dubbed Capital of Crime in the Russian press. Trumbull, Nathaniel S. (2003) The impacts of globalization on Saint Petersburg: A secondary world city in from the cold? The Annals of Regional Science 37:533â546 Powell, Bill & Brian Whitmore. The Capital Of Crime.(Saint Petersburg, Russia). Newsweek International, May 15, 2000. There were a number of movies filmed in Saint Petersburg about the life of crime; , Brother (1997) reinforcing its image as the Crime Capital of Russia.
One of the oldest and most infamous remand facilities in Saint Petersburg, Kresty prison is located near downtown.
However, crime rates in St. Petersburg have declined since the end of the 1990s; the aforementioned criminal gangs have mostly dispersed. Even the Kresty prison is no longer in use, as more modern penal institutions are being built farther from the city centre.
The decoration of Saint Petersburg Metro (Kirovsky Zavod Station).
Saint Petersburg is a major transport hub. The first Russian railway was built here, in 1837. Today, the city is the final destination of a web of intercity and suburban railways, served by five different railway terminals (Baltiysky, Finlyandsky, Ladozhsky, Moskovsky, and Vitebsky), Until 2001, the Varshavsky Rail Terminal served as a major station; it now is a railway museum. Reconstruction of the Warsaw Railway Station as well as dozens of non-terminal railway stations within the federal subject. Saint Petersburg has international railway connections to Helsinki, Finland, Berlin, Germany, and all former republics of the USSR. The Helsinki railway was built in 1870, , commutes three times a day, in a journey lasting about five and a half hours. The Moscow-Saint Petersburg Railway opened in 1851, ; the commute to Moscow now requires about four and a half to nine hours. Saint Petersburg is also served by Pulkovo International Airport, Rossiya (Pulkovo): Pulkovo Aviation Enterprise and by three smaller commercial and cargo airports in the suburbs. There is a regular, 24/7, rapid-bus transit connection between Pulkovo airport and the city centre.
The city is also served by the passenger and cargo seaports in the Neva Bay of the Gulf of Finland, Baltic Sea, the river port higher up the Neva, and tens of smaller passenger stations on both banks of the Neva river. It is a terminus of the Volga-Baltic and White Sea-Baltic waterways. In 2004 the first high bridge that doesn't need to be drawn, a long Big Obukhovsky Bridge, was opened. Meteor hydrofoils link the city centre to the coastal towns of Kronstadt, Lomonosov, Peterhof, Sestroretsk and Zelenogorsk from May through October.
Pulkovo International Airport.
Saint Petersburg has an extensive city-funded network of public transport (buses, trams, trolleybuses) and several hundred routes served by marshrutkas. Trams in Saint Petersburg used to be the main transport; in the 1980s, Leningrad had the largest tramway network in the world, but many tramway rail tracks were dismantled in the 2000s. Buses carry up to 3 million passengers daily, serving over 250 urban and a number of suburban bus routes. Saint Petersburg Metro underground rapid transit system was opened in 1955; it now has five lines with 63 stations, connecting all five railway terminals, and carrying 3.4 million passengers daily. Metro stations are decorated in marble and bronze.
Traffic jams are common in the city, because of high daily traffic volumes between the commuter boroughs and the city centre, intercity traffic, and at times excessive snow in winter. Five segments of the Saint Petersburg Ring Road were opened between 2002 and 2006, and full ring is planned to open in 2010.
Saint Petersburg is part of the important transport corridor linking Scandinavia to Russia and Eastern Europe. The city is a node of the international European routes E18 towards Helsinki, E20 towards Tallinn, E95 towards Pskov, Kiev and Odessa and E105 towards Petrozavodsk, Murmansk and Kirkenes (north) and towards Moscow and Kharkiv (south).
Kazan Cathedral
Griboyedov Canal
A bridge over the river Neva
As of now, Saint Petersburg has no skyscrapers and a relatively low skyline. Current regulations forbid construction of high buildings in the city centre. The 310 metre tall Saint Petersburg TV Tower is the tallest structure in the city, while the 122.5 m Peter and Paul Cathedral is by far the highest building. However, there is a controversial project endorsed by the city authorities and known as the Ohkta Centre to build a 396 m supertall skyscraper. In 2008 the World Monuments Fund included the Saint Petersburg historic skyline within the watch list of 100 most endangered sites due to the expected construction, which threatens to alter it drastically.
Unlike in Moscow, in Saint Petersburg the historic architecture of the city centre, mostly consisting of Baroque and neoclassical buildings of the 18th and 19th centuries, has been largely preserved, although a number of buildings were demolished after the Bolsheviks' seizure of power, during the Siege of Leningrad and in recent years. The oldest of the remaining building is a wooden house built for Peter I in 1703 on the shore of the Neva near Trinity Square. Since 1991 the Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments in Saint Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast have been listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.
The ensemble of Peter and Paul Fortress with the Peter and Paul Cathedral takes dominant position on Zayachy Island along the right bank of the River Neva. Each noon a cannon fires a blank shot from the fortress. The Saint Petersburg Mosque, the largest mosque in Europe when opened in 1913, is situated on the right bank nearby. The spit of Vasilievsky Island, which splits the river into two largest armlets, the Bolshaya Neva and Malaya Neva, is connected to the northern bank (Petrogradsky Island) via the Exchange Bridge and occupied by the Old Saint Petersburg Stock Exchange and Rostral Columns. The southern coast of Vasilievsky Island along the Bolshaya Neva features some of the city's oldest buildings, dating from the 18th century, including the Kunstkamera, Twelve Collegia, Menshikov Palace and Imperial Academy of Arts. It hosts one of two campuses of Saint Petersburg State University.
On the southern, left bank of the Neva, connected to the spit of Vasilievsky Island via the Palace Bridge, lie the Admiralty Building, the vast Hermitage Museum complex stretching along the Palace Embankment, which includes the baroque Winter Palace, former official residence of Russian emperors, as well as the neoclassical Marble Palace. The Winter Palace faces Palace Square, the city's main square with the Alexander Column.
Nevsky Prospekt, also situated on the left bank of the Neva, is the main avenue in the city. It starts at the Admiralty and runs eastwards next to Palace Square. Nevsky Prospekt crosses the Moika (Green Bridge), Griboyedov Canal (Kazansky Bridge), Garden Street, the Fontanka (Anichkov Bridge), meets Liteyny Prospekt and proceeds to Uprising Square near the Moskovsky railway station, where it meets Ligovsky Prospekt and turns to the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. The Passage, Catholic Church of St. Catherine, Book House (former Singer Manufacturing Company Building in the Art Nouveau style), Grand Hotel Europe, Lutheran Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, Gostiny Dvor, Russian National Library, Alexandrine Theatre behind Mikeshin's statue of Catherine the Great, Kazan Cathedral, Stroganov Palace, Anichkov Palace and Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace are all situated along that avenue.
The Alexander Nevsky Lavra, intended to house the relics of St. Alexander Nevsky, is an important centre of Christian education in Russia. It also contains the Tikhvin Cemetery with graves of many notable Petersburgers.
On the territory between the Neva and Nevsky Prospekt the Church of the Savior on Blood, Mikhailovsky Palace housing the Russian Museum, Field of Mars, St. Michael's Castle, Summer Garden, Tauride Palace, Smolny Institute and Smolny Convent are located.
Many notable landmarks are situated to the west and south of the Admiralty Building, including the Trinity Cathedral, Mariinsky Palace, Hotel Astoria, famous Mariinsky Theatre, New Holland Island, Saint Isaac's Cathedral, the largest in the city, and Decembrists Square with the Bronze Horseman, 18th century equestrian monument to Peter the Great, which is considered among the city's most recognisable symbols.
Other symbols of Saint Petersburg include the weather vane in the shape of a small ship on top of the Admiralty's golden spire and the golden angel on top of the Peter and Paul Cathedral. The Palace Bridge drawn at night is yet another symbol of the city. Every night during the navigation period from April to November, 22 bridges across the Neva and main canals are drawn to let ships pass in and out of the Baltic Sea according to a schedule. Schedule for main drawbridges across the Neva river (Official Russian schedule): Mr-spb.ru It wasn't until 2004 that the first high bridge across the Neva, which doesn't need to be drawn, Big Obukhovsky Bridge, was opened. There are hundreds of smaller bridges in Saint Petersburg spanning across numerous canals and distributaries of the Neva, some of the most important of which are the Moika, Fontanka, Griboyedov Canal, Obvodny Canal, Karpovka and Smolenka. Due to the intricate web of canals, Saint Petersburg is often called Venice of the North. The rivers and canals in the city centre are lined with granite embankments. The embankments and bridges are separated from rivers and canals by granite or cast iron parapets.
Southern suburbs of the city feature former imperial residences, including Peterhof, with majestic fountain cascades and parks, Tsarskoe Selo, with the baroque Catherine Palace and the neoclassical Alexander Palace, and Pavlovsk, which contains a domed palace of Emperor Paul and one of the largest English-style parks in Europe. Some other residences situated nearby and making part of the world heritage site, including a castle and park in Gatchina, actually belong to Leningrad Oblast rather than Saint Petersburg. Another notable suburb is Kronstadt with its 19th century fortifications and naval monuments, occupying the Kotlin Island in the Gulf of Finland.
From XX century end in a city active building and reorganisation of old historical city districts is conducted.
The authorities are compelled to transfer control of private residences in city centre to private lessors.
Also sealing building and a superstructure of buildings is spent by penthouses.
Some of these structures, such as the Saint Petersburg Commodity and Stock Exchange" have been recognised as town-planning errors.
Interior of the Hermitage Museum.
Saint Petersburg is home to more than two hundred museums, many of them hosted in historic buildings. The largest of the museums is the Hermitage Museum, featuring interiors of the former imperial residence and a vast collection of art. The Russian Museum is a large museum devoted to the Russian fine art specifically. The apartments of some famous Petersburgers, including Alexander Pushkin, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Feodor Chaliapin, Alexander Blok, Vladimir Nabokov, Anna Akhmatova, Mikhail Zoshchenko, Joseph Brodsky, as well as some palace and park ensembles of the southern suburbs and notable architectural monuments such as St. Isaac's Cathedral, have also been turned into public museums.
The Kunstkamera, with its collection established in 1714 by Peter the Great to collect curiosities from all over the world, is sometimes considered the first museum in Russia, which has evolved into the present-day Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography. The Russian Ethnography Museum, which has been split from the Russian Museum, is devoted to the cultures of the people of Russia, the former Soviet Union and Russian Empire.
Other notable museums include the Central Naval Museum hosted in the building of the former stock exchange and Zoological Museum, the Railway Museum, Museum of the Siege of Leningrad, Saint Petersburg Museum of History in the Peter and Paul Fortress and Artillery Museum, which in fact includes not only artillery items, but also a huge collection of other military equipment, uniform and decorations.
The Grand Cascade.
Saint Petersburg is home to numerous parks and gardens, some of the most famous of which are situated in the southern suburbs, including one of the largest English gardens of Europe in Pavlovsk. Sosnovka is the largest park within the limits of the city proper, occupying 240 ha. The Summer Garden is the oldest one, dating back to the early 18th century and designed in the regular style. It is situated on the southern bank of the Neva at the head of the Fontanka and is famous for its cast iron railing and marble sculptures.
Among other notable parks are the Maritime Victory Park on Krestovsky Island and the Moscow Victory Park in the south, both commemorating the victory over Nazi Germany in the Second World War, as well as the Central Park of Culture and Leisure occupying Yelagin Island and the Tauride Garden around the Tauride Palace. The most common trees grown in the parks are the English oak, Norway maple, green ash, silver birch, Siberian larch, blue spruce, crack willow, limes and poplars. Important dendrological collections dating back to the 19th century are hosted by the Saint Petersburg Botanical Garden and the Park of the Forestry Academy.
Among the city's more than fifty theaters is the world-famous Mariinsky Theater (also known as the Kirov Theater in the USSR ), home to the Mariinsky Ballet company and opera. Leading ballet dancers, such as Vaslav Nijinsky, Anna Pavlova, Rudolph Nureyev, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Galina Ulanova and Natalia Makarova, were principal stars of the Mariinsky ballet.
Dmitri Shostakovich was born and brought up in Saint Petersburg, and dedicated his Seventh Symphony to the city, calling it the "Leningrad Symphony." He wrote the symphony while in Leningrad during the German siege. The 7th symphony was premiered in 1942; its performance in the besieged Leningrad at the Bolshoy Philharmonic Hall under the baton of conductor Karl Eliasberg was heard over the radio and lifted the spirits of the survivors. In 1992 a reunion performance of the 7th Symphony by the (then) 14 survivors was played in the same hall as they done half a century ago. The Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra remained one of the best known symphony orchestras in the world under the leadership of conductors Yevgeny Mravinsky and Yuri Temirkanov.
The Imperial Choral Capella was founded and modeled after the royal courts of other European capitals.
Saint Petersburg has been home to the newest movements in popular music in the country. The first jazz band in the Soviet Union was founded here by Leonid Utyosov in the 1920s, under the patronage of Isaak Dunayevsky. The first jazz club in the Soviet Union was founded here in the 1950s, and later was named jazz club Kvadrat. In 1956 the popular ensemble Druzhba was founded by Aleksandr Bronevitsky and Edita Piekha, becoming the first popular band in the 1950s USSR. In the 1960s student rock-groups Argonavty, Kochevniki and others pioneered a series of unofficial and underground rock concerts and festivals. In 1972 Boris Grebenshchikov founded the band Aquarium, that later grew to huge popularity. Since then "Peter's rock" music style was formed.
In the 1970s many bands came out from "underground" and eventually founded the Leningrad rock club which has been providing stage to such bands as Piknik, DDT, Kino, headed by the legendary Viktor Tsoi, Igry, Mify, Zemlyane, Alisa and many other popular groups. The first Russian-style happening show Pop mekhanika, mixing over 300 people and animals on stage, was directed by the multi-talented Sergey Kuryokhin in the 1980s.
Today's Saint Petersburg boasts many notable musicians of various genres, from popular Leningrad's Sergei Shnurov and Tequilajazzz, to rock veterans Yuri Shevchuk, Vyacheslav Butusov and Mikhail Boyarsky.
The White Nights Festival in Saint Petersburg is famous for spectacular fireworks and massive show celebrating the end of school year.
Over 250 international and Russian movies were filmed in Saint Petersburg. International Movie Database Well over a thousand feature films about tsars, revolution, people and stories set in Saint Petersburg were produced worldwide, but were not filmed in the city. First film studios were founded in Saint Petersburg in the 1900s, and since the 1920s Lenfilm has been the largest film studio based in Saint Petersburg. The first foreign feature movie filmed entirely in Saint Petersburg was the 1997 production of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, starring Sophie Marceau and Sean Bean, and made by international team of British, American, French and Russian filmmakers.
The cult comedy Irony of Fate (also ÐÑÐ¾Ð½Ð¸Ñ ÑÑдÑбÑ, или С лÑгким паÑом!) is set in Saint Petersburg and pokes fun at Soviet city planning. The 1985 film White Nights received considerable Western attention for having captured genuine Leningrad street scenes at a time when filming in the Soviet Union by Western production companies was generally unheard of. Other movies include GoldenEye (1995), Midnight in Saint Petersburg (1996), and Brother (1997). Onegin (1999) is based on the Pushkin poem and showcases many tourist attractions. In addition, the Russian romantic comedy, ÐиÑÐµÑ FM, showcases the cityscape significantly, almost as if it was a main character in the film.
Several international film festivals are held annually, such as the Festival of Festivals, St. Petersburg, as well as the Message to Man International Documentary Film Festival, since its inauguration in 1988 during the White Nights.
Saint Petersburg has a longstanding and world famous tradition in literature. Dostoyevsky called it âThe most abstract and intentional city in the world," emphasizing its artificiality, but it was also a symbol of modern disorder in a changing Russia. It frequently appeared to Russian writers as a menacing and inhuman mechanism. The grotesque and often nightmarish image of the city is featured in Pushkin's last poems, the Petersburg stories of Gogol, the novels of Dostoyevsky, the verse of Alexander Blok and Osip Mandelshtam, and in the symbolist novel Petersburg by Andrey Bely. According to Lotman in his chapter, 'The Symbolism of Saint Petersburg' in Universe and the Mind, these writers were inspired from symbolism from within the city itself. The effect of life in Saint Petersburg on the plight of the poor clerk in a society obsessed with hierarchy and status also became an important theme for authors such as Pushkin, Gogol, and Dostoyevsky. Another important feature of early Saint Petersburg literature is its mythical element, which incorporates urban legends and popular ghost stories, as the stories of Pushkin and Gogol included ghosts returning to Saint Petersburg to haunt other characters as well as other fantastical elements, creating a surreal and abstract image of Saint Petersburg.
Twentieth century writers from Saint Petersburg, such as Vladimir Nabokov, Ayn Rand, Andrey Bely and Yevgeny Zamyatin, along with his apprentices, The Serapion Brothers, created entire new styles in literature and contributed new insights to the understanding of society through their experience in this city. Anna Akhmatova became an important leader for Russian poetry. Her poem Requiem focuses on the tragedies of living during the time of the Stalinist terror. Another notable 20th century writer from Saint Petersburg is Joseph Brodsky, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1987). While living in the United States, his writings in English reflected on life in Saint Petersburg from the unique perspective of being both an insider and an outsider to the city in essays such as, "A Guide to a Renamed City" and the nostalgic "In a Room and a Half". Joseph Brodsky. Less Than One: Selected Essays, 1986
FC Zenit's home Petrovsky stadium
Leningrad hosted part of the football tournament during the 1980 Summer Olympics. The 1994 Goodwill Games were held here.
The first competition here was the 1703 rowing event initiated by Peter the Great, after the victory over the Swedish fleet. Yachting events were held by the Russian Navy since the foundation of the city. Yacht clubs: St. Petersburg River Yacht Club, Neva Yacht Club, the latter is the oldest yacht club in the world. In the winter, when the sea and lake surfaces are frozen and yachts and dinghies cannot be used, local people sail on ice boats.
Equestrianism has been a long tradition, popular among the Tsars and aristocracy, as well as part of the military training. Several historic sports arenas were built for Equestrianism since the 18th century, to maintain training all year round, such as the Zimny Stadion and Konnogvardeisky Manezh among others.
Chess tradition was highlighted by the 1914 international tournament, in which the title "Grandmaster" was first formally conferred by Russian Tsar Nicholas II to five players: Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine, Tarrasch and Marshall, and which the Tsar had partially funded.
Kirov Stadium (now demolished) was one of the largest stadiums anywhere in the world, and the home to FC Zenit St. Petersburg in 1950-1993 and 1995. In 1951 the attendance of 110,000 set the record for the Soviet football. In 2007 Zenit became champions of the Russian Premier League, won the UEFA Cup 2007â08 season and the 2008 UEFA Supercup. Zenit now plays their home games at Petrovsky Stadium.
As of 2006/2007 there were 1024 kindergartens, 716 public schools and 80 vocational schools in Saint Petersburg. SPB.ru The largest of the higher education institutions are Saint Petersburg State University, enrolling approximately 32,000 undergraduate students, Saint Petersburg Polytechnical University and Herzen University. However, the universities are all federal property and don't belong to the city.
*List of consulates in Saint Petersburg
*List of museums in Saint Petersburg
*List of notable people from Saint Petersburg
*List of Saint Petersburg sister cities
*Amery, Colin, Brian Curran & Yuri Molodkovets. St. Petersburg. London: Frances Lincoln, 2006. ISBN 0711224927.
*Bater, James H. St. Petersburg: Industrialization and Change. Montreal: McGuill-Queenâs University Press, 1976. ISBN 0773502661.
*Berelowitch, Wladimir & Olga Medvedkova. Histoire de Saint-Pétersbourg. Paris: Fayard, 1996. ISBN 2213596018.
*Buckler, Julie. Mapping St. Petersburg: Imperial Text and Cityshape. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005 ISBN0691113491.
*Clark, Katerina, Petersburg, Crucible of Revolution. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995.
*Cross, Anthony (ed.). St. Petersburg, 1703-1825. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. ISBN 1403915709.
*George, Arthur L. & Elena George. St. Petersburg: Russia's Window to the Future, The First Three Centuries. Lanham: Taylor Trade Publishing, 2003. ISBN 1589790170.
*Glantz, David M. The Battle for Leningrad, 1941-1944. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002. ISBN 0700612084.
*Hellberg-Hirn, Elena. Imperial Imprints: Post-Soviet St. Petersburg. Helsinki: SKS Finnish Literature Society, 2003. ISBN 9517464916.
*Knopf Guide: Sat. Petersburg. New York: Knopf, 1995. ISBN 0679762027.
*Eyewitness Guide: St. Petersburg.
*Lincoln, W. Bruce. Sunlight at Midnight: St. Petersburg and the Rise of Modern Russia. New York: Basic Books, 2000. ISBN 0465083234.
*Orttung, Robert W. From Leningrad to St. Petersburg: Democratization in a Russian City. New York: St. Martinâs, 1995. ISBN 0312175612.
*Ruble, Blair A. Leningrad: Shaping a Soviet City. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. ISBN 0877723478.
*Shvidkovsky, Dmitry O. & Alexander Orloff. St. Petersburg: Architecture of the Tsars. New York: Abbeville Press, 1996. ISBN 0789202174.
*Volkov, Solomon. St. Petersburg: A Cultural History. New York: Free Press, 1995. ISBN 0028740521.
*St. Petersburg:Architecture of the Tsars. 360 pages. Abbeville Press, 1996. ISBN 0789202174
*Saint Petersburg: Museums, Palaces, and Historic Collections: A Guide to the Lesser Known Treasures of St. Petersburg. 2003. ISBN 1593730004.
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овÑкий Ð . Ð. Река Ðева и ÐевÑÐºÐ°Ñ Ð³Ñба, Leningrad, ÐидÑомеÑеоиздаÑ, 1981.
* Official presentation of Saint Petersburg
* Official Portal of the City Government: Saint Petersburg
* Encyclopaedia of Saint Petersburg
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* Saint Petersburg in 1900
* Saint Petersburg, entry in the World Monuments Fund's 2008 watchlist
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Saint_Petersburg | Has the terrain in the city been artificially raised? | Yes. | data/set3/a10 | Saint_Petersburg
Saint Petersburg ( , ) is a city and a federal subject (a federal city) of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The city's other names were Petrograd ( , 1914â1924) and Leningrad ( , 1924â1991). It is often called just Petersburg ( ) and is informally known as Piter ( ).
Founded by Tsar Peter I of Russia on 27 May 1703, it was the capital of the Russian Empire for more than two hundred years (1713â1728, 1732â1918). Saint Petersburg ceased being the capital in 1918 after the Russian Revolution of 1917. Nicholas and Alexandra: An Intimate Account of the Last of the Romanovs and the Fall of Imperial Russia (Athenum, 1967) by Robert K. Massie, ASIN B000CGP8M2 (also, Ballantine Books, 2000, ISBN 0-345-43831-0 and Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, 2005, ISBN 1-57912-433-X) It is Russia's second largest city after Moscow with 4.6 million inhabitants, and over 6 million people live in its vicinity. Saint Petersburg is a major European cultural centre, and an important Russian port on the Baltic Sea.
Saint Petersburg is often described as the most Western city of Russia. V. Morozov. The Discourses of Saint Petersburg and the Shaping of a Wider Europe. Copenhagen Peace Research Institute. 2002. Ciaonet.org Among cities of the world with over one million people, Saint Petersburg is the northernmost. The Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments constitute a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Saint Petersburg is also home to The Hermitage, the largest art museum in the world. /ref> Russia's political and cultural centre for 200 years, the city is sometimes referred to in Russia as the northern capital. A large number of foreign consulates, international corporations, banks and other businesses are located in Saint Petersburg.
On 1 May 1703 (Julian calendar), during the Great Northern War, Peter the Great captured the Swedish fortress of Nyenskans on the Neva river in Ingria. A few weeks later, on 27 May 1703 (May 16, Old Style), lower on the river, on Zayachy (Hare) Island, three miles (5 km) inland from the gulf, he laid down the Peter and Paul Fortress, which became the first brick and stone building of the new city. He named the city after his patron saint, Saint Peter, the apostle. The original name was meant to sound like Dutch due to Peter's obsession with the Dutch culture. Peter the Great: His Life and World (Knopf, 1980) by Robert K. Massie, ISBN 0-394-50032-6
The city was built by conscripted serfs from all over Russia and also by Swedish prisoners of war under the supervision of Alexander Menshikov and later became the centre of Saint Petersburg Governorate. Peter moved the capital from Moscow to Saint Petersburg in 1712, before the Treaty of Nystad of 1721 ended the war.
The Bronze Horseman, monument to Peter the Great.
Palace Square, as the main square of the Russian Empire it was the setting of many events of great historical significance
Lenin statue outside the Finland station. Between 1924 and 1991 the city was known as Leningrad.
Map of Saint Petersburg, 1903.
Church of the Savior on Blood.
During the first few years of its existence the city grew spontaneously around Trinity Square on the right bank of the Neva, near the Peter and Paul Fortress. However, Saint Petersburg soon started to develop according to a plan. By 1716 Domenico Trezzini had elaborated a project whereby the city centre would be located on Vasilievsky Island and shaped by a rectangular grid of canals. The project was not completed, but is still evident in the layout of the streets. In 1716 Jean-Baptiste Alexandre Le Blond was appointed chief architect of Saint Petersburg by Peter the Great.
The style of Petrine Baroque, developed by Trezzini and other architects and exemplified by such buildings as the Menshikov Palace, Kunstkamera, Peter and Paul Cathedral, Twelve Collegia, became prominent in the city architecture of the early 18th century. In 1724 the Academy of Sciences, University and Academic Gymnasium were established in Saint Petersburg by Peter the Great.
However, in 1725 Peter died. His near-lifelong autocratic push for modernisation of Russia had met with considerable opposition from the old-fashioned Russian nobility â resulting in several attempts on his life and a treason case involving his own son. Matthew S. Anderson, Peter the Great (London: Thames and Hudson, 1978) Thus, in 1728, Peter II of Russia moved his seat back to Moscow. But four years later, in 1732, under Empress Anna of Russia, Saint Petersburg again became the capital of the Russian Empire and remained the seat of the government for 186 years.
In 1736-1737 the city suffered from catastrophic fires. In order to rebuild the damaged boroughs, in 1737 a new plan was commissioned by a committee under Burkhard Christoph von Munnich. The city was divided into five boroughs, and the city centre was moved to the Admiralty borough, situated on the east bank between the Neva and Fontanka.
It developed along three radial streets, which meet at the Admiralty and are now known as Nevsky Prospekt (which is now perceived as the main street of the city), Gorokhovaya Street and Voznesensky Prospekt. The style of Baroque dominated the city architecture during the first sixty years, culminating in the Elizabethan Baroque, represented most notably by Bartolomeo Rastrelli with such buildings as the Winter Palace. In the 1760s the Baroque architecture was succeeded by the neoclassical architecture.
The Commission of Stone Buildings of Moscow and Saint Petersburg established in 1762 ruled that no structure in the city be higher than the Winter Palace and prohibited spacing between buildings. During the reign of Catherine the Great in the 1760s-1780s the banks of the Neva were lined with granite embankments.
However, it wasn't until 1850 that it was allowed to open the first permanent bridge across the Neva, Blagoveshchensky Bridge. Before that, only pontoon bridges were allowed. Obvodny Canal (dug in 1769-1833) became the southern limit of the city.
Some of the most important neoclassical architects in Saint Petersburg (including those working within the Empire style) were Jean-Baptiste Vallin de la Mothe (Imperial Academy of Arts, Small Hermitage, Gostiny Dvor, New Holland Arch, Catholic Church of St. Catherine), Antonio Rinaldi (Marble Palace), Yury Felten (Old Hermitage, Chesme Church), Giacomo Quarenghi (Academy of Sciences, Hermitage Theatre, Yusupov Palace), Andrey Voronikhin (Mining Institute, Kazan Cathedral), Andreyan Zakharov (Admiralty building), Jean-François Thomas de Thomon (Spit of Vasilievsky Island), Carlo Rossi (Yelagin Palace, Mikhailovsky Palace, Alexandrine Theatre, Senate and Synod Buildings, General Staff Building, design of many streets and squares), Vasily Stasov (Moscow Triumphal Gate, Trinity Cathedral), Auguste de Montferrand (Saint Isaac's Cathedral, Alexander Column). The victory over Napoleonic France in the Patriotic War of 1812 was commemorated with many monuments, including Alexander Column by Montferrand, erected in 1834, and Narva Triumphal Gate.
In 1825 the suppressed Decembrist revolt against Nicholas I of Russia took place on the Senate Square in the city, a day after he assumed the throne.
By the 1840s the neoclassical architecture had given place to various romanticist styles, which were dominant until the 1890s, represented by such architects as Andrei Stackenschneider (Mariinsky Palace, Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace, Nicholas Palace, New Michael Palace) and Konstantin Thon (Moskovsky Rail Terminal). The Church of the Savior on Blood designed in the Russian revival style commemorated the place where Alexander II of Russia was assassinated in 1881.
With the emancipation of the serfs undertaken by Alexander II in 1861 and the industrial revolution the influx of former peasants into the capital increased greatly. Poor boroughs spontaneously emerged on the outskirts of the city. Saint Petersburg surpassed Moscow in population and industrial growth and grew into one of the largest industrial hubs and cities in Europe.
The Revolution of 1905 began in Saint Petersburg and spread rapidly into the provinces. With the start of World War I, the name Saint Petersburg was perceived to be too German, so in 1914 the city was renamed Petrograd. The Romanovs: The Final Chapter (Random House, 1995) by Robert K. Massie, ISBN 0-394-58048-6 and ISBN 0-679-43572-7 In 1917 the February Revolution, which put an end to the Russian monarchy, and the October Revolution, which ultimately brought Vladimir Lenin to power, broke out in Petrograd. Rex A. Wade The Russian Revolution, 1917 2005 Cambridge University Press ISBN 0521841550 The city's proximity to the border and anti-Soviet armies forced the Bolsheviks under Lenin to transfer the capital to Moscow on March 12, 1918.
In 1919 during the ensuing Russian Civil War Nikolay Yudenich advancing from Estonia was about to capture the city from the Bolsheviks, but Leon Trotsky ultimately managed to mobilise the population and make him retreat. Many people fled the city in 1917-1920 or were repressed in the Red Terror, Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe. By Robert Gellately, 2007, Random House, 720 pages. ISBN 1400040051 so its population decreased dramatically. On January 26, 1924, three days after Lenin's death, Petrograd was renamed Leningrad. For decades Leningrad was glorified by the Soviet propaganda as "the cradle of the revolution" and "the city of three revolutions", many spots related to Lenin and the revolutions, such as the cruiser Aurora, were carefully preserved. Many streets and other toponyms were renamed accordingly.
In the 1920s-1930s the poor outskirts were reconstructed into regularly planned boroughs. The constructivist architecture flourished around that time. The Soviets nationalised housing and forced many residents to share communal apartments (kommunalkas). With 68% living in shared apartments in the 1930s, Leningrad was the city with the largest number of kommunalkas. In 1935 a new general plan was outlined, whereby the city should expand to the south and its centre should move there. The constructivism was rejected in favor of the pompous Stalinist architecture. Stalin ordered the construction of the new city hall on Moskovsky Prospect thus making it the new main street of Leningrad during the Soviet rule.
Since December 1931 Leningrad has been administratively separate from Leningrad Oblast. At that time it included Leningrad Suburban District, some parts of which were transferred back to Leningrad Oblast in 1936 and turned into Vsevolozhsky District, Krasnoselsky District, Pargolovsky District and Slutsky District (renamed Pavlovsky District in 1944).
On December 1, 1934, Sergey Kirov, popular communist leader of Leningrad, was assassinated, which was used to start the Great Purge. Stalin's Terror: High Politics and Mass Repression in the Soviet Union by Barry McLoughlin and Kevin McDermott (eds). Palgrave Macmillan, 2002, p. 6 The sizeable minorities of Germans, Poles, Finns, Estonians and Latvians were almost completely expelled from Leningrad by the Soviet government during the 1930s. Martin, Terry (1998). The Origins of Soviet Ethnic Cleansing. The Journal of Modern History 70.4, 813-861.
During World War II, Leningrad was besieged by Nazi Germany and co-belligerent Finland. Siege of Leningrad. Encyclopædia Britannica The siege lasted 872 days from September 1941 to January 1944. Baldack, Richard H. "Leningrad, Siege of" World Book Encyclopedia, Chicago, 2002, vol.12, page 195 The Siege of Leningrad was one of the longest, most destructive, and most lethal sieges of major cities in modern history. It isolated the city from most supplies except those provided through the Road of Life across Lake Ladoga, and more than a million civilians died, mainly from starvation. Many others were eventually evacuated or escaped by themselves, so the city became largely depopulated. For the heroic resistance of the city and tenacity of the survivors of the Siege, in 1945 Leningrad became the first city in the Soviet Union awarded the title Hero City. In October 1946 some former Finnish territories along the northern coast of the Gulf of Finland captured in the Winter War and Continuation War were transferred from Leningrad Oblast to Leningrad and divided into Sestroretsky District and Kurortny District, including the town of Terijoki (renamed Zelenogorsk in 1948).
Leningrad and many of its suburbs were rebuilt over the post-war decades, partially according to the pre-war plans. The 1948 general plan of Leningrad featured radial urban development in the north as well as in the south. The Leningrad Metro, underground rapid transit system which was designed before the war in the 1930s, was opened in 1955 with its first seven stations decorated with marble and bronze. Meanwhile, in 1949-1951 a large number of prominent Leningrad members of the Communist Party and their families were charged with treason and intention to create an anti-Soviet organization out of their local party cell. Many were imprisoned or executed in the Leningrad Affair fabricated by the central Soviet leadership. Dmitri Volkogonov. Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy, 1996, ISBN 0761507183 Russian publication: ÐенингÑадÑкое дело â надо ли ÑÑавиÑÑ ÐºÐ°Ð²ÑÑки?: Contr-tv.ru
In 1953 Pavlovsky District of Leningrad Oblast was abolished, and parts of its territory including Pavlovsk merged with Leningrad. In 1954 the settlements Levashovo, Pargolovo and Pesochny merged with Leningrad.
After the death of Stalin the perceived ornamental excesses of the Stalinist architecture were abandoned. In the 1960s-1980s, as many new residential boroughs were built on the outskirts with few series of functionalist apartment blocks identical to each other, many families moved there from kommunalkas in the city centre in order to live in separate apartments. Uritsk was re-named Ligovo and merged with Leningrad in 1963, Lomonosov merged in 1978.
On June 12, 1991, in a referendum held on the same day as the first Russian presidential election, 54% of voters chose to restore the name "Saint Petersburg" (the change officially took effect on September 6, 1991). Many other Soviet-era toponyms in the city were also renamed soon afterwards. In the same election Anatoly Sobchak became the first democratically elected mayor of the city. Jack F. Matlock, Jr., Autopsy on an Empire: The American Ambassador's Account of the Collapse of the Soviet Union, Random House, 1995, ISBN 0679413766
By the end of 1991 the deteriorating planned economy of the collapsing Soviet Union had put the city on the verge of starvation. For the first time since World War II food rationing was introduced, and the city received humanitarian food aid from abroad. The city somewhat recovered with the market reforms in Russia. In 1995-2004 a northern section of the Metro's Kirovsko-Vyborgskaya Line was cut off by underground flooding, which was a major obstacle to the city development.
In 1996, Vladimir Yakovlev was elected as head of the Saint Petersburg City Administration. The title of the city head was changed in advance from "mayor" to "governor". In 2003, Yakovlev resigned a year before his second term expired. Valentina Matviyenko was elected governor. In 2006 she was reapproved as governor by the city legislature. The residential building had intensified again, real estate prices inflated greatly, and this situation causes many new problems for the historical part of the city.
In spite of the fact that the central part of the city is watched by UNESCO, the safety of its historical and architectural environment is in danger. Sergey Zagraevsky. Will Saint Petersburg share the same fate as Moscow? Zagraevsky.com There are still about 8000 architectural monuments in Saint Petersburg, but since 2005 the destruction of older buildings in the historical centre has continued. A number of new building projects are underway, including the Gazprom skyscraper in Okhta.
Territory of the federal subject of Saint Petersburg.
The area of Saint Petersburg city proper is . The area of the federal subject is , which contains the Saint Petersburg proper (consisting of 81 okrugs), nine suburban towns (Kolpino, Krasnoye Selo, Kronstadt, Lomonosov, Pavlovsk, Peterhof, Pushkin, Sestroretsk and Zelenogorsk) and 21 municipal settlements.
Saint Petersburg is situated on the middle taiga lowlands along the shores of the Neva Bay of the Gulf of Finland, and islands of the river delta. The largest are Vasilyevsky island (besides the artificial island between Obvodny canal and Fontanka, and Kotlin in the Neva Bay), Petrogradsky, Dekabristov and Krestovsky. The latter together with Yelagin and Kamenny island are covered mostly by parks. The Karelian Isthmus, North of the city, is a popular resort area. In the south Saint Petersburg crosses the Baltic-Ladoga Klint and meets the Izhora Plateau.
The elevation of Saint Petersburg ranges from the sea level to its highest point of at the Orekhovaya Hill in the Duderhof Heights in the south. Part of the city's territory west of Liteyny Prospekt is no higher than above sea level, and has suffered from numerous floods. Floods in Saint Petersburg are triggered by a long wave in the Baltic Sea, caused by meteorological conditions, winds and shallowness of the Neva Bay. The four most disastrous floods occurred in 1824 ( above sea-level, during which over 300 buildings were destroyed The level of flooding is measured near Saint Petersburg Mining Institute, which is normally a.s.l. ), 1924 , 1777 , 1955 and 1975 . To prevent floods, the Saint Petersburg Dam has been under construction since 1979. ÐежиÑ
овÑкий Ð . Ð. Река Ðева и ÐевÑÐºÐ°Ñ Ð³Ñба, Leningrad: ÐидÑомеÑеоиздаÑ, 1981.
Since the 18th century the terrain in the city has been raised artificially, at some places by more than , making mergers of several islands, and changing the hydrology of the city. Besides the Neva and its distributaries, other important rivers of the federal subject of Saint Petersburg are Sestra, Okhta and Izhora. The largest lake is Sestroretsky Razliv in the north, followed by Lakhtinsky Razliv, Suzdal Lakes and other smaller lakes.
Saint Petersburg's position on the latitude of ca. 60° N causes variation in day length across seasons, ranging from 5:53 to 18:50. Twilight may last all night in early summer, from mid-May to mid-July, the celebrated phenomenon known as the white nights.
Snow falling on the morning of May 14, 2008 at Srednyaya Rogatka (district in the south of St. Petersburg)
Saint Petersburg experiences a humid continental climate of the cool summer subtype (Köppen: Dfb), due to the distinct moderating influence of the Baltic Sea cyclones, with warm, humid and short summers and long, cold winters.
The average daily temperature in July is ; summer maximum is about , winter minimum is about . The record low temperature is , recorded in 1883. The average annual temperature is . The River Neva within the city limits usually freezes up in November-December, break-up occurs in April. From December to March there are 123 days average with snow cover, which reaches the average of by February. The frost-free period in the city lasts on average for about 135 days. The city has a climate slightly warmer than its suburbs. Weather conditions are quite variable all year round. See Historical weather records for Saint Petersburg (since 1932) and Historical weather in Saint Petersburg for further information.
Average annual precipitation varies across the city, averaging per year and reaching maximum in late summer. Soil moisture is almost always high because of lower evapotranspiration due to the cool climate. Air humidity is 78% on average, while overcast is 165 days a year on average.
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Saint Petersburg is the second largest city in Russia. The 2002 census recorded a population of the federal subject of 4,661,219, or 3.21% of the total population of Russia. The 2002 census recorded twenty-two ethnic groups of more than two thousand persons each. The ethnic composition was: Russian 84.72%, Ukrainian 1.87%, Belarusians 1.17%, Jewish 0.78%, Tatar 0.76%, Armenian 0.41%, Azeri 0.36%, Georgian 0.22%, Chuvash 0.13%, Polish 0.10%, and many other smaller ethnic groups, while 7.89% of the inhabitants declined to state their ethnicity.
The 20th century saw hectic ups and downs in population. From 2.4 million in 1916 it had dropped to less than 740,000 by 1920 during the Russian Revolution of 1917 and Russian Civil War. The sizeable minorities of Germans, Poles, Finns, Estonians and Latvians were almost completely expelled from Leningrad by the Soviet government during the 1930s. From 1941 to the end of 1943, population dropped from 3 million to less than 700,000, as people died in battles, starved to death during the Siege of Leningrad, or were evacuated. After the siege, some of the evacuees returned, but most influx was due to migration from other parts of the Soviet Union. The city absorbed about 3 million people in the 1950s and grew to over 5 million in the 1980s. From 1991 to 2006 the city's population decreased to the current 4.6 million, while the suburban population increased due to privatization of land and massive move to suburbs. ЧиÑÑÑкова Ð. ТÑеÑÑе ÑокÑаÑение ÑиÑленноÑÑи наÑелениÑ... и поÑледнее? ÐемоÑкоп Weekly 163 â 164, August 1â15, 2004. Russian source: "Encyclopedia of Saint Petersburg" ЧиÑÑÑков Ð. Ю. ÐаÑеление (обзоÑÐ½Ð°Ñ ÑÑаÑÑÑ). ÐнÑÐ¸ÐºÐ»Ð¾Ð¿ÐµÐ´Ð¸Ñ Ð¡Ð°Ð½ÐºÑ-ÐеÑеÑбÑÑга The birth rate remains lower than the death rate; people over 65 constitute more than twenty percent of the population; and the median age is about 40 years. Russian statistics ÐÑновнÑе показаÑели ÑоÑиалÑно-демогÑаÑиÑеÑкой ÑиÑÑаÑии в СанкÑ-ÐеÑеÑбÑÑге
People in urban Saint Petersburg live mostly in apartments. Between 1918 and the 1990s, the Soviets nationalised housing and forced residents to share communal apartments (kommunalkas). With 68% living in shared flats in the 1930s, Leningrad was the city in the USSR with the largest number of kommunalkas. Resettling residents of kommunalkas is now on the way out, albeit shared apartments are still not uncommon. As new boroughs were built on the outskirts in the 1950s-1980s, over half a million low income families eventually received free apartments, and about an additional hundred thousand condos were purchased. While economic and social activity is concentrated in the historic city centre, the richest part of Saint Petersburg, most people live in commuter areas. For the first half of 2007, the birth rate was 9.1 per 1000.
Smolny Institute, the seat of the governor.
Saint Petersburg is a federal subject of Russia. The political life of Saint Petersburg is regulated by the city charter adopted by the city legislature in 1998. The superior executive body is the Saint Petersburg City Administration, led by the governor (mayor before 1996). Saint Petersburg has a single-chamber legislature, the Saint Petersburg Legislative Assembly.
According to the federal law passed in 2004, heads of federal subjects, including the governor of Saint Petersburg, are nominated by the President of Russia and approved by local legislatures. If the legislature disapproves the nominee, it is dissolved. The current governor, Valentina Matviyenko, was approved according to the new system in December 2006. She is currently the only woman governor in the whole of Russia.
Saint Petersburg city is currently divided into eighteen districts. Saint Petersburg is also the administrative centre of Leningrad Oblast, and of the Northwestern Federal District. The Constitutional Court of Russia moved to Saint Petersburg from Moscow in May 2008.
Saint Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast, being two different federal subjects, share a number of local departments of federal executive agencies and courts, such as court of arbitration, police, FSB, postal service, drug enforcement administration, penitentiary service, federal registration service, and other federal services.
The Old Saint Petersburg Stock Exchange, or Bourse, houses the Central Naval Museum
Saint Petersburg is a major trade gateway, financial and industrial centre of Russia specialising in oil and gas trade, shipbuilding yards, aerospace industry, radio and electronics, software and computers; machine building, heavy machinery and transport, including tanks and other military equipment, mining, instrument manufacture, ferrous and nonferrous metallurgy (production of aluminium alloys), chemicals, pharmaceuticals, medical equipment, publishing and printing, food and catering, wholesale and retail, textile and apparel industries, and many other businesses. It was also home to Lessner, one of Russia's two pioneering automobile manufacturers (along with Russo-Baltic), Lessner; founded by machine tool and boiler maker G. A. Lessner in 1904, with designs by Boris Loutsky, it survived until 1910. Georgano, G. N. Cars: Early and Vintage, 1886-1930. (London: Grange-Universal, 1985)
10% of the world's power turbines are made there at the LMZ, which built over two thousand turbines for power plants across the world. Major local industries are Admiralty Shipyard, Baltic Shipyard, LOMO, Kirov Plant, Elektrosila, Izhorsky Zavod; also registered in Saint Petersburg are Sovkomflot, Petersburg Fuel Company and SIBUR among other major Russian and international companies.
The Saint Petersburg docks at dawn.
Saint Petersburg has three large cargo seaports: Bolshoi Port Saint Petersburg, Kronstadt, and Lomonosov. International cruise liners have been served at the passenger port at Morskoy Vokzal on the south-west of Vasilevsky Island. In 2008 the first two berths were opened at the New Passenger Port on the west of the island. Discoverthebaltic.com Discover the Baltic online guide to Baltic cruise ports The new port is part of the city's "Marine Facade" development project Mfspb.ru St Petersburg "Marine Facade" development project and is due to have seven berths in operation by 2010.
A complex system of riverports on both banks of the Neva river are interconnected with the system of seaports, thus making Saint Petersburg the main link between the Baltic sea and the rest of Russia through the Volga-Baltic Waterway.
The Saint Petersburg Mint (Monetny Dvor), founded in 1724, is one of the largest mints in the world, it mints Russian coins, medals and badges. Saint Petersburg is also home to the oldest and largest Russian foundry, Monumentskulptura, which made thousands of sculptures and statues that are now gracing public parks of Saint Petersburg, as well as many other cities. Monuments and bronze statues of the Czars, as well as other important historic figures and dignitaries, and other world famous monuments, such as the sculptures by Peter Clodt von Jürgensburg, Paolo Troubetzkoy, Pavel Antokolsky, and others, were made there.
In 2007 Toyota opened a Camry plant after investing 5 billion dollars in Shushary, one of the southern suburbs of Saint Petersburg. General Motors, Hyundai and Nissan have signed deals with the Russian government to build their automotive plants in Saint Petersburg too. Automotive and auto-parts industry is on the rise there during the last decade. Saint Petersburg is also known as the "beer capital" of Russia, due to the supply and quality of local water, contributing over 30% of the domestic production of beer with its five large-scale breweries including Europe's second largest brewery Baltika, Vena (both operated by BBH), Heineken Brewery, Stepan Razin (both by Heineken) and Tinkoff brewery (SUN-InBev). Saint Petersburg has the second largest construction industry in Russia, including commercial, housing and road construction.
In 2006 Saint Petersburg's city budget was 179,9 billion rubles, and is planned to double by 2012. The federal subject's gross regional product as of 2005 was 667,905.4 million Russian rubles, ranked 4th in Russia, after Moscow, Tyumen Oblast, and Moscow Oblast, or 145,503.3 rubles per capita, ranked 12th among Russia's federal subjects, contributed mostly by wholesale and retail trade and repair services (24.7%) as well as processing industry (20.9%) and transportation and telecommunications (15.1%).
The Kresty prison.
Russia historically had a high level of crime that increased significantly after the October revolution. Edward Hallett Carr The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1923, 1985 ISBN 0393301990 Google preview Perestroika-time turmoils saw additional increase of the crime level.
Saint Petersburg experiences significant levels of street crime and bribery. In addition, in recent years there has been a notable increase in racially motivated violence, especially towards tourists and foreign students. One of the well known white supremacist groups Belaya Energia (White Energy, originally comes from White Power), has reportedly been one of the main gangs involved in murdering foreign university students. Russia: Racist Attacks Plague St. Petersburg Radio Free Europe September 30, 2005
At the end of the 1980s â beginning of the 1990s, Leningrad became home to a number of organised criminal groups as Tambov Gang, Malyshev Gang, Kazan Gang and ethnic criminal groups, engaged in a racket, extortion, paying off local government, and violent clashes with each other. Russian Mafia Shakes Down the Country by Steven R. Van Hook, Santa Barbara News-Press, November 20, 1994
In 2008, a car bomb killed three people (including a four-year old child), and injured one.
After the assassinations of City Property Committee Chairman and vice-Governor Mikhail Manevich(1997), State Duma deputy Galina Starovoytova (1998), acting City Legislature Speaker Viktor Novosyolov (1999) and a number of prominent businesspeople, Saint Petersburg was dubbed Capital of Crime in the Russian press. Trumbull, Nathaniel S. (2003) The impacts of globalization on Saint Petersburg: A secondary world city in from the cold? The Annals of Regional Science 37:533â546 Powell, Bill & Brian Whitmore. The Capital Of Crime.(Saint Petersburg, Russia). Newsweek International, May 15, 2000. There were a number of movies filmed in Saint Petersburg about the life of crime; , Brother (1997) reinforcing its image as the Crime Capital of Russia.
One of the oldest and most infamous remand facilities in Saint Petersburg, Kresty prison is located near downtown.
However, crime rates in St. Petersburg have declined since the end of the 1990s; the aforementioned criminal gangs have mostly dispersed. Even the Kresty prison is no longer in use, as more modern penal institutions are being built farther from the city centre.
The decoration of Saint Petersburg Metro (Kirovsky Zavod Station).
Saint Petersburg is a major transport hub. The first Russian railway was built here, in 1837. Today, the city is the final destination of a web of intercity and suburban railways, served by five different railway terminals (Baltiysky, Finlyandsky, Ladozhsky, Moskovsky, and Vitebsky), Until 2001, the Varshavsky Rail Terminal served as a major station; it now is a railway museum. Reconstruction of the Warsaw Railway Station as well as dozens of non-terminal railway stations within the federal subject. Saint Petersburg has international railway connections to Helsinki, Finland, Berlin, Germany, and all former republics of the USSR. The Helsinki railway was built in 1870, , commutes three times a day, in a journey lasting about five and a half hours. The Moscow-Saint Petersburg Railway opened in 1851, ; the commute to Moscow now requires about four and a half to nine hours. Saint Petersburg is also served by Pulkovo International Airport, Rossiya (Pulkovo): Pulkovo Aviation Enterprise and by three smaller commercial and cargo airports in the suburbs. There is a regular, 24/7, rapid-bus transit connection between Pulkovo airport and the city centre.
The city is also served by the passenger and cargo seaports in the Neva Bay of the Gulf of Finland, Baltic Sea, the river port higher up the Neva, and tens of smaller passenger stations on both banks of the Neva river. It is a terminus of the Volga-Baltic and White Sea-Baltic waterways. In 2004 the first high bridge that doesn't need to be drawn, a long Big Obukhovsky Bridge, was opened. Meteor hydrofoils link the city centre to the coastal towns of Kronstadt, Lomonosov, Peterhof, Sestroretsk and Zelenogorsk from May through October.
Pulkovo International Airport.
Saint Petersburg has an extensive city-funded network of public transport (buses, trams, trolleybuses) and several hundred routes served by marshrutkas. Trams in Saint Petersburg used to be the main transport; in the 1980s, Leningrad had the largest tramway network in the world, but many tramway rail tracks were dismantled in the 2000s. Buses carry up to 3 million passengers daily, serving over 250 urban and a number of suburban bus routes. Saint Petersburg Metro underground rapid transit system was opened in 1955; it now has five lines with 63 stations, connecting all five railway terminals, and carrying 3.4 million passengers daily. Metro stations are decorated in marble and bronze.
Traffic jams are common in the city, because of high daily traffic volumes between the commuter boroughs and the city centre, intercity traffic, and at times excessive snow in winter. Five segments of the Saint Petersburg Ring Road were opened between 2002 and 2006, and full ring is planned to open in 2010.
Saint Petersburg is part of the important transport corridor linking Scandinavia to Russia and Eastern Europe. The city is a node of the international European routes E18 towards Helsinki, E20 towards Tallinn, E95 towards Pskov, Kiev and Odessa and E105 towards Petrozavodsk, Murmansk and Kirkenes (north) and towards Moscow and Kharkiv (south).
Kazan Cathedral
Griboyedov Canal
A bridge over the river Neva
As of now, Saint Petersburg has no skyscrapers and a relatively low skyline. Current regulations forbid construction of high buildings in the city centre. The 310 metre tall Saint Petersburg TV Tower is the tallest structure in the city, while the 122.5 m Peter and Paul Cathedral is by far the highest building. However, there is a controversial project endorsed by the city authorities and known as the Ohkta Centre to build a 396 m supertall skyscraper. In 2008 the World Monuments Fund included the Saint Petersburg historic skyline within the watch list of 100 most endangered sites due to the expected construction, which threatens to alter it drastically.
Unlike in Moscow, in Saint Petersburg the historic architecture of the city centre, mostly consisting of Baroque and neoclassical buildings of the 18th and 19th centuries, has been largely preserved, although a number of buildings were demolished after the Bolsheviks' seizure of power, during the Siege of Leningrad and in recent years. The oldest of the remaining building is a wooden house built for Peter I in 1703 on the shore of the Neva near Trinity Square. Since 1991 the Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments in Saint Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast have been listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.
The ensemble of Peter and Paul Fortress with the Peter and Paul Cathedral takes dominant position on Zayachy Island along the right bank of the River Neva. Each noon a cannon fires a blank shot from the fortress. The Saint Petersburg Mosque, the largest mosque in Europe when opened in 1913, is situated on the right bank nearby. The spit of Vasilievsky Island, which splits the river into two largest armlets, the Bolshaya Neva and Malaya Neva, is connected to the northern bank (Petrogradsky Island) via the Exchange Bridge and occupied by the Old Saint Petersburg Stock Exchange and Rostral Columns. The southern coast of Vasilievsky Island along the Bolshaya Neva features some of the city's oldest buildings, dating from the 18th century, including the Kunstkamera, Twelve Collegia, Menshikov Palace and Imperial Academy of Arts. It hosts one of two campuses of Saint Petersburg State University.
On the southern, left bank of the Neva, connected to the spit of Vasilievsky Island via the Palace Bridge, lie the Admiralty Building, the vast Hermitage Museum complex stretching along the Palace Embankment, which includes the baroque Winter Palace, former official residence of Russian emperors, as well as the neoclassical Marble Palace. The Winter Palace faces Palace Square, the city's main square with the Alexander Column.
Nevsky Prospekt, also situated on the left bank of the Neva, is the main avenue in the city. It starts at the Admiralty and runs eastwards next to Palace Square. Nevsky Prospekt crosses the Moika (Green Bridge), Griboyedov Canal (Kazansky Bridge), Garden Street, the Fontanka (Anichkov Bridge), meets Liteyny Prospekt and proceeds to Uprising Square near the Moskovsky railway station, where it meets Ligovsky Prospekt and turns to the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. The Passage, Catholic Church of St. Catherine, Book House (former Singer Manufacturing Company Building in the Art Nouveau style), Grand Hotel Europe, Lutheran Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, Gostiny Dvor, Russian National Library, Alexandrine Theatre behind Mikeshin's statue of Catherine the Great, Kazan Cathedral, Stroganov Palace, Anichkov Palace and Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace are all situated along that avenue.
The Alexander Nevsky Lavra, intended to house the relics of St. Alexander Nevsky, is an important centre of Christian education in Russia. It also contains the Tikhvin Cemetery with graves of many notable Petersburgers.
On the territory between the Neva and Nevsky Prospekt the Church of the Savior on Blood, Mikhailovsky Palace housing the Russian Museum, Field of Mars, St. Michael's Castle, Summer Garden, Tauride Palace, Smolny Institute and Smolny Convent are located.
Many notable landmarks are situated to the west and south of the Admiralty Building, including the Trinity Cathedral, Mariinsky Palace, Hotel Astoria, famous Mariinsky Theatre, New Holland Island, Saint Isaac's Cathedral, the largest in the city, and Decembrists Square with the Bronze Horseman, 18th century equestrian monument to Peter the Great, which is considered among the city's most recognisable symbols.
Other symbols of Saint Petersburg include the weather vane in the shape of a small ship on top of the Admiralty's golden spire and the golden angel on top of the Peter and Paul Cathedral. The Palace Bridge drawn at night is yet another symbol of the city. Every night during the navigation period from April to November, 22 bridges across the Neva and main canals are drawn to let ships pass in and out of the Baltic Sea according to a schedule. Schedule for main drawbridges across the Neva river (Official Russian schedule): Mr-spb.ru It wasn't until 2004 that the first high bridge across the Neva, which doesn't need to be drawn, Big Obukhovsky Bridge, was opened. There are hundreds of smaller bridges in Saint Petersburg spanning across numerous canals and distributaries of the Neva, some of the most important of which are the Moika, Fontanka, Griboyedov Canal, Obvodny Canal, Karpovka and Smolenka. Due to the intricate web of canals, Saint Petersburg is often called Venice of the North. The rivers and canals in the city centre are lined with granite embankments. The embankments and bridges are separated from rivers and canals by granite or cast iron parapets.
Southern suburbs of the city feature former imperial residences, including Peterhof, with majestic fountain cascades and parks, Tsarskoe Selo, with the baroque Catherine Palace and the neoclassical Alexander Palace, and Pavlovsk, which contains a domed palace of Emperor Paul and one of the largest English-style parks in Europe. Some other residences situated nearby and making part of the world heritage site, including a castle and park in Gatchina, actually belong to Leningrad Oblast rather than Saint Petersburg. Another notable suburb is Kronstadt with its 19th century fortifications and naval monuments, occupying the Kotlin Island in the Gulf of Finland.
From XX century end in a city active building and reorganisation of old historical city districts is conducted.
The authorities are compelled to transfer control of private residences in city centre to private lessors.
Also sealing building and a superstructure of buildings is spent by penthouses.
Some of these structures, such as the Saint Petersburg Commodity and Stock Exchange" have been recognised as town-planning errors.
Interior of the Hermitage Museum.
Saint Petersburg is home to more than two hundred museums, many of them hosted in historic buildings. The largest of the museums is the Hermitage Museum, featuring interiors of the former imperial residence and a vast collection of art. The Russian Museum is a large museum devoted to the Russian fine art specifically. The apartments of some famous Petersburgers, including Alexander Pushkin, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Feodor Chaliapin, Alexander Blok, Vladimir Nabokov, Anna Akhmatova, Mikhail Zoshchenko, Joseph Brodsky, as well as some palace and park ensembles of the southern suburbs and notable architectural monuments such as St. Isaac's Cathedral, have also been turned into public museums.
The Kunstkamera, with its collection established in 1714 by Peter the Great to collect curiosities from all over the world, is sometimes considered the first museum in Russia, which has evolved into the present-day Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography. The Russian Ethnography Museum, which has been split from the Russian Museum, is devoted to the cultures of the people of Russia, the former Soviet Union and Russian Empire.
Other notable museums include the Central Naval Museum hosted in the building of the former stock exchange and Zoological Museum, the Railway Museum, Museum of the Siege of Leningrad, Saint Petersburg Museum of History in the Peter and Paul Fortress and Artillery Museum, which in fact includes not only artillery items, but also a huge collection of other military equipment, uniform and decorations.
The Grand Cascade.
Saint Petersburg is home to numerous parks and gardens, some of the most famous of which are situated in the southern suburbs, including one of the largest English gardens of Europe in Pavlovsk. Sosnovka is the largest park within the limits of the city proper, occupying 240 ha. The Summer Garden is the oldest one, dating back to the early 18th century and designed in the regular style. It is situated on the southern bank of the Neva at the head of the Fontanka and is famous for its cast iron railing and marble sculptures.
Among other notable parks are the Maritime Victory Park on Krestovsky Island and the Moscow Victory Park in the south, both commemorating the victory over Nazi Germany in the Second World War, as well as the Central Park of Culture and Leisure occupying Yelagin Island and the Tauride Garden around the Tauride Palace. The most common trees grown in the parks are the English oak, Norway maple, green ash, silver birch, Siberian larch, blue spruce, crack willow, limes and poplars. Important dendrological collections dating back to the 19th century are hosted by the Saint Petersburg Botanical Garden and the Park of the Forestry Academy.
Among the city's more than fifty theaters is the world-famous Mariinsky Theater (also known as the Kirov Theater in the USSR ), home to the Mariinsky Ballet company and opera. Leading ballet dancers, such as Vaslav Nijinsky, Anna Pavlova, Rudolph Nureyev, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Galina Ulanova and Natalia Makarova, were principal stars of the Mariinsky ballet.
Dmitri Shostakovich was born and brought up in Saint Petersburg, and dedicated his Seventh Symphony to the city, calling it the "Leningrad Symphony." He wrote the symphony while in Leningrad during the German siege. The 7th symphony was premiered in 1942; its performance in the besieged Leningrad at the Bolshoy Philharmonic Hall under the baton of conductor Karl Eliasberg was heard over the radio and lifted the spirits of the survivors. In 1992 a reunion performance of the 7th Symphony by the (then) 14 survivors was played in the same hall as they done half a century ago. The Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra remained one of the best known symphony orchestras in the world under the leadership of conductors Yevgeny Mravinsky and Yuri Temirkanov.
The Imperial Choral Capella was founded and modeled after the royal courts of other European capitals.
Saint Petersburg has been home to the newest movements in popular music in the country. The first jazz band in the Soviet Union was founded here by Leonid Utyosov in the 1920s, under the patronage of Isaak Dunayevsky. The first jazz club in the Soviet Union was founded here in the 1950s, and later was named jazz club Kvadrat. In 1956 the popular ensemble Druzhba was founded by Aleksandr Bronevitsky and Edita Piekha, becoming the first popular band in the 1950s USSR. In the 1960s student rock-groups Argonavty, Kochevniki and others pioneered a series of unofficial and underground rock concerts and festivals. In 1972 Boris Grebenshchikov founded the band Aquarium, that later grew to huge popularity. Since then "Peter's rock" music style was formed.
In the 1970s many bands came out from "underground" and eventually founded the Leningrad rock club which has been providing stage to such bands as Piknik, DDT, Kino, headed by the legendary Viktor Tsoi, Igry, Mify, Zemlyane, Alisa and many other popular groups. The first Russian-style happening show Pop mekhanika, mixing over 300 people and animals on stage, was directed by the multi-talented Sergey Kuryokhin in the 1980s.
Today's Saint Petersburg boasts many notable musicians of various genres, from popular Leningrad's Sergei Shnurov and Tequilajazzz, to rock veterans Yuri Shevchuk, Vyacheslav Butusov and Mikhail Boyarsky.
The White Nights Festival in Saint Petersburg is famous for spectacular fireworks and massive show celebrating the end of school year.
Over 250 international and Russian movies were filmed in Saint Petersburg. International Movie Database Well over a thousand feature films about tsars, revolution, people and stories set in Saint Petersburg were produced worldwide, but were not filmed in the city. First film studios were founded in Saint Petersburg in the 1900s, and since the 1920s Lenfilm has been the largest film studio based in Saint Petersburg. The first foreign feature movie filmed entirely in Saint Petersburg was the 1997 production of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, starring Sophie Marceau and Sean Bean, and made by international team of British, American, French and Russian filmmakers.
The cult comedy Irony of Fate (also ÐÑÐ¾Ð½Ð¸Ñ ÑÑдÑбÑ, или С лÑгким паÑом!) is set in Saint Petersburg and pokes fun at Soviet city planning. The 1985 film White Nights received considerable Western attention for having captured genuine Leningrad street scenes at a time when filming in the Soviet Union by Western production companies was generally unheard of. Other movies include GoldenEye (1995), Midnight in Saint Petersburg (1996), and Brother (1997). Onegin (1999) is based on the Pushkin poem and showcases many tourist attractions. In addition, the Russian romantic comedy, ÐиÑÐµÑ FM, showcases the cityscape significantly, almost as if it was a main character in the film.
Several international film festivals are held annually, such as the Festival of Festivals, St. Petersburg, as well as the Message to Man International Documentary Film Festival, since its inauguration in 1988 during the White Nights.
Saint Petersburg has a longstanding and world famous tradition in literature. Dostoyevsky called it âThe most abstract and intentional city in the world," emphasizing its artificiality, but it was also a symbol of modern disorder in a changing Russia. It frequently appeared to Russian writers as a menacing and inhuman mechanism. The grotesque and often nightmarish image of the city is featured in Pushkin's last poems, the Petersburg stories of Gogol, the novels of Dostoyevsky, the verse of Alexander Blok and Osip Mandelshtam, and in the symbolist novel Petersburg by Andrey Bely. According to Lotman in his chapter, 'The Symbolism of Saint Petersburg' in Universe and the Mind, these writers were inspired from symbolism from within the city itself. The effect of life in Saint Petersburg on the plight of the poor clerk in a society obsessed with hierarchy and status also became an important theme for authors such as Pushkin, Gogol, and Dostoyevsky. Another important feature of early Saint Petersburg literature is its mythical element, which incorporates urban legends and popular ghost stories, as the stories of Pushkin and Gogol included ghosts returning to Saint Petersburg to haunt other characters as well as other fantastical elements, creating a surreal and abstract image of Saint Petersburg.
Twentieth century writers from Saint Petersburg, such as Vladimir Nabokov, Ayn Rand, Andrey Bely and Yevgeny Zamyatin, along with his apprentices, The Serapion Brothers, created entire new styles in literature and contributed new insights to the understanding of society through their experience in this city. Anna Akhmatova became an important leader for Russian poetry. Her poem Requiem focuses on the tragedies of living during the time of the Stalinist terror. Another notable 20th century writer from Saint Petersburg is Joseph Brodsky, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1987). While living in the United States, his writings in English reflected on life in Saint Petersburg from the unique perspective of being both an insider and an outsider to the city in essays such as, "A Guide to a Renamed City" and the nostalgic "In a Room and a Half". Joseph Brodsky. Less Than One: Selected Essays, 1986
FC Zenit's home Petrovsky stadium
Leningrad hosted part of the football tournament during the 1980 Summer Olympics. The 1994 Goodwill Games were held here.
The first competition here was the 1703 rowing event initiated by Peter the Great, after the victory over the Swedish fleet. Yachting events were held by the Russian Navy since the foundation of the city. Yacht clubs: St. Petersburg River Yacht Club, Neva Yacht Club, the latter is the oldest yacht club in the world. In the winter, when the sea and lake surfaces are frozen and yachts and dinghies cannot be used, local people sail on ice boats.
Equestrianism has been a long tradition, popular among the Tsars and aristocracy, as well as part of the military training. Several historic sports arenas were built for Equestrianism since the 18th century, to maintain training all year round, such as the Zimny Stadion and Konnogvardeisky Manezh among others.
Chess tradition was highlighted by the 1914 international tournament, in which the title "Grandmaster" was first formally conferred by Russian Tsar Nicholas II to five players: Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine, Tarrasch and Marshall, and which the Tsar had partially funded.
Kirov Stadium (now demolished) was one of the largest stadiums anywhere in the world, and the home to FC Zenit St. Petersburg in 1950-1993 and 1995. In 1951 the attendance of 110,000 set the record for the Soviet football. In 2007 Zenit became champions of the Russian Premier League, won the UEFA Cup 2007â08 season and the 2008 UEFA Supercup. Zenit now plays their home games at Petrovsky Stadium.
As of 2006/2007 there were 1024 kindergartens, 716 public schools and 80 vocational schools in Saint Petersburg. SPB.ru The largest of the higher education institutions are Saint Petersburg State University, enrolling approximately 32,000 undergraduate students, Saint Petersburg Polytechnical University and Herzen University. However, the universities are all federal property and don't belong to the city.
*List of consulates in Saint Petersburg
*List of museums in Saint Petersburg
*List of notable people from Saint Petersburg
*List of Saint Petersburg sister cities
*Amery, Colin, Brian Curran & Yuri Molodkovets. St. Petersburg. London: Frances Lincoln, 2006. ISBN 0711224927.
*Bater, James H. St. Petersburg: Industrialization and Change. Montreal: McGuill-Queenâs University Press, 1976. ISBN 0773502661.
*Berelowitch, Wladimir & Olga Medvedkova. Histoire de Saint-Pétersbourg. Paris: Fayard, 1996. ISBN 2213596018.
*Buckler, Julie. Mapping St. Petersburg: Imperial Text and Cityshape. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005 ISBN0691113491.
*Clark, Katerina, Petersburg, Crucible of Revolution. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995.
*Cross, Anthony (ed.). St. Petersburg, 1703-1825. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. ISBN 1403915709.
*George, Arthur L. & Elena George. St. Petersburg: Russia's Window to the Future, The First Three Centuries. Lanham: Taylor Trade Publishing, 2003. ISBN 1589790170.
*Glantz, David M. The Battle for Leningrad, 1941-1944. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002. ISBN 0700612084.
*Hellberg-Hirn, Elena. Imperial Imprints: Post-Soviet St. Petersburg. Helsinki: SKS Finnish Literature Society, 2003. ISBN 9517464916.
*Knopf Guide: Sat. Petersburg. New York: Knopf, 1995. ISBN 0679762027.
*Eyewitness Guide: St. Petersburg.
*Lincoln, W. Bruce. Sunlight at Midnight: St. Petersburg and the Rise of Modern Russia. New York: Basic Books, 2000. ISBN 0465083234.
*Orttung, Robert W. From Leningrad to St. Petersburg: Democratization in a Russian City. New York: St. Martinâs, 1995. ISBN 0312175612.
*Ruble, Blair A. Leningrad: Shaping a Soviet City. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. ISBN 0877723478.
*Shvidkovsky, Dmitry O. & Alexander Orloff. St. Petersburg: Architecture of the Tsars. New York: Abbeville Press, 1996. ISBN 0789202174.
*Volkov, Solomon. St. Petersburg: A Cultural History. New York: Free Press, 1995. ISBN 0028740521.
*St. Petersburg:Architecture of the Tsars. 360 pages. Abbeville Press, 1996. ISBN 0789202174
*Saint Petersburg: Museums, Palaces, and Historic Collections: A Guide to the Lesser Known Treasures of St. Petersburg. 2003. ISBN 1593730004.
*ÐежиÑ
овÑкий Ð . Ð. Река Ðева и ÐевÑÐºÐ°Ñ Ð³Ñба, Leningrad, ÐидÑомеÑеоиздаÑ, 1981.
* Official presentation of Saint Petersburg
* Official Portal of the City Government: Saint Petersburg
* Encyclopaedia of Saint Petersburg
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* Saint Petersburg in 1900
* Saint Petersburg, entry in the World Monuments Fund's 2008 watchlist
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Saint_Petersburg | What were some other names of the city? | Petrograd, Leningrad, and Piter | data/set3/a10 | Saint_Petersburg
Saint Petersburg ( , ) is a city and a federal subject (a federal city) of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The city's other names were Petrograd ( , 1914â1924) and Leningrad ( , 1924â1991). It is often called just Petersburg ( ) and is informally known as Piter ( ).
Founded by Tsar Peter I of Russia on 27 May 1703, it was the capital of the Russian Empire for more than two hundred years (1713â1728, 1732â1918). Saint Petersburg ceased being the capital in 1918 after the Russian Revolution of 1917. Nicholas and Alexandra: An Intimate Account of the Last of the Romanovs and the Fall of Imperial Russia (Athenum, 1967) by Robert K. Massie, ASIN B000CGP8M2 (also, Ballantine Books, 2000, ISBN 0-345-43831-0 and Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, 2005, ISBN 1-57912-433-X) It is Russia's second largest city after Moscow with 4.6 million inhabitants, and over 6 million people live in its vicinity. Saint Petersburg is a major European cultural centre, and an important Russian port on the Baltic Sea.
Saint Petersburg is often described as the most Western city of Russia. V. Morozov. The Discourses of Saint Petersburg and the Shaping of a Wider Europe. Copenhagen Peace Research Institute. 2002. Ciaonet.org Among cities of the world with over one million people, Saint Petersburg is the northernmost. The Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments constitute a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Saint Petersburg is also home to The Hermitage, the largest art museum in the world. /ref> Russia's political and cultural centre for 200 years, the city is sometimes referred to in Russia as the northern capital. A large number of foreign consulates, international corporations, banks and other businesses are located in Saint Petersburg.
On 1 May 1703 (Julian calendar), during the Great Northern War, Peter the Great captured the Swedish fortress of Nyenskans on the Neva river in Ingria. A few weeks later, on 27 May 1703 (May 16, Old Style), lower on the river, on Zayachy (Hare) Island, three miles (5 km) inland from the gulf, he laid down the Peter and Paul Fortress, which became the first brick and stone building of the new city. He named the city after his patron saint, Saint Peter, the apostle. The original name was meant to sound like Dutch due to Peter's obsession with the Dutch culture. Peter the Great: His Life and World (Knopf, 1980) by Robert K. Massie, ISBN 0-394-50032-6
The city was built by conscripted serfs from all over Russia and also by Swedish prisoners of war under the supervision of Alexander Menshikov and later became the centre of Saint Petersburg Governorate. Peter moved the capital from Moscow to Saint Petersburg in 1712, before the Treaty of Nystad of 1721 ended the war.
The Bronze Horseman, monument to Peter the Great.
Palace Square, as the main square of the Russian Empire it was the setting of many events of great historical significance
Lenin statue outside the Finland station. Between 1924 and 1991 the city was known as Leningrad.
Map of Saint Petersburg, 1903.
Church of the Savior on Blood.
During the first few years of its existence the city grew spontaneously around Trinity Square on the right bank of the Neva, near the Peter and Paul Fortress. However, Saint Petersburg soon started to develop according to a plan. By 1716 Domenico Trezzini had elaborated a project whereby the city centre would be located on Vasilievsky Island and shaped by a rectangular grid of canals. The project was not completed, but is still evident in the layout of the streets. In 1716 Jean-Baptiste Alexandre Le Blond was appointed chief architect of Saint Petersburg by Peter the Great.
The style of Petrine Baroque, developed by Trezzini and other architects and exemplified by such buildings as the Menshikov Palace, Kunstkamera, Peter and Paul Cathedral, Twelve Collegia, became prominent in the city architecture of the early 18th century. In 1724 the Academy of Sciences, University and Academic Gymnasium were established in Saint Petersburg by Peter the Great.
However, in 1725 Peter died. His near-lifelong autocratic push for modernisation of Russia had met with considerable opposition from the old-fashioned Russian nobility â resulting in several attempts on his life and a treason case involving his own son. Matthew S. Anderson, Peter the Great (London: Thames and Hudson, 1978) Thus, in 1728, Peter II of Russia moved his seat back to Moscow. But four years later, in 1732, under Empress Anna of Russia, Saint Petersburg again became the capital of the Russian Empire and remained the seat of the government for 186 years.
In 1736-1737 the city suffered from catastrophic fires. In order to rebuild the damaged boroughs, in 1737 a new plan was commissioned by a committee under Burkhard Christoph von Munnich. The city was divided into five boroughs, and the city centre was moved to the Admiralty borough, situated on the east bank between the Neva and Fontanka.
It developed along three radial streets, which meet at the Admiralty and are now known as Nevsky Prospekt (which is now perceived as the main street of the city), Gorokhovaya Street and Voznesensky Prospekt. The style of Baroque dominated the city architecture during the first sixty years, culminating in the Elizabethan Baroque, represented most notably by Bartolomeo Rastrelli with such buildings as the Winter Palace. In the 1760s the Baroque architecture was succeeded by the neoclassical architecture.
The Commission of Stone Buildings of Moscow and Saint Petersburg established in 1762 ruled that no structure in the city be higher than the Winter Palace and prohibited spacing between buildings. During the reign of Catherine the Great in the 1760s-1780s the banks of the Neva were lined with granite embankments.
However, it wasn't until 1850 that it was allowed to open the first permanent bridge across the Neva, Blagoveshchensky Bridge. Before that, only pontoon bridges were allowed. Obvodny Canal (dug in 1769-1833) became the southern limit of the city.
Some of the most important neoclassical architects in Saint Petersburg (including those working within the Empire style) were Jean-Baptiste Vallin de la Mothe (Imperial Academy of Arts, Small Hermitage, Gostiny Dvor, New Holland Arch, Catholic Church of St. Catherine), Antonio Rinaldi (Marble Palace), Yury Felten (Old Hermitage, Chesme Church), Giacomo Quarenghi (Academy of Sciences, Hermitage Theatre, Yusupov Palace), Andrey Voronikhin (Mining Institute, Kazan Cathedral), Andreyan Zakharov (Admiralty building), Jean-François Thomas de Thomon (Spit of Vasilievsky Island), Carlo Rossi (Yelagin Palace, Mikhailovsky Palace, Alexandrine Theatre, Senate and Synod Buildings, General Staff Building, design of many streets and squares), Vasily Stasov (Moscow Triumphal Gate, Trinity Cathedral), Auguste de Montferrand (Saint Isaac's Cathedral, Alexander Column). The victory over Napoleonic France in the Patriotic War of 1812 was commemorated with many monuments, including Alexander Column by Montferrand, erected in 1834, and Narva Triumphal Gate.
In 1825 the suppressed Decembrist revolt against Nicholas I of Russia took place on the Senate Square in the city, a day after he assumed the throne.
By the 1840s the neoclassical architecture had given place to various romanticist styles, which were dominant until the 1890s, represented by such architects as Andrei Stackenschneider (Mariinsky Palace, Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace, Nicholas Palace, New Michael Palace) and Konstantin Thon (Moskovsky Rail Terminal). The Church of the Savior on Blood designed in the Russian revival style commemorated the place where Alexander II of Russia was assassinated in 1881.
With the emancipation of the serfs undertaken by Alexander II in 1861 and the industrial revolution the influx of former peasants into the capital increased greatly. Poor boroughs spontaneously emerged on the outskirts of the city. Saint Petersburg surpassed Moscow in population and industrial growth and grew into one of the largest industrial hubs and cities in Europe.
The Revolution of 1905 began in Saint Petersburg and spread rapidly into the provinces. With the start of World War I, the name Saint Petersburg was perceived to be too German, so in 1914 the city was renamed Petrograd. The Romanovs: The Final Chapter (Random House, 1995) by Robert K. Massie, ISBN 0-394-58048-6 and ISBN 0-679-43572-7 In 1917 the February Revolution, which put an end to the Russian monarchy, and the October Revolution, which ultimately brought Vladimir Lenin to power, broke out in Petrograd. Rex A. Wade The Russian Revolution, 1917 2005 Cambridge University Press ISBN 0521841550 The city's proximity to the border and anti-Soviet armies forced the Bolsheviks under Lenin to transfer the capital to Moscow on March 12, 1918.
In 1919 during the ensuing Russian Civil War Nikolay Yudenich advancing from Estonia was about to capture the city from the Bolsheviks, but Leon Trotsky ultimately managed to mobilise the population and make him retreat. Many people fled the city in 1917-1920 or were repressed in the Red Terror, Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe. By Robert Gellately, 2007, Random House, 720 pages. ISBN 1400040051 so its population decreased dramatically. On January 26, 1924, three days after Lenin's death, Petrograd was renamed Leningrad. For decades Leningrad was glorified by the Soviet propaganda as "the cradle of the revolution" and "the city of three revolutions", many spots related to Lenin and the revolutions, such as the cruiser Aurora, were carefully preserved. Many streets and other toponyms were renamed accordingly.
In the 1920s-1930s the poor outskirts were reconstructed into regularly planned boroughs. The constructivist architecture flourished around that time. The Soviets nationalised housing and forced many residents to share communal apartments (kommunalkas). With 68% living in shared apartments in the 1930s, Leningrad was the city with the largest number of kommunalkas. In 1935 a new general plan was outlined, whereby the city should expand to the south and its centre should move there. The constructivism was rejected in favor of the pompous Stalinist architecture. Stalin ordered the construction of the new city hall on Moskovsky Prospect thus making it the new main street of Leningrad during the Soviet rule.
Since December 1931 Leningrad has been administratively separate from Leningrad Oblast. At that time it included Leningrad Suburban District, some parts of which were transferred back to Leningrad Oblast in 1936 and turned into Vsevolozhsky District, Krasnoselsky District, Pargolovsky District and Slutsky District (renamed Pavlovsky District in 1944).
On December 1, 1934, Sergey Kirov, popular communist leader of Leningrad, was assassinated, which was used to start the Great Purge. Stalin's Terror: High Politics and Mass Repression in the Soviet Union by Barry McLoughlin and Kevin McDermott (eds). Palgrave Macmillan, 2002, p. 6 The sizeable minorities of Germans, Poles, Finns, Estonians and Latvians were almost completely expelled from Leningrad by the Soviet government during the 1930s. Martin, Terry (1998). The Origins of Soviet Ethnic Cleansing. The Journal of Modern History 70.4, 813-861.
During World War II, Leningrad was besieged by Nazi Germany and co-belligerent Finland. Siege of Leningrad. Encyclopædia Britannica The siege lasted 872 days from September 1941 to January 1944. Baldack, Richard H. "Leningrad, Siege of" World Book Encyclopedia, Chicago, 2002, vol.12, page 195 The Siege of Leningrad was one of the longest, most destructive, and most lethal sieges of major cities in modern history. It isolated the city from most supplies except those provided through the Road of Life across Lake Ladoga, and more than a million civilians died, mainly from starvation. Many others were eventually evacuated or escaped by themselves, so the city became largely depopulated. For the heroic resistance of the city and tenacity of the survivors of the Siege, in 1945 Leningrad became the first city in the Soviet Union awarded the title Hero City. In October 1946 some former Finnish territories along the northern coast of the Gulf of Finland captured in the Winter War and Continuation War were transferred from Leningrad Oblast to Leningrad and divided into Sestroretsky District and Kurortny District, including the town of Terijoki (renamed Zelenogorsk in 1948).
Leningrad and many of its suburbs were rebuilt over the post-war decades, partially according to the pre-war plans. The 1948 general plan of Leningrad featured radial urban development in the north as well as in the south. The Leningrad Metro, underground rapid transit system which was designed before the war in the 1930s, was opened in 1955 with its first seven stations decorated with marble and bronze. Meanwhile, in 1949-1951 a large number of prominent Leningrad members of the Communist Party and their families were charged with treason and intention to create an anti-Soviet organization out of their local party cell. Many were imprisoned or executed in the Leningrad Affair fabricated by the central Soviet leadership. Dmitri Volkogonov. Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy, 1996, ISBN 0761507183 Russian publication: ÐенингÑадÑкое дело â надо ли ÑÑавиÑÑ ÐºÐ°Ð²ÑÑки?: Contr-tv.ru
In 1953 Pavlovsky District of Leningrad Oblast was abolished, and parts of its territory including Pavlovsk merged with Leningrad. In 1954 the settlements Levashovo, Pargolovo and Pesochny merged with Leningrad.
After the death of Stalin the perceived ornamental excesses of the Stalinist architecture were abandoned. In the 1960s-1980s, as many new residential boroughs were built on the outskirts with few series of functionalist apartment blocks identical to each other, many families moved there from kommunalkas in the city centre in order to live in separate apartments. Uritsk was re-named Ligovo and merged with Leningrad in 1963, Lomonosov merged in 1978.
On June 12, 1991, in a referendum held on the same day as the first Russian presidential election, 54% of voters chose to restore the name "Saint Petersburg" (the change officially took effect on September 6, 1991). Many other Soviet-era toponyms in the city were also renamed soon afterwards. In the same election Anatoly Sobchak became the first democratically elected mayor of the city. Jack F. Matlock, Jr., Autopsy on an Empire: The American Ambassador's Account of the Collapse of the Soviet Union, Random House, 1995, ISBN 0679413766
By the end of 1991 the deteriorating planned economy of the collapsing Soviet Union had put the city on the verge of starvation. For the first time since World War II food rationing was introduced, and the city received humanitarian food aid from abroad. The city somewhat recovered with the market reforms in Russia. In 1995-2004 a northern section of the Metro's Kirovsko-Vyborgskaya Line was cut off by underground flooding, which was a major obstacle to the city development.
In 1996, Vladimir Yakovlev was elected as head of the Saint Petersburg City Administration. The title of the city head was changed in advance from "mayor" to "governor". In 2003, Yakovlev resigned a year before his second term expired. Valentina Matviyenko was elected governor. In 2006 she was reapproved as governor by the city legislature. The residential building had intensified again, real estate prices inflated greatly, and this situation causes many new problems for the historical part of the city.
In spite of the fact that the central part of the city is watched by UNESCO, the safety of its historical and architectural environment is in danger. Sergey Zagraevsky. Will Saint Petersburg share the same fate as Moscow? Zagraevsky.com There are still about 8000 architectural monuments in Saint Petersburg, but since 2005 the destruction of older buildings in the historical centre has continued. A number of new building projects are underway, including the Gazprom skyscraper in Okhta.
Territory of the federal subject of Saint Petersburg.
The area of Saint Petersburg city proper is . The area of the federal subject is , which contains the Saint Petersburg proper (consisting of 81 okrugs), nine suburban towns (Kolpino, Krasnoye Selo, Kronstadt, Lomonosov, Pavlovsk, Peterhof, Pushkin, Sestroretsk and Zelenogorsk) and 21 municipal settlements.
Saint Petersburg is situated on the middle taiga lowlands along the shores of the Neva Bay of the Gulf of Finland, and islands of the river delta. The largest are Vasilyevsky island (besides the artificial island between Obvodny canal and Fontanka, and Kotlin in the Neva Bay), Petrogradsky, Dekabristov and Krestovsky. The latter together with Yelagin and Kamenny island are covered mostly by parks. The Karelian Isthmus, North of the city, is a popular resort area. In the south Saint Petersburg crosses the Baltic-Ladoga Klint and meets the Izhora Plateau.
The elevation of Saint Petersburg ranges from the sea level to its highest point of at the Orekhovaya Hill in the Duderhof Heights in the south. Part of the city's territory west of Liteyny Prospekt is no higher than above sea level, and has suffered from numerous floods. Floods in Saint Petersburg are triggered by a long wave in the Baltic Sea, caused by meteorological conditions, winds and shallowness of the Neva Bay. The four most disastrous floods occurred in 1824 ( above sea-level, during which over 300 buildings were destroyed The level of flooding is measured near Saint Petersburg Mining Institute, which is normally a.s.l. ), 1924 , 1777 , 1955 and 1975 . To prevent floods, the Saint Petersburg Dam has been under construction since 1979. ÐежиÑ
овÑкий Ð . Ð. Река Ðева и ÐевÑÐºÐ°Ñ Ð³Ñба, Leningrad: ÐидÑомеÑеоиздаÑ, 1981.
Since the 18th century the terrain in the city has been raised artificially, at some places by more than , making mergers of several islands, and changing the hydrology of the city. Besides the Neva and its distributaries, other important rivers of the federal subject of Saint Petersburg are Sestra, Okhta and Izhora. The largest lake is Sestroretsky Razliv in the north, followed by Lakhtinsky Razliv, Suzdal Lakes and other smaller lakes.
Saint Petersburg's position on the latitude of ca. 60° N causes variation in day length across seasons, ranging from 5:53 to 18:50. Twilight may last all night in early summer, from mid-May to mid-July, the celebrated phenomenon known as the white nights.
Snow falling on the morning of May 14, 2008 at Srednyaya Rogatka (district in the south of St. Petersburg)
Saint Petersburg experiences a humid continental climate of the cool summer subtype (Köppen: Dfb), due to the distinct moderating influence of the Baltic Sea cyclones, with warm, humid and short summers and long, cold winters.
The average daily temperature in July is ; summer maximum is about , winter minimum is about . The record low temperature is , recorded in 1883. The average annual temperature is . The River Neva within the city limits usually freezes up in November-December, break-up occurs in April. From December to March there are 123 days average with snow cover, which reaches the average of by February. The frost-free period in the city lasts on average for about 135 days. The city has a climate slightly warmer than its suburbs. Weather conditions are quite variable all year round. See Historical weather records for Saint Petersburg (since 1932) and Historical weather in Saint Petersburg for further information.
Average annual precipitation varies across the city, averaging per year and reaching maximum in late summer. Soil moisture is almost always high because of lower evapotranspiration due to the cool climate. Air humidity is 78% on average, while overcast is 165 days a year on average.
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Saint Petersburg is the second largest city in Russia. The 2002 census recorded a population of the federal subject of 4,661,219, or 3.21% of the total population of Russia. The 2002 census recorded twenty-two ethnic groups of more than two thousand persons each. The ethnic composition was: Russian 84.72%, Ukrainian 1.87%, Belarusians 1.17%, Jewish 0.78%, Tatar 0.76%, Armenian 0.41%, Azeri 0.36%, Georgian 0.22%, Chuvash 0.13%, Polish 0.10%, and many other smaller ethnic groups, while 7.89% of the inhabitants declined to state their ethnicity.
The 20th century saw hectic ups and downs in population. From 2.4 million in 1916 it had dropped to less than 740,000 by 1920 during the Russian Revolution of 1917 and Russian Civil War. The sizeable minorities of Germans, Poles, Finns, Estonians and Latvians were almost completely expelled from Leningrad by the Soviet government during the 1930s. From 1941 to the end of 1943, population dropped from 3 million to less than 700,000, as people died in battles, starved to death during the Siege of Leningrad, or were evacuated. After the siege, some of the evacuees returned, but most influx was due to migration from other parts of the Soviet Union. The city absorbed about 3 million people in the 1950s and grew to over 5 million in the 1980s. From 1991 to 2006 the city's population decreased to the current 4.6 million, while the suburban population increased due to privatization of land and massive move to suburbs. ЧиÑÑÑкова Ð. ТÑеÑÑе ÑокÑаÑение ÑиÑленноÑÑи наÑелениÑ... и поÑледнее? ÐемоÑкоп Weekly 163 â 164, August 1â15, 2004. Russian source: "Encyclopedia of Saint Petersburg" ЧиÑÑÑков Ð. Ю. ÐаÑеление (обзоÑÐ½Ð°Ñ ÑÑаÑÑÑ). ÐнÑÐ¸ÐºÐ»Ð¾Ð¿ÐµÐ´Ð¸Ñ Ð¡Ð°Ð½ÐºÑ-ÐеÑеÑбÑÑга The birth rate remains lower than the death rate; people over 65 constitute more than twenty percent of the population; and the median age is about 40 years. Russian statistics ÐÑновнÑе показаÑели ÑоÑиалÑно-демогÑаÑиÑеÑкой ÑиÑÑаÑии в СанкÑ-ÐеÑеÑбÑÑге
People in urban Saint Petersburg live mostly in apartments. Between 1918 and the 1990s, the Soviets nationalised housing and forced residents to share communal apartments (kommunalkas). With 68% living in shared flats in the 1930s, Leningrad was the city in the USSR with the largest number of kommunalkas. Resettling residents of kommunalkas is now on the way out, albeit shared apartments are still not uncommon. As new boroughs were built on the outskirts in the 1950s-1980s, over half a million low income families eventually received free apartments, and about an additional hundred thousand condos were purchased. While economic and social activity is concentrated in the historic city centre, the richest part of Saint Petersburg, most people live in commuter areas. For the first half of 2007, the birth rate was 9.1 per 1000.
Smolny Institute, the seat of the governor.
Saint Petersburg is a federal subject of Russia. The political life of Saint Petersburg is regulated by the city charter adopted by the city legislature in 1998. The superior executive body is the Saint Petersburg City Administration, led by the governor (mayor before 1996). Saint Petersburg has a single-chamber legislature, the Saint Petersburg Legislative Assembly.
According to the federal law passed in 2004, heads of federal subjects, including the governor of Saint Petersburg, are nominated by the President of Russia and approved by local legislatures. If the legislature disapproves the nominee, it is dissolved. The current governor, Valentina Matviyenko, was approved according to the new system in December 2006. She is currently the only woman governor in the whole of Russia.
Saint Petersburg city is currently divided into eighteen districts. Saint Petersburg is also the administrative centre of Leningrad Oblast, and of the Northwestern Federal District. The Constitutional Court of Russia moved to Saint Petersburg from Moscow in May 2008.
Saint Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast, being two different federal subjects, share a number of local departments of federal executive agencies and courts, such as court of arbitration, police, FSB, postal service, drug enforcement administration, penitentiary service, federal registration service, and other federal services.
The Old Saint Petersburg Stock Exchange, or Bourse, houses the Central Naval Museum
Saint Petersburg is a major trade gateway, financial and industrial centre of Russia specialising in oil and gas trade, shipbuilding yards, aerospace industry, radio and electronics, software and computers; machine building, heavy machinery and transport, including tanks and other military equipment, mining, instrument manufacture, ferrous and nonferrous metallurgy (production of aluminium alloys), chemicals, pharmaceuticals, medical equipment, publishing and printing, food and catering, wholesale and retail, textile and apparel industries, and many other businesses. It was also home to Lessner, one of Russia's two pioneering automobile manufacturers (along with Russo-Baltic), Lessner; founded by machine tool and boiler maker G. A. Lessner in 1904, with designs by Boris Loutsky, it survived until 1910. Georgano, G. N. Cars: Early and Vintage, 1886-1930. (London: Grange-Universal, 1985)
10% of the world's power turbines are made there at the LMZ, which built over two thousand turbines for power plants across the world. Major local industries are Admiralty Shipyard, Baltic Shipyard, LOMO, Kirov Plant, Elektrosila, Izhorsky Zavod; also registered in Saint Petersburg are Sovkomflot, Petersburg Fuel Company and SIBUR among other major Russian and international companies.
The Saint Petersburg docks at dawn.
Saint Petersburg has three large cargo seaports: Bolshoi Port Saint Petersburg, Kronstadt, and Lomonosov. International cruise liners have been served at the passenger port at Morskoy Vokzal on the south-west of Vasilevsky Island. In 2008 the first two berths were opened at the New Passenger Port on the west of the island. Discoverthebaltic.com Discover the Baltic online guide to Baltic cruise ports The new port is part of the city's "Marine Facade" development project Mfspb.ru St Petersburg "Marine Facade" development project and is due to have seven berths in operation by 2010.
A complex system of riverports on both banks of the Neva river are interconnected with the system of seaports, thus making Saint Petersburg the main link between the Baltic sea and the rest of Russia through the Volga-Baltic Waterway.
The Saint Petersburg Mint (Monetny Dvor), founded in 1724, is one of the largest mints in the world, it mints Russian coins, medals and badges. Saint Petersburg is also home to the oldest and largest Russian foundry, Monumentskulptura, which made thousands of sculptures and statues that are now gracing public parks of Saint Petersburg, as well as many other cities. Monuments and bronze statues of the Czars, as well as other important historic figures and dignitaries, and other world famous monuments, such as the sculptures by Peter Clodt von Jürgensburg, Paolo Troubetzkoy, Pavel Antokolsky, and others, were made there.
In 2007 Toyota opened a Camry plant after investing 5 billion dollars in Shushary, one of the southern suburbs of Saint Petersburg. General Motors, Hyundai and Nissan have signed deals with the Russian government to build their automotive plants in Saint Petersburg too. Automotive and auto-parts industry is on the rise there during the last decade. Saint Petersburg is also known as the "beer capital" of Russia, due to the supply and quality of local water, contributing over 30% of the domestic production of beer with its five large-scale breweries including Europe's second largest brewery Baltika, Vena (both operated by BBH), Heineken Brewery, Stepan Razin (both by Heineken) and Tinkoff brewery (SUN-InBev). Saint Petersburg has the second largest construction industry in Russia, including commercial, housing and road construction.
In 2006 Saint Petersburg's city budget was 179,9 billion rubles, and is planned to double by 2012. The federal subject's gross regional product as of 2005 was 667,905.4 million Russian rubles, ranked 4th in Russia, after Moscow, Tyumen Oblast, and Moscow Oblast, or 145,503.3 rubles per capita, ranked 12th among Russia's federal subjects, contributed mostly by wholesale and retail trade and repair services (24.7%) as well as processing industry (20.9%) and transportation and telecommunications (15.1%).
The Kresty prison.
Russia historically had a high level of crime that increased significantly after the October revolution. Edward Hallett Carr The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1923, 1985 ISBN 0393301990 Google preview Perestroika-time turmoils saw additional increase of the crime level.
Saint Petersburg experiences significant levels of street crime and bribery. In addition, in recent years there has been a notable increase in racially motivated violence, especially towards tourists and foreign students. One of the well known white supremacist groups Belaya Energia (White Energy, originally comes from White Power), has reportedly been one of the main gangs involved in murdering foreign university students. Russia: Racist Attacks Plague St. Petersburg Radio Free Europe September 30, 2005
At the end of the 1980s â beginning of the 1990s, Leningrad became home to a number of organised criminal groups as Tambov Gang, Malyshev Gang, Kazan Gang and ethnic criminal groups, engaged in a racket, extortion, paying off local government, and violent clashes with each other. Russian Mafia Shakes Down the Country by Steven R. Van Hook, Santa Barbara News-Press, November 20, 1994
In 2008, a car bomb killed three people (including a four-year old child), and injured one.
After the assassinations of City Property Committee Chairman and vice-Governor Mikhail Manevich(1997), State Duma deputy Galina Starovoytova (1998), acting City Legislature Speaker Viktor Novosyolov (1999) and a number of prominent businesspeople, Saint Petersburg was dubbed Capital of Crime in the Russian press. Trumbull, Nathaniel S. (2003) The impacts of globalization on Saint Petersburg: A secondary world city in from the cold? The Annals of Regional Science 37:533â546 Powell, Bill & Brian Whitmore. The Capital Of Crime.(Saint Petersburg, Russia). Newsweek International, May 15, 2000. There were a number of movies filmed in Saint Petersburg about the life of crime; , Brother (1997) reinforcing its image as the Crime Capital of Russia.
One of the oldest and most infamous remand facilities in Saint Petersburg, Kresty prison is located near downtown.
However, crime rates in St. Petersburg have declined since the end of the 1990s; the aforementioned criminal gangs have mostly dispersed. Even the Kresty prison is no longer in use, as more modern penal institutions are being built farther from the city centre.
The decoration of Saint Petersburg Metro (Kirovsky Zavod Station).
Saint Petersburg is a major transport hub. The first Russian railway was built here, in 1837. Today, the city is the final destination of a web of intercity and suburban railways, served by five different railway terminals (Baltiysky, Finlyandsky, Ladozhsky, Moskovsky, and Vitebsky), Until 2001, the Varshavsky Rail Terminal served as a major station; it now is a railway museum. Reconstruction of the Warsaw Railway Station as well as dozens of non-terminal railway stations within the federal subject. Saint Petersburg has international railway connections to Helsinki, Finland, Berlin, Germany, and all former republics of the USSR. The Helsinki railway was built in 1870, , commutes three times a day, in a journey lasting about five and a half hours. The Moscow-Saint Petersburg Railway opened in 1851, ; the commute to Moscow now requires about four and a half to nine hours. Saint Petersburg is also served by Pulkovo International Airport, Rossiya (Pulkovo): Pulkovo Aviation Enterprise and by three smaller commercial and cargo airports in the suburbs. There is a regular, 24/7, rapid-bus transit connection between Pulkovo airport and the city centre.
The city is also served by the passenger and cargo seaports in the Neva Bay of the Gulf of Finland, Baltic Sea, the river port higher up the Neva, and tens of smaller passenger stations on both banks of the Neva river. It is a terminus of the Volga-Baltic and White Sea-Baltic waterways. In 2004 the first high bridge that doesn't need to be drawn, a long Big Obukhovsky Bridge, was opened. Meteor hydrofoils link the city centre to the coastal towns of Kronstadt, Lomonosov, Peterhof, Sestroretsk and Zelenogorsk from May through October.
Pulkovo International Airport.
Saint Petersburg has an extensive city-funded network of public transport (buses, trams, trolleybuses) and several hundred routes served by marshrutkas. Trams in Saint Petersburg used to be the main transport; in the 1980s, Leningrad had the largest tramway network in the world, but many tramway rail tracks were dismantled in the 2000s. Buses carry up to 3 million passengers daily, serving over 250 urban and a number of suburban bus routes. Saint Petersburg Metro underground rapid transit system was opened in 1955; it now has five lines with 63 stations, connecting all five railway terminals, and carrying 3.4 million passengers daily. Metro stations are decorated in marble and bronze.
Traffic jams are common in the city, because of high daily traffic volumes between the commuter boroughs and the city centre, intercity traffic, and at times excessive snow in winter. Five segments of the Saint Petersburg Ring Road were opened between 2002 and 2006, and full ring is planned to open in 2010.
Saint Petersburg is part of the important transport corridor linking Scandinavia to Russia and Eastern Europe. The city is a node of the international European routes E18 towards Helsinki, E20 towards Tallinn, E95 towards Pskov, Kiev and Odessa and E105 towards Petrozavodsk, Murmansk and Kirkenes (north) and towards Moscow and Kharkiv (south).
Kazan Cathedral
Griboyedov Canal
A bridge over the river Neva
As of now, Saint Petersburg has no skyscrapers and a relatively low skyline. Current regulations forbid construction of high buildings in the city centre. The 310 metre tall Saint Petersburg TV Tower is the tallest structure in the city, while the 122.5 m Peter and Paul Cathedral is by far the highest building. However, there is a controversial project endorsed by the city authorities and known as the Ohkta Centre to build a 396 m supertall skyscraper. In 2008 the World Monuments Fund included the Saint Petersburg historic skyline within the watch list of 100 most endangered sites due to the expected construction, which threatens to alter it drastically.
Unlike in Moscow, in Saint Petersburg the historic architecture of the city centre, mostly consisting of Baroque and neoclassical buildings of the 18th and 19th centuries, has been largely preserved, although a number of buildings were demolished after the Bolsheviks' seizure of power, during the Siege of Leningrad and in recent years. The oldest of the remaining building is a wooden house built for Peter I in 1703 on the shore of the Neva near Trinity Square. Since 1991 the Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments in Saint Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast have been listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.
The ensemble of Peter and Paul Fortress with the Peter and Paul Cathedral takes dominant position on Zayachy Island along the right bank of the River Neva. Each noon a cannon fires a blank shot from the fortress. The Saint Petersburg Mosque, the largest mosque in Europe when opened in 1913, is situated on the right bank nearby. The spit of Vasilievsky Island, which splits the river into two largest armlets, the Bolshaya Neva and Malaya Neva, is connected to the northern bank (Petrogradsky Island) via the Exchange Bridge and occupied by the Old Saint Petersburg Stock Exchange and Rostral Columns. The southern coast of Vasilievsky Island along the Bolshaya Neva features some of the city's oldest buildings, dating from the 18th century, including the Kunstkamera, Twelve Collegia, Menshikov Palace and Imperial Academy of Arts. It hosts one of two campuses of Saint Petersburg State University.
On the southern, left bank of the Neva, connected to the spit of Vasilievsky Island via the Palace Bridge, lie the Admiralty Building, the vast Hermitage Museum complex stretching along the Palace Embankment, which includes the baroque Winter Palace, former official residence of Russian emperors, as well as the neoclassical Marble Palace. The Winter Palace faces Palace Square, the city's main square with the Alexander Column.
Nevsky Prospekt, also situated on the left bank of the Neva, is the main avenue in the city. It starts at the Admiralty and runs eastwards next to Palace Square. Nevsky Prospekt crosses the Moika (Green Bridge), Griboyedov Canal (Kazansky Bridge), Garden Street, the Fontanka (Anichkov Bridge), meets Liteyny Prospekt and proceeds to Uprising Square near the Moskovsky railway station, where it meets Ligovsky Prospekt and turns to the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. The Passage, Catholic Church of St. Catherine, Book House (former Singer Manufacturing Company Building in the Art Nouveau style), Grand Hotel Europe, Lutheran Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, Gostiny Dvor, Russian National Library, Alexandrine Theatre behind Mikeshin's statue of Catherine the Great, Kazan Cathedral, Stroganov Palace, Anichkov Palace and Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace are all situated along that avenue.
The Alexander Nevsky Lavra, intended to house the relics of St. Alexander Nevsky, is an important centre of Christian education in Russia. It also contains the Tikhvin Cemetery with graves of many notable Petersburgers.
On the territory between the Neva and Nevsky Prospekt the Church of the Savior on Blood, Mikhailovsky Palace housing the Russian Museum, Field of Mars, St. Michael's Castle, Summer Garden, Tauride Palace, Smolny Institute and Smolny Convent are located.
Many notable landmarks are situated to the west and south of the Admiralty Building, including the Trinity Cathedral, Mariinsky Palace, Hotel Astoria, famous Mariinsky Theatre, New Holland Island, Saint Isaac's Cathedral, the largest in the city, and Decembrists Square with the Bronze Horseman, 18th century equestrian monument to Peter the Great, which is considered among the city's most recognisable symbols.
Other symbols of Saint Petersburg include the weather vane in the shape of a small ship on top of the Admiralty's golden spire and the golden angel on top of the Peter and Paul Cathedral. The Palace Bridge drawn at night is yet another symbol of the city. Every night during the navigation period from April to November, 22 bridges across the Neva and main canals are drawn to let ships pass in and out of the Baltic Sea according to a schedule. Schedule for main drawbridges across the Neva river (Official Russian schedule): Mr-spb.ru It wasn't until 2004 that the first high bridge across the Neva, which doesn't need to be drawn, Big Obukhovsky Bridge, was opened. There are hundreds of smaller bridges in Saint Petersburg spanning across numerous canals and distributaries of the Neva, some of the most important of which are the Moika, Fontanka, Griboyedov Canal, Obvodny Canal, Karpovka and Smolenka. Due to the intricate web of canals, Saint Petersburg is often called Venice of the North. The rivers and canals in the city centre are lined with granite embankments. The embankments and bridges are separated from rivers and canals by granite or cast iron parapets.
Southern suburbs of the city feature former imperial residences, including Peterhof, with majestic fountain cascades and parks, Tsarskoe Selo, with the baroque Catherine Palace and the neoclassical Alexander Palace, and Pavlovsk, which contains a domed palace of Emperor Paul and one of the largest English-style parks in Europe. Some other residences situated nearby and making part of the world heritage site, including a castle and park in Gatchina, actually belong to Leningrad Oblast rather than Saint Petersburg. Another notable suburb is Kronstadt with its 19th century fortifications and naval monuments, occupying the Kotlin Island in the Gulf of Finland.
From XX century end in a city active building and reorganisation of old historical city districts is conducted.
The authorities are compelled to transfer control of private residences in city centre to private lessors.
Also sealing building and a superstructure of buildings is spent by penthouses.
Some of these structures, such as the Saint Petersburg Commodity and Stock Exchange" have been recognised as town-planning errors.
Interior of the Hermitage Museum.
Saint Petersburg is home to more than two hundred museums, many of them hosted in historic buildings. The largest of the museums is the Hermitage Museum, featuring interiors of the former imperial residence and a vast collection of art. The Russian Museum is a large museum devoted to the Russian fine art specifically. The apartments of some famous Petersburgers, including Alexander Pushkin, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Feodor Chaliapin, Alexander Blok, Vladimir Nabokov, Anna Akhmatova, Mikhail Zoshchenko, Joseph Brodsky, as well as some palace and park ensembles of the southern suburbs and notable architectural monuments such as St. Isaac's Cathedral, have also been turned into public museums.
The Kunstkamera, with its collection established in 1714 by Peter the Great to collect curiosities from all over the world, is sometimes considered the first museum in Russia, which has evolved into the present-day Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography. The Russian Ethnography Museum, which has been split from the Russian Museum, is devoted to the cultures of the people of Russia, the former Soviet Union and Russian Empire.
Other notable museums include the Central Naval Museum hosted in the building of the former stock exchange and Zoological Museum, the Railway Museum, Museum of the Siege of Leningrad, Saint Petersburg Museum of History in the Peter and Paul Fortress and Artillery Museum, which in fact includes not only artillery items, but also a huge collection of other military equipment, uniform and decorations.
The Grand Cascade.
Saint Petersburg is home to numerous parks and gardens, some of the most famous of which are situated in the southern suburbs, including one of the largest English gardens of Europe in Pavlovsk. Sosnovka is the largest park within the limits of the city proper, occupying 240 ha. The Summer Garden is the oldest one, dating back to the early 18th century and designed in the regular style. It is situated on the southern bank of the Neva at the head of the Fontanka and is famous for its cast iron railing and marble sculptures.
Among other notable parks are the Maritime Victory Park on Krestovsky Island and the Moscow Victory Park in the south, both commemorating the victory over Nazi Germany in the Second World War, as well as the Central Park of Culture and Leisure occupying Yelagin Island and the Tauride Garden around the Tauride Palace. The most common trees grown in the parks are the English oak, Norway maple, green ash, silver birch, Siberian larch, blue spruce, crack willow, limes and poplars. Important dendrological collections dating back to the 19th century are hosted by the Saint Petersburg Botanical Garden and the Park of the Forestry Academy.
Among the city's more than fifty theaters is the world-famous Mariinsky Theater (also known as the Kirov Theater in the USSR ), home to the Mariinsky Ballet company and opera. Leading ballet dancers, such as Vaslav Nijinsky, Anna Pavlova, Rudolph Nureyev, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Galina Ulanova and Natalia Makarova, were principal stars of the Mariinsky ballet.
Dmitri Shostakovich was born and brought up in Saint Petersburg, and dedicated his Seventh Symphony to the city, calling it the "Leningrad Symphony." He wrote the symphony while in Leningrad during the German siege. The 7th symphony was premiered in 1942; its performance in the besieged Leningrad at the Bolshoy Philharmonic Hall under the baton of conductor Karl Eliasberg was heard over the radio and lifted the spirits of the survivors. In 1992 a reunion performance of the 7th Symphony by the (then) 14 survivors was played in the same hall as they done half a century ago. The Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra remained one of the best known symphony orchestras in the world under the leadership of conductors Yevgeny Mravinsky and Yuri Temirkanov.
The Imperial Choral Capella was founded and modeled after the royal courts of other European capitals.
Saint Petersburg has been home to the newest movements in popular music in the country. The first jazz band in the Soviet Union was founded here by Leonid Utyosov in the 1920s, under the patronage of Isaak Dunayevsky. The first jazz club in the Soviet Union was founded here in the 1950s, and later was named jazz club Kvadrat. In 1956 the popular ensemble Druzhba was founded by Aleksandr Bronevitsky and Edita Piekha, becoming the first popular band in the 1950s USSR. In the 1960s student rock-groups Argonavty, Kochevniki and others pioneered a series of unofficial and underground rock concerts and festivals. In 1972 Boris Grebenshchikov founded the band Aquarium, that later grew to huge popularity. Since then "Peter's rock" music style was formed.
In the 1970s many bands came out from "underground" and eventually founded the Leningrad rock club which has been providing stage to such bands as Piknik, DDT, Kino, headed by the legendary Viktor Tsoi, Igry, Mify, Zemlyane, Alisa and many other popular groups. The first Russian-style happening show Pop mekhanika, mixing over 300 people and animals on stage, was directed by the multi-talented Sergey Kuryokhin in the 1980s.
Today's Saint Petersburg boasts many notable musicians of various genres, from popular Leningrad's Sergei Shnurov and Tequilajazzz, to rock veterans Yuri Shevchuk, Vyacheslav Butusov and Mikhail Boyarsky.
The White Nights Festival in Saint Petersburg is famous for spectacular fireworks and massive show celebrating the end of school year.
Over 250 international and Russian movies were filmed in Saint Petersburg. International Movie Database Well over a thousand feature films about tsars, revolution, people and stories set in Saint Petersburg were produced worldwide, but were not filmed in the city. First film studios were founded in Saint Petersburg in the 1900s, and since the 1920s Lenfilm has been the largest film studio based in Saint Petersburg. The first foreign feature movie filmed entirely in Saint Petersburg was the 1997 production of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, starring Sophie Marceau and Sean Bean, and made by international team of British, American, French and Russian filmmakers.
The cult comedy Irony of Fate (also ÐÑÐ¾Ð½Ð¸Ñ ÑÑдÑбÑ, или С лÑгким паÑом!) is set in Saint Petersburg and pokes fun at Soviet city planning. The 1985 film White Nights received considerable Western attention for having captured genuine Leningrad street scenes at a time when filming in the Soviet Union by Western production companies was generally unheard of. Other movies include GoldenEye (1995), Midnight in Saint Petersburg (1996), and Brother (1997). Onegin (1999) is based on the Pushkin poem and showcases many tourist attractions. In addition, the Russian romantic comedy, ÐиÑÐµÑ FM, showcases the cityscape significantly, almost as if it was a main character in the film.
Several international film festivals are held annually, such as the Festival of Festivals, St. Petersburg, as well as the Message to Man International Documentary Film Festival, since its inauguration in 1988 during the White Nights.
Saint Petersburg has a longstanding and world famous tradition in literature. Dostoyevsky called it âThe most abstract and intentional city in the world," emphasizing its artificiality, but it was also a symbol of modern disorder in a changing Russia. It frequently appeared to Russian writers as a menacing and inhuman mechanism. The grotesque and often nightmarish image of the city is featured in Pushkin's last poems, the Petersburg stories of Gogol, the novels of Dostoyevsky, the verse of Alexander Blok and Osip Mandelshtam, and in the symbolist novel Petersburg by Andrey Bely. According to Lotman in his chapter, 'The Symbolism of Saint Petersburg' in Universe and the Mind, these writers were inspired from symbolism from within the city itself. The effect of life in Saint Petersburg on the plight of the poor clerk in a society obsessed with hierarchy and status also became an important theme for authors such as Pushkin, Gogol, and Dostoyevsky. Another important feature of early Saint Petersburg literature is its mythical element, which incorporates urban legends and popular ghost stories, as the stories of Pushkin and Gogol included ghosts returning to Saint Petersburg to haunt other characters as well as other fantastical elements, creating a surreal and abstract image of Saint Petersburg.
Twentieth century writers from Saint Petersburg, such as Vladimir Nabokov, Ayn Rand, Andrey Bely and Yevgeny Zamyatin, along with his apprentices, The Serapion Brothers, created entire new styles in literature and contributed new insights to the understanding of society through their experience in this city. Anna Akhmatova became an important leader for Russian poetry. Her poem Requiem focuses on the tragedies of living during the time of the Stalinist terror. Another notable 20th century writer from Saint Petersburg is Joseph Brodsky, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1987). While living in the United States, his writings in English reflected on life in Saint Petersburg from the unique perspective of being both an insider and an outsider to the city in essays such as, "A Guide to a Renamed City" and the nostalgic "In a Room and a Half". Joseph Brodsky. Less Than One: Selected Essays, 1986
FC Zenit's home Petrovsky stadium
Leningrad hosted part of the football tournament during the 1980 Summer Olympics. The 1994 Goodwill Games were held here.
The first competition here was the 1703 rowing event initiated by Peter the Great, after the victory over the Swedish fleet. Yachting events were held by the Russian Navy since the foundation of the city. Yacht clubs: St. Petersburg River Yacht Club, Neva Yacht Club, the latter is the oldest yacht club in the world. In the winter, when the sea and lake surfaces are frozen and yachts and dinghies cannot be used, local people sail on ice boats.
Equestrianism has been a long tradition, popular among the Tsars and aristocracy, as well as part of the military training. Several historic sports arenas were built for Equestrianism since the 18th century, to maintain training all year round, such as the Zimny Stadion and Konnogvardeisky Manezh among others.
Chess tradition was highlighted by the 1914 international tournament, in which the title "Grandmaster" was first formally conferred by Russian Tsar Nicholas II to five players: Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine, Tarrasch and Marshall, and which the Tsar had partially funded.
Kirov Stadium (now demolished) was one of the largest stadiums anywhere in the world, and the home to FC Zenit St. Petersburg in 1950-1993 and 1995. In 1951 the attendance of 110,000 set the record for the Soviet football. In 2007 Zenit became champions of the Russian Premier League, won the UEFA Cup 2007â08 season and the 2008 UEFA Supercup. Zenit now plays their home games at Petrovsky Stadium.
As of 2006/2007 there were 1024 kindergartens, 716 public schools and 80 vocational schools in Saint Petersburg. SPB.ru The largest of the higher education institutions are Saint Petersburg State University, enrolling approximately 32,000 undergraduate students, Saint Petersburg Polytechnical University and Herzen University. However, the universities are all federal property and don't belong to the city.
*List of consulates in Saint Petersburg
*List of museums in Saint Petersburg
*List of notable people from Saint Petersburg
*List of Saint Petersburg sister cities
*Amery, Colin, Brian Curran & Yuri Molodkovets. St. Petersburg. London: Frances Lincoln, 2006. ISBN 0711224927.
*Bater, James H. St. Petersburg: Industrialization and Change. Montreal: McGuill-Queenâs University Press, 1976. ISBN 0773502661.
*Berelowitch, Wladimir & Olga Medvedkova. Histoire de Saint-Pétersbourg. Paris: Fayard, 1996. ISBN 2213596018.
*Buckler, Julie. Mapping St. Petersburg: Imperial Text and Cityshape. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005 ISBN0691113491.
*Clark, Katerina, Petersburg, Crucible of Revolution. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995.
*Cross, Anthony (ed.). St. Petersburg, 1703-1825. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. ISBN 1403915709.
*George, Arthur L. & Elena George. St. Petersburg: Russia's Window to the Future, The First Three Centuries. Lanham: Taylor Trade Publishing, 2003. ISBN 1589790170.
*Glantz, David M. The Battle for Leningrad, 1941-1944. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002. ISBN 0700612084.
*Hellberg-Hirn, Elena. Imperial Imprints: Post-Soviet St. Petersburg. Helsinki: SKS Finnish Literature Society, 2003. ISBN 9517464916.
*Knopf Guide: Sat. Petersburg. New York: Knopf, 1995. ISBN 0679762027.
*Eyewitness Guide: St. Petersburg.
*Lincoln, W. Bruce. Sunlight at Midnight: St. Petersburg and the Rise of Modern Russia. New York: Basic Books, 2000. ISBN 0465083234.
*Orttung, Robert W. From Leningrad to St. Petersburg: Democratization in a Russian City. New York: St. Martinâs, 1995. ISBN 0312175612.
*Ruble, Blair A. Leningrad: Shaping a Soviet City. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. ISBN 0877723478.
*Shvidkovsky, Dmitry O. & Alexander Orloff. St. Petersburg: Architecture of the Tsars. New York: Abbeville Press, 1996. ISBN 0789202174.
*Volkov, Solomon. St. Petersburg: A Cultural History. New York: Free Press, 1995. ISBN 0028740521.
*St. Petersburg:Architecture of the Tsars. 360 pages. Abbeville Press, 1996. ISBN 0789202174
*Saint Petersburg: Museums, Palaces, and Historic Collections: A Guide to the Lesser Known Treasures of St. Petersburg. 2003. ISBN 1593730004.
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* Official presentation of Saint Petersburg
* Official Portal of the City Government: Saint Petersburg
* Encyclopaedia of Saint Petersburg
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* Saint Petersburg in 1900
* Saint Petersburg, entry in the World Monuments Fund's 2008 watchlist
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Saint_Petersburg | What were some other names of the city? | Petrograd and Leningrad. | data/set3/a10 | Saint_Petersburg
Saint Petersburg ( , ) is a city and a federal subject (a federal city) of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The city's other names were Petrograd ( , 1914â1924) and Leningrad ( , 1924â1991). It is often called just Petersburg ( ) and is informally known as Piter ( ).
Founded by Tsar Peter I of Russia on 27 May 1703, it was the capital of the Russian Empire for more than two hundred years (1713â1728, 1732â1918). Saint Petersburg ceased being the capital in 1918 after the Russian Revolution of 1917. Nicholas and Alexandra: An Intimate Account of the Last of the Romanovs and the Fall of Imperial Russia (Athenum, 1967) by Robert K. Massie, ASIN B000CGP8M2 (also, Ballantine Books, 2000, ISBN 0-345-43831-0 and Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, 2005, ISBN 1-57912-433-X) It is Russia's second largest city after Moscow with 4.6 million inhabitants, and over 6 million people live in its vicinity. Saint Petersburg is a major European cultural centre, and an important Russian port on the Baltic Sea.
Saint Petersburg is often described as the most Western city of Russia. V. Morozov. The Discourses of Saint Petersburg and the Shaping of a Wider Europe. Copenhagen Peace Research Institute. 2002. Ciaonet.org Among cities of the world with over one million people, Saint Petersburg is the northernmost. The Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments constitute a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Saint Petersburg is also home to The Hermitage, the largest art museum in the world. /ref> Russia's political and cultural centre for 200 years, the city is sometimes referred to in Russia as the northern capital. A large number of foreign consulates, international corporations, banks and other businesses are located in Saint Petersburg.
On 1 May 1703 (Julian calendar), during the Great Northern War, Peter the Great captured the Swedish fortress of Nyenskans on the Neva river in Ingria. A few weeks later, on 27 May 1703 (May 16, Old Style), lower on the river, on Zayachy (Hare) Island, three miles (5 km) inland from the gulf, he laid down the Peter and Paul Fortress, which became the first brick and stone building of the new city. He named the city after his patron saint, Saint Peter, the apostle. The original name was meant to sound like Dutch due to Peter's obsession with the Dutch culture. Peter the Great: His Life and World (Knopf, 1980) by Robert K. Massie, ISBN 0-394-50032-6
The city was built by conscripted serfs from all over Russia and also by Swedish prisoners of war under the supervision of Alexander Menshikov and later became the centre of Saint Petersburg Governorate. Peter moved the capital from Moscow to Saint Petersburg in 1712, before the Treaty of Nystad of 1721 ended the war.
The Bronze Horseman, monument to Peter the Great.
Palace Square, as the main square of the Russian Empire it was the setting of many events of great historical significance
Lenin statue outside the Finland station. Between 1924 and 1991 the city was known as Leningrad.
Map of Saint Petersburg, 1903.
Church of the Savior on Blood.
During the first few years of its existence the city grew spontaneously around Trinity Square on the right bank of the Neva, near the Peter and Paul Fortress. However, Saint Petersburg soon started to develop according to a plan. By 1716 Domenico Trezzini had elaborated a project whereby the city centre would be located on Vasilievsky Island and shaped by a rectangular grid of canals. The project was not completed, but is still evident in the layout of the streets. In 1716 Jean-Baptiste Alexandre Le Blond was appointed chief architect of Saint Petersburg by Peter the Great.
The style of Petrine Baroque, developed by Trezzini and other architects and exemplified by such buildings as the Menshikov Palace, Kunstkamera, Peter and Paul Cathedral, Twelve Collegia, became prominent in the city architecture of the early 18th century. In 1724 the Academy of Sciences, University and Academic Gymnasium were established in Saint Petersburg by Peter the Great.
However, in 1725 Peter died. His near-lifelong autocratic push for modernisation of Russia had met with considerable opposition from the old-fashioned Russian nobility â resulting in several attempts on his life and a treason case involving his own son. Matthew S. Anderson, Peter the Great (London: Thames and Hudson, 1978) Thus, in 1728, Peter II of Russia moved his seat back to Moscow. But four years later, in 1732, under Empress Anna of Russia, Saint Petersburg again became the capital of the Russian Empire and remained the seat of the government for 186 years.
In 1736-1737 the city suffered from catastrophic fires. In order to rebuild the damaged boroughs, in 1737 a new plan was commissioned by a committee under Burkhard Christoph von Munnich. The city was divided into five boroughs, and the city centre was moved to the Admiralty borough, situated on the east bank between the Neva and Fontanka.
It developed along three radial streets, which meet at the Admiralty and are now known as Nevsky Prospekt (which is now perceived as the main street of the city), Gorokhovaya Street and Voznesensky Prospekt. The style of Baroque dominated the city architecture during the first sixty years, culminating in the Elizabethan Baroque, represented most notably by Bartolomeo Rastrelli with such buildings as the Winter Palace. In the 1760s the Baroque architecture was succeeded by the neoclassical architecture.
The Commission of Stone Buildings of Moscow and Saint Petersburg established in 1762 ruled that no structure in the city be higher than the Winter Palace and prohibited spacing between buildings. During the reign of Catherine the Great in the 1760s-1780s the banks of the Neva were lined with granite embankments.
However, it wasn't until 1850 that it was allowed to open the first permanent bridge across the Neva, Blagoveshchensky Bridge. Before that, only pontoon bridges were allowed. Obvodny Canal (dug in 1769-1833) became the southern limit of the city.
Some of the most important neoclassical architects in Saint Petersburg (including those working within the Empire style) were Jean-Baptiste Vallin de la Mothe (Imperial Academy of Arts, Small Hermitage, Gostiny Dvor, New Holland Arch, Catholic Church of St. Catherine), Antonio Rinaldi (Marble Palace), Yury Felten (Old Hermitage, Chesme Church), Giacomo Quarenghi (Academy of Sciences, Hermitage Theatre, Yusupov Palace), Andrey Voronikhin (Mining Institute, Kazan Cathedral), Andreyan Zakharov (Admiralty building), Jean-François Thomas de Thomon (Spit of Vasilievsky Island), Carlo Rossi (Yelagin Palace, Mikhailovsky Palace, Alexandrine Theatre, Senate and Synod Buildings, General Staff Building, design of many streets and squares), Vasily Stasov (Moscow Triumphal Gate, Trinity Cathedral), Auguste de Montferrand (Saint Isaac's Cathedral, Alexander Column). The victory over Napoleonic France in the Patriotic War of 1812 was commemorated with many monuments, including Alexander Column by Montferrand, erected in 1834, and Narva Triumphal Gate.
In 1825 the suppressed Decembrist revolt against Nicholas I of Russia took place on the Senate Square in the city, a day after he assumed the throne.
By the 1840s the neoclassical architecture had given place to various romanticist styles, which were dominant until the 1890s, represented by such architects as Andrei Stackenschneider (Mariinsky Palace, Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace, Nicholas Palace, New Michael Palace) and Konstantin Thon (Moskovsky Rail Terminal). The Church of the Savior on Blood designed in the Russian revival style commemorated the place where Alexander II of Russia was assassinated in 1881.
With the emancipation of the serfs undertaken by Alexander II in 1861 and the industrial revolution the influx of former peasants into the capital increased greatly. Poor boroughs spontaneously emerged on the outskirts of the city. Saint Petersburg surpassed Moscow in population and industrial growth and grew into one of the largest industrial hubs and cities in Europe.
The Revolution of 1905 began in Saint Petersburg and spread rapidly into the provinces. With the start of World War I, the name Saint Petersburg was perceived to be too German, so in 1914 the city was renamed Petrograd. The Romanovs: The Final Chapter (Random House, 1995) by Robert K. Massie, ISBN 0-394-58048-6 and ISBN 0-679-43572-7 In 1917 the February Revolution, which put an end to the Russian monarchy, and the October Revolution, which ultimately brought Vladimir Lenin to power, broke out in Petrograd. Rex A. Wade The Russian Revolution, 1917 2005 Cambridge University Press ISBN 0521841550 The city's proximity to the border and anti-Soviet armies forced the Bolsheviks under Lenin to transfer the capital to Moscow on March 12, 1918.
In 1919 during the ensuing Russian Civil War Nikolay Yudenich advancing from Estonia was about to capture the city from the Bolsheviks, but Leon Trotsky ultimately managed to mobilise the population and make him retreat. Many people fled the city in 1917-1920 or were repressed in the Red Terror, Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe. By Robert Gellately, 2007, Random House, 720 pages. ISBN 1400040051 so its population decreased dramatically. On January 26, 1924, three days after Lenin's death, Petrograd was renamed Leningrad. For decades Leningrad was glorified by the Soviet propaganda as "the cradle of the revolution" and "the city of three revolutions", many spots related to Lenin and the revolutions, such as the cruiser Aurora, were carefully preserved. Many streets and other toponyms were renamed accordingly.
In the 1920s-1930s the poor outskirts were reconstructed into regularly planned boroughs. The constructivist architecture flourished around that time. The Soviets nationalised housing and forced many residents to share communal apartments (kommunalkas). With 68% living in shared apartments in the 1930s, Leningrad was the city with the largest number of kommunalkas. In 1935 a new general plan was outlined, whereby the city should expand to the south and its centre should move there. The constructivism was rejected in favor of the pompous Stalinist architecture. Stalin ordered the construction of the new city hall on Moskovsky Prospect thus making it the new main street of Leningrad during the Soviet rule.
Since December 1931 Leningrad has been administratively separate from Leningrad Oblast. At that time it included Leningrad Suburban District, some parts of which were transferred back to Leningrad Oblast in 1936 and turned into Vsevolozhsky District, Krasnoselsky District, Pargolovsky District and Slutsky District (renamed Pavlovsky District in 1944).
On December 1, 1934, Sergey Kirov, popular communist leader of Leningrad, was assassinated, which was used to start the Great Purge. Stalin's Terror: High Politics and Mass Repression in the Soviet Union by Barry McLoughlin and Kevin McDermott (eds). Palgrave Macmillan, 2002, p. 6 The sizeable minorities of Germans, Poles, Finns, Estonians and Latvians were almost completely expelled from Leningrad by the Soviet government during the 1930s. Martin, Terry (1998). The Origins of Soviet Ethnic Cleansing. The Journal of Modern History 70.4, 813-861.
During World War II, Leningrad was besieged by Nazi Germany and co-belligerent Finland. Siege of Leningrad. Encyclopædia Britannica The siege lasted 872 days from September 1941 to January 1944. Baldack, Richard H. "Leningrad, Siege of" World Book Encyclopedia, Chicago, 2002, vol.12, page 195 The Siege of Leningrad was one of the longest, most destructive, and most lethal sieges of major cities in modern history. It isolated the city from most supplies except those provided through the Road of Life across Lake Ladoga, and more than a million civilians died, mainly from starvation. Many others were eventually evacuated or escaped by themselves, so the city became largely depopulated. For the heroic resistance of the city and tenacity of the survivors of the Siege, in 1945 Leningrad became the first city in the Soviet Union awarded the title Hero City. In October 1946 some former Finnish territories along the northern coast of the Gulf of Finland captured in the Winter War and Continuation War were transferred from Leningrad Oblast to Leningrad and divided into Sestroretsky District and Kurortny District, including the town of Terijoki (renamed Zelenogorsk in 1948).
Leningrad and many of its suburbs were rebuilt over the post-war decades, partially according to the pre-war plans. The 1948 general plan of Leningrad featured radial urban development in the north as well as in the south. The Leningrad Metro, underground rapid transit system which was designed before the war in the 1930s, was opened in 1955 with its first seven stations decorated with marble and bronze. Meanwhile, in 1949-1951 a large number of prominent Leningrad members of the Communist Party and their families were charged with treason and intention to create an anti-Soviet organization out of their local party cell. Many were imprisoned or executed in the Leningrad Affair fabricated by the central Soviet leadership. Dmitri Volkogonov. Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy, 1996, ISBN 0761507183 Russian publication: ÐенингÑадÑкое дело â надо ли ÑÑавиÑÑ ÐºÐ°Ð²ÑÑки?: Contr-tv.ru
In 1953 Pavlovsky District of Leningrad Oblast was abolished, and parts of its territory including Pavlovsk merged with Leningrad. In 1954 the settlements Levashovo, Pargolovo and Pesochny merged with Leningrad.
After the death of Stalin the perceived ornamental excesses of the Stalinist architecture were abandoned. In the 1960s-1980s, as many new residential boroughs were built on the outskirts with few series of functionalist apartment blocks identical to each other, many families moved there from kommunalkas in the city centre in order to live in separate apartments. Uritsk was re-named Ligovo and merged with Leningrad in 1963, Lomonosov merged in 1978.
On June 12, 1991, in a referendum held on the same day as the first Russian presidential election, 54% of voters chose to restore the name "Saint Petersburg" (the change officially took effect on September 6, 1991). Many other Soviet-era toponyms in the city were also renamed soon afterwards. In the same election Anatoly Sobchak became the first democratically elected mayor of the city. Jack F. Matlock, Jr., Autopsy on an Empire: The American Ambassador's Account of the Collapse of the Soviet Union, Random House, 1995, ISBN 0679413766
By the end of 1991 the deteriorating planned economy of the collapsing Soviet Union had put the city on the verge of starvation. For the first time since World War II food rationing was introduced, and the city received humanitarian food aid from abroad. The city somewhat recovered with the market reforms in Russia. In 1995-2004 a northern section of the Metro's Kirovsko-Vyborgskaya Line was cut off by underground flooding, which was a major obstacle to the city development.
In 1996, Vladimir Yakovlev was elected as head of the Saint Petersburg City Administration. The title of the city head was changed in advance from "mayor" to "governor". In 2003, Yakovlev resigned a year before his second term expired. Valentina Matviyenko was elected governor. In 2006 she was reapproved as governor by the city legislature. The residential building had intensified again, real estate prices inflated greatly, and this situation causes many new problems for the historical part of the city.
In spite of the fact that the central part of the city is watched by UNESCO, the safety of its historical and architectural environment is in danger. Sergey Zagraevsky. Will Saint Petersburg share the same fate as Moscow? Zagraevsky.com There are still about 8000 architectural monuments in Saint Petersburg, but since 2005 the destruction of older buildings in the historical centre has continued. A number of new building projects are underway, including the Gazprom skyscraper in Okhta.
Territory of the federal subject of Saint Petersburg.
The area of Saint Petersburg city proper is . The area of the federal subject is , which contains the Saint Petersburg proper (consisting of 81 okrugs), nine suburban towns (Kolpino, Krasnoye Selo, Kronstadt, Lomonosov, Pavlovsk, Peterhof, Pushkin, Sestroretsk and Zelenogorsk) and 21 municipal settlements.
Saint Petersburg is situated on the middle taiga lowlands along the shores of the Neva Bay of the Gulf of Finland, and islands of the river delta. The largest are Vasilyevsky island (besides the artificial island between Obvodny canal and Fontanka, and Kotlin in the Neva Bay), Petrogradsky, Dekabristov and Krestovsky. The latter together with Yelagin and Kamenny island are covered mostly by parks. The Karelian Isthmus, North of the city, is a popular resort area. In the south Saint Petersburg crosses the Baltic-Ladoga Klint and meets the Izhora Plateau.
The elevation of Saint Petersburg ranges from the sea level to its highest point of at the Orekhovaya Hill in the Duderhof Heights in the south. Part of the city's territory west of Liteyny Prospekt is no higher than above sea level, and has suffered from numerous floods. Floods in Saint Petersburg are triggered by a long wave in the Baltic Sea, caused by meteorological conditions, winds and shallowness of the Neva Bay. The four most disastrous floods occurred in 1824 ( above sea-level, during which over 300 buildings were destroyed The level of flooding is measured near Saint Petersburg Mining Institute, which is normally a.s.l. ), 1924 , 1777 , 1955 and 1975 . To prevent floods, the Saint Petersburg Dam has been under construction since 1979. ÐежиÑ
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Since the 18th century the terrain in the city has been raised artificially, at some places by more than , making mergers of several islands, and changing the hydrology of the city. Besides the Neva and its distributaries, other important rivers of the federal subject of Saint Petersburg are Sestra, Okhta and Izhora. The largest lake is Sestroretsky Razliv in the north, followed by Lakhtinsky Razliv, Suzdal Lakes and other smaller lakes.
Saint Petersburg's position on the latitude of ca. 60° N causes variation in day length across seasons, ranging from 5:53 to 18:50. Twilight may last all night in early summer, from mid-May to mid-July, the celebrated phenomenon known as the white nights.
Snow falling on the morning of May 14, 2008 at Srednyaya Rogatka (district in the south of St. Petersburg)
Saint Petersburg experiences a humid continental climate of the cool summer subtype (Köppen: Dfb), due to the distinct moderating influence of the Baltic Sea cyclones, with warm, humid and short summers and long, cold winters.
The average daily temperature in July is ; summer maximum is about , winter minimum is about . The record low temperature is , recorded in 1883. The average annual temperature is . The River Neva within the city limits usually freezes up in November-December, break-up occurs in April. From December to March there are 123 days average with snow cover, which reaches the average of by February. The frost-free period in the city lasts on average for about 135 days. The city has a climate slightly warmer than its suburbs. Weather conditions are quite variable all year round. See Historical weather records for Saint Petersburg (since 1932) and Historical weather in Saint Petersburg for further information.
Average annual precipitation varies across the city, averaging per year and reaching maximum in late summer. Soil moisture is almost always high because of lower evapotranspiration due to the cool climate. Air humidity is 78% on average, while overcast is 165 days a year on average.
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Saint Petersburg is the second largest city in Russia. The 2002 census recorded a population of the federal subject of 4,661,219, or 3.21% of the total population of Russia. The 2002 census recorded twenty-two ethnic groups of more than two thousand persons each. The ethnic composition was: Russian 84.72%, Ukrainian 1.87%, Belarusians 1.17%, Jewish 0.78%, Tatar 0.76%, Armenian 0.41%, Azeri 0.36%, Georgian 0.22%, Chuvash 0.13%, Polish 0.10%, and many other smaller ethnic groups, while 7.89% of the inhabitants declined to state their ethnicity.
The 20th century saw hectic ups and downs in population. From 2.4 million in 1916 it had dropped to less than 740,000 by 1920 during the Russian Revolution of 1917 and Russian Civil War. The sizeable minorities of Germans, Poles, Finns, Estonians and Latvians were almost completely expelled from Leningrad by the Soviet government during the 1930s. From 1941 to the end of 1943, population dropped from 3 million to less than 700,000, as people died in battles, starved to death during the Siege of Leningrad, or were evacuated. After the siege, some of the evacuees returned, but most influx was due to migration from other parts of the Soviet Union. The city absorbed about 3 million people in the 1950s and grew to over 5 million in the 1980s. From 1991 to 2006 the city's population decreased to the current 4.6 million, while the suburban population increased due to privatization of land and massive move to suburbs. ЧиÑÑÑкова Ð. ТÑеÑÑе ÑокÑаÑение ÑиÑленноÑÑи наÑелениÑ... и поÑледнее? ÐемоÑкоп Weekly 163 â 164, August 1â15, 2004. Russian source: "Encyclopedia of Saint Petersburg" ЧиÑÑÑков Ð. Ю. ÐаÑеление (обзоÑÐ½Ð°Ñ ÑÑаÑÑÑ). ÐнÑÐ¸ÐºÐ»Ð¾Ð¿ÐµÐ´Ð¸Ñ Ð¡Ð°Ð½ÐºÑ-ÐеÑеÑбÑÑга The birth rate remains lower than the death rate; people over 65 constitute more than twenty percent of the population; and the median age is about 40 years. Russian statistics ÐÑновнÑе показаÑели ÑоÑиалÑно-демогÑаÑиÑеÑкой ÑиÑÑаÑии в СанкÑ-ÐеÑеÑбÑÑге
People in urban Saint Petersburg live mostly in apartments. Between 1918 and the 1990s, the Soviets nationalised housing and forced residents to share communal apartments (kommunalkas). With 68% living in shared flats in the 1930s, Leningrad was the city in the USSR with the largest number of kommunalkas. Resettling residents of kommunalkas is now on the way out, albeit shared apartments are still not uncommon. As new boroughs were built on the outskirts in the 1950s-1980s, over half a million low income families eventually received free apartments, and about an additional hundred thousand condos were purchased. While economic and social activity is concentrated in the historic city centre, the richest part of Saint Petersburg, most people live in commuter areas. For the first half of 2007, the birth rate was 9.1 per 1000.
Smolny Institute, the seat of the governor.
Saint Petersburg is a federal subject of Russia. The political life of Saint Petersburg is regulated by the city charter adopted by the city legislature in 1998. The superior executive body is the Saint Petersburg City Administration, led by the governor (mayor before 1996). Saint Petersburg has a single-chamber legislature, the Saint Petersburg Legislative Assembly.
According to the federal law passed in 2004, heads of federal subjects, including the governor of Saint Petersburg, are nominated by the President of Russia and approved by local legislatures. If the legislature disapproves the nominee, it is dissolved. The current governor, Valentina Matviyenko, was approved according to the new system in December 2006. She is currently the only woman governor in the whole of Russia.
Saint Petersburg city is currently divided into eighteen districts. Saint Petersburg is also the administrative centre of Leningrad Oblast, and of the Northwestern Federal District. The Constitutional Court of Russia moved to Saint Petersburg from Moscow in May 2008.
Saint Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast, being two different federal subjects, share a number of local departments of federal executive agencies and courts, such as court of arbitration, police, FSB, postal service, drug enforcement administration, penitentiary service, federal registration service, and other federal services.
The Old Saint Petersburg Stock Exchange, or Bourse, houses the Central Naval Museum
Saint Petersburg is a major trade gateway, financial and industrial centre of Russia specialising in oil and gas trade, shipbuilding yards, aerospace industry, radio and electronics, software and computers; machine building, heavy machinery and transport, including tanks and other military equipment, mining, instrument manufacture, ferrous and nonferrous metallurgy (production of aluminium alloys), chemicals, pharmaceuticals, medical equipment, publishing and printing, food and catering, wholesale and retail, textile and apparel industries, and many other businesses. It was also home to Lessner, one of Russia's two pioneering automobile manufacturers (along with Russo-Baltic), Lessner; founded by machine tool and boiler maker G. A. Lessner in 1904, with designs by Boris Loutsky, it survived until 1910. Georgano, G. N. Cars: Early and Vintage, 1886-1930. (London: Grange-Universal, 1985)
10% of the world's power turbines are made there at the LMZ, which built over two thousand turbines for power plants across the world. Major local industries are Admiralty Shipyard, Baltic Shipyard, LOMO, Kirov Plant, Elektrosila, Izhorsky Zavod; also registered in Saint Petersburg are Sovkomflot, Petersburg Fuel Company and SIBUR among other major Russian and international companies.
The Saint Petersburg docks at dawn.
Saint Petersburg has three large cargo seaports: Bolshoi Port Saint Petersburg, Kronstadt, and Lomonosov. International cruise liners have been served at the passenger port at Morskoy Vokzal on the south-west of Vasilevsky Island. In 2008 the first two berths were opened at the New Passenger Port on the west of the island. Discoverthebaltic.com Discover the Baltic online guide to Baltic cruise ports The new port is part of the city's "Marine Facade" development project Mfspb.ru St Petersburg "Marine Facade" development project and is due to have seven berths in operation by 2010.
A complex system of riverports on both banks of the Neva river are interconnected with the system of seaports, thus making Saint Petersburg the main link between the Baltic sea and the rest of Russia through the Volga-Baltic Waterway.
The Saint Petersburg Mint (Monetny Dvor), founded in 1724, is one of the largest mints in the world, it mints Russian coins, medals and badges. Saint Petersburg is also home to the oldest and largest Russian foundry, Monumentskulptura, which made thousands of sculptures and statues that are now gracing public parks of Saint Petersburg, as well as many other cities. Monuments and bronze statues of the Czars, as well as other important historic figures and dignitaries, and other world famous monuments, such as the sculptures by Peter Clodt von Jürgensburg, Paolo Troubetzkoy, Pavel Antokolsky, and others, were made there.
In 2007 Toyota opened a Camry plant after investing 5 billion dollars in Shushary, one of the southern suburbs of Saint Petersburg. General Motors, Hyundai and Nissan have signed deals with the Russian government to build their automotive plants in Saint Petersburg too. Automotive and auto-parts industry is on the rise there during the last decade. Saint Petersburg is also known as the "beer capital" of Russia, due to the supply and quality of local water, contributing over 30% of the domestic production of beer with its five large-scale breweries including Europe's second largest brewery Baltika, Vena (both operated by BBH), Heineken Brewery, Stepan Razin (both by Heineken) and Tinkoff brewery (SUN-InBev). Saint Petersburg has the second largest construction industry in Russia, including commercial, housing and road construction.
In 2006 Saint Petersburg's city budget was 179,9 billion rubles, and is planned to double by 2012. The federal subject's gross regional product as of 2005 was 667,905.4 million Russian rubles, ranked 4th in Russia, after Moscow, Tyumen Oblast, and Moscow Oblast, or 145,503.3 rubles per capita, ranked 12th among Russia's federal subjects, contributed mostly by wholesale and retail trade and repair services (24.7%) as well as processing industry (20.9%) and transportation and telecommunications (15.1%).
The Kresty prison.
Russia historically had a high level of crime that increased significantly after the October revolution. Edward Hallett Carr The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1923, 1985 ISBN 0393301990 Google preview Perestroika-time turmoils saw additional increase of the crime level.
Saint Petersburg experiences significant levels of street crime and bribery. In addition, in recent years there has been a notable increase in racially motivated violence, especially towards tourists and foreign students. One of the well known white supremacist groups Belaya Energia (White Energy, originally comes from White Power), has reportedly been one of the main gangs involved in murdering foreign university students. Russia: Racist Attacks Plague St. Petersburg Radio Free Europe September 30, 2005
At the end of the 1980s â beginning of the 1990s, Leningrad became home to a number of organised criminal groups as Tambov Gang, Malyshev Gang, Kazan Gang and ethnic criminal groups, engaged in a racket, extortion, paying off local government, and violent clashes with each other. Russian Mafia Shakes Down the Country by Steven R. Van Hook, Santa Barbara News-Press, November 20, 1994
In 2008, a car bomb killed three people (including a four-year old child), and injured one.
After the assassinations of City Property Committee Chairman and vice-Governor Mikhail Manevich(1997), State Duma deputy Galina Starovoytova (1998), acting City Legislature Speaker Viktor Novosyolov (1999) and a number of prominent businesspeople, Saint Petersburg was dubbed Capital of Crime in the Russian press. Trumbull, Nathaniel S. (2003) The impacts of globalization on Saint Petersburg: A secondary world city in from the cold? The Annals of Regional Science 37:533â546 Powell, Bill & Brian Whitmore. The Capital Of Crime.(Saint Petersburg, Russia). Newsweek International, May 15, 2000. There were a number of movies filmed in Saint Petersburg about the life of crime; , Brother (1997) reinforcing its image as the Crime Capital of Russia.
One of the oldest and most infamous remand facilities in Saint Petersburg, Kresty prison is located near downtown.
However, crime rates in St. Petersburg have declined since the end of the 1990s; the aforementioned criminal gangs have mostly dispersed. Even the Kresty prison is no longer in use, as more modern penal institutions are being built farther from the city centre.
The decoration of Saint Petersburg Metro (Kirovsky Zavod Station).
Saint Petersburg is a major transport hub. The first Russian railway was built here, in 1837. Today, the city is the final destination of a web of intercity and suburban railways, served by five different railway terminals (Baltiysky, Finlyandsky, Ladozhsky, Moskovsky, and Vitebsky), Until 2001, the Varshavsky Rail Terminal served as a major station; it now is a railway museum. Reconstruction of the Warsaw Railway Station as well as dozens of non-terminal railway stations within the federal subject. Saint Petersburg has international railway connections to Helsinki, Finland, Berlin, Germany, and all former republics of the USSR. The Helsinki railway was built in 1870, , commutes three times a day, in a journey lasting about five and a half hours. The Moscow-Saint Petersburg Railway opened in 1851, ; the commute to Moscow now requires about four and a half to nine hours. Saint Petersburg is also served by Pulkovo International Airport, Rossiya (Pulkovo): Pulkovo Aviation Enterprise and by three smaller commercial and cargo airports in the suburbs. There is a regular, 24/7, rapid-bus transit connection between Pulkovo airport and the city centre.
The city is also served by the passenger and cargo seaports in the Neva Bay of the Gulf of Finland, Baltic Sea, the river port higher up the Neva, and tens of smaller passenger stations on both banks of the Neva river. It is a terminus of the Volga-Baltic and White Sea-Baltic waterways. In 2004 the first high bridge that doesn't need to be drawn, a long Big Obukhovsky Bridge, was opened. Meteor hydrofoils link the city centre to the coastal towns of Kronstadt, Lomonosov, Peterhof, Sestroretsk and Zelenogorsk from May through October.
Pulkovo International Airport.
Saint Petersburg has an extensive city-funded network of public transport (buses, trams, trolleybuses) and several hundred routes served by marshrutkas. Trams in Saint Petersburg used to be the main transport; in the 1980s, Leningrad had the largest tramway network in the world, but many tramway rail tracks were dismantled in the 2000s. Buses carry up to 3 million passengers daily, serving over 250 urban and a number of suburban bus routes. Saint Petersburg Metro underground rapid transit system was opened in 1955; it now has five lines with 63 stations, connecting all five railway terminals, and carrying 3.4 million passengers daily. Metro stations are decorated in marble and bronze.
Traffic jams are common in the city, because of high daily traffic volumes between the commuter boroughs and the city centre, intercity traffic, and at times excessive snow in winter. Five segments of the Saint Petersburg Ring Road were opened between 2002 and 2006, and full ring is planned to open in 2010.
Saint Petersburg is part of the important transport corridor linking Scandinavia to Russia and Eastern Europe. The city is a node of the international European routes E18 towards Helsinki, E20 towards Tallinn, E95 towards Pskov, Kiev and Odessa and E105 towards Petrozavodsk, Murmansk and Kirkenes (north) and towards Moscow and Kharkiv (south).
Kazan Cathedral
Griboyedov Canal
A bridge over the river Neva
As of now, Saint Petersburg has no skyscrapers and a relatively low skyline. Current regulations forbid construction of high buildings in the city centre. The 310 metre tall Saint Petersburg TV Tower is the tallest structure in the city, while the 122.5 m Peter and Paul Cathedral is by far the highest building. However, there is a controversial project endorsed by the city authorities and known as the Ohkta Centre to build a 396 m supertall skyscraper. In 2008 the World Monuments Fund included the Saint Petersburg historic skyline within the watch list of 100 most endangered sites due to the expected construction, which threatens to alter it drastically.
Unlike in Moscow, in Saint Petersburg the historic architecture of the city centre, mostly consisting of Baroque and neoclassical buildings of the 18th and 19th centuries, has been largely preserved, although a number of buildings were demolished after the Bolsheviks' seizure of power, during the Siege of Leningrad and in recent years. The oldest of the remaining building is a wooden house built for Peter I in 1703 on the shore of the Neva near Trinity Square. Since 1991 the Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments in Saint Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast have been listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.
The ensemble of Peter and Paul Fortress with the Peter and Paul Cathedral takes dominant position on Zayachy Island along the right bank of the River Neva. Each noon a cannon fires a blank shot from the fortress. The Saint Petersburg Mosque, the largest mosque in Europe when opened in 1913, is situated on the right bank nearby. The spit of Vasilievsky Island, which splits the river into two largest armlets, the Bolshaya Neva and Malaya Neva, is connected to the northern bank (Petrogradsky Island) via the Exchange Bridge and occupied by the Old Saint Petersburg Stock Exchange and Rostral Columns. The southern coast of Vasilievsky Island along the Bolshaya Neva features some of the city's oldest buildings, dating from the 18th century, including the Kunstkamera, Twelve Collegia, Menshikov Palace and Imperial Academy of Arts. It hosts one of two campuses of Saint Petersburg State University.
On the southern, left bank of the Neva, connected to the spit of Vasilievsky Island via the Palace Bridge, lie the Admiralty Building, the vast Hermitage Museum complex stretching along the Palace Embankment, which includes the baroque Winter Palace, former official residence of Russian emperors, as well as the neoclassical Marble Palace. The Winter Palace faces Palace Square, the city's main square with the Alexander Column.
Nevsky Prospekt, also situated on the left bank of the Neva, is the main avenue in the city. It starts at the Admiralty and runs eastwards next to Palace Square. Nevsky Prospekt crosses the Moika (Green Bridge), Griboyedov Canal (Kazansky Bridge), Garden Street, the Fontanka (Anichkov Bridge), meets Liteyny Prospekt and proceeds to Uprising Square near the Moskovsky railway station, where it meets Ligovsky Prospekt and turns to the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. The Passage, Catholic Church of St. Catherine, Book House (former Singer Manufacturing Company Building in the Art Nouveau style), Grand Hotel Europe, Lutheran Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, Gostiny Dvor, Russian National Library, Alexandrine Theatre behind Mikeshin's statue of Catherine the Great, Kazan Cathedral, Stroganov Palace, Anichkov Palace and Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace are all situated along that avenue.
The Alexander Nevsky Lavra, intended to house the relics of St. Alexander Nevsky, is an important centre of Christian education in Russia. It also contains the Tikhvin Cemetery with graves of many notable Petersburgers.
On the territory between the Neva and Nevsky Prospekt the Church of the Savior on Blood, Mikhailovsky Palace housing the Russian Museum, Field of Mars, St. Michael's Castle, Summer Garden, Tauride Palace, Smolny Institute and Smolny Convent are located.
Many notable landmarks are situated to the west and south of the Admiralty Building, including the Trinity Cathedral, Mariinsky Palace, Hotel Astoria, famous Mariinsky Theatre, New Holland Island, Saint Isaac's Cathedral, the largest in the city, and Decembrists Square with the Bronze Horseman, 18th century equestrian monument to Peter the Great, which is considered among the city's most recognisable symbols.
Other symbols of Saint Petersburg include the weather vane in the shape of a small ship on top of the Admiralty's golden spire and the golden angel on top of the Peter and Paul Cathedral. The Palace Bridge drawn at night is yet another symbol of the city. Every night during the navigation period from April to November, 22 bridges across the Neva and main canals are drawn to let ships pass in and out of the Baltic Sea according to a schedule. Schedule for main drawbridges across the Neva river (Official Russian schedule): Mr-spb.ru It wasn't until 2004 that the first high bridge across the Neva, which doesn't need to be drawn, Big Obukhovsky Bridge, was opened. There are hundreds of smaller bridges in Saint Petersburg spanning across numerous canals and distributaries of the Neva, some of the most important of which are the Moika, Fontanka, Griboyedov Canal, Obvodny Canal, Karpovka and Smolenka. Due to the intricate web of canals, Saint Petersburg is often called Venice of the North. The rivers and canals in the city centre are lined with granite embankments. The embankments and bridges are separated from rivers and canals by granite or cast iron parapets.
Southern suburbs of the city feature former imperial residences, including Peterhof, with majestic fountain cascades and parks, Tsarskoe Selo, with the baroque Catherine Palace and the neoclassical Alexander Palace, and Pavlovsk, which contains a domed palace of Emperor Paul and one of the largest English-style parks in Europe. Some other residences situated nearby and making part of the world heritage site, including a castle and park in Gatchina, actually belong to Leningrad Oblast rather than Saint Petersburg. Another notable suburb is Kronstadt with its 19th century fortifications and naval monuments, occupying the Kotlin Island in the Gulf of Finland.
From XX century end in a city active building and reorganisation of old historical city districts is conducted.
The authorities are compelled to transfer control of private residences in city centre to private lessors.
Also sealing building and a superstructure of buildings is spent by penthouses.
Some of these structures, such as the Saint Petersburg Commodity and Stock Exchange" have been recognised as town-planning errors.
Interior of the Hermitage Museum.
Saint Petersburg is home to more than two hundred museums, many of them hosted in historic buildings. The largest of the museums is the Hermitage Museum, featuring interiors of the former imperial residence and a vast collection of art. The Russian Museum is a large museum devoted to the Russian fine art specifically. The apartments of some famous Petersburgers, including Alexander Pushkin, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Feodor Chaliapin, Alexander Blok, Vladimir Nabokov, Anna Akhmatova, Mikhail Zoshchenko, Joseph Brodsky, as well as some palace and park ensembles of the southern suburbs and notable architectural monuments such as St. Isaac's Cathedral, have also been turned into public museums.
The Kunstkamera, with its collection established in 1714 by Peter the Great to collect curiosities from all over the world, is sometimes considered the first museum in Russia, which has evolved into the present-day Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography. The Russian Ethnography Museum, which has been split from the Russian Museum, is devoted to the cultures of the people of Russia, the former Soviet Union and Russian Empire.
Other notable museums include the Central Naval Museum hosted in the building of the former stock exchange and Zoological Museum, the Railway Museum, Museum of the Siege of Leningrad, Saint Petersburg Museum of History in the Peter and Paul Fortress and Artillery Museum, which in fact includes not only artillery items, but also a huge collection of other military equipment, uniform and decorations.
The Grand Cascade.
Saint Petersburg is home to numerous parks and gardens, some of the most famous of which are situated in the southern suburbs, including one of the largest English gardens of Europe in Pavlovsk. Sosnovka is the largest park within the limits of the city proper, occupying 240 ha. The Summer Garden is the oldest one, dating back to the early 18th century and designed in the regular style. It is situated on the southern bank of the Neva at the head of the Fontanka and is famous for its cast iron railing and marble sculptures.
Among other notable parks are the Maritime Victory Park on Krestovsky Island and the Moscow Victory Park in the south, both commemorating the victory over Nazi Germany in the Second World War, as well as the Central Park of Culture and Leisure occupying Yelagin Island and the Tauride Garden around the Tauride Palace. The most common trees grown in the parks are the English oak, Norway maple, green ash, silver birch, Siberian larch, blue spruce, crack willow, limes and poplars. Important dendrological collections dating back to the 19th century are hosted by the Saint Petersburg Botanical Garden and the Park of the Forestry Academy.
Among the city's more than fifty theaters is the world-famous Mariinsky Theater (also known as the Kirov Theater in the USSR ), home to the Mariinsky Ballet company and opera. Leading ballet dancers, such as Vaslav Nijinsky, Anna Pavlova, Rudolph Nureyev, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Galina Ulanova and Natalia Makarova, were principal stars of the Mariinsky ballet.
Dmitri Shostakovich was born and brought up in Saint Petersburg, and dedicated his Seventh Symphony to the city, calling it the "Leningrad Symphony." He wrote the symphony while in Leningrad during the German siege. The 7th symphony was premiered in 1942; its performance in the besieged Leningrad at the Bolshoy Philharmonic Hall under the baton of conductor Karl Eliasberg was heard over the radio and lifted the spirits of the survivors. In 1992 a reunion performance of the 7th Symphony by the (then) 14 survivors was played in the same hall as they done half a century ago. The Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra remained one of the best known symphony orchestras in the world under the leadership of conductors Yevgeny Mravinsky and Yuri Temirkanov.
The Imperial Choral Capella was founded and modeled after the royal courts of other European capitals.
Saint Petersburg has been home to the newest movements in popular music in the country. The first jazz band in the Soviet Union was founded here by Leonid Utyosov in the 1920s, under the patronage of Isaak Dunayevsky. The first jazz club in the Soviet Union was founded here in the 1950s, and later was named jazz club Kvadrat. In 1956 the popular ensemble Druzhba was founded by Aleksandr Bronevitsky and Edita Piekha, becoming the first popular band in the 1950s USSR. In the 1960s student rock-groups Argonavty, Kochevniki and others pioneered a series of unofficial and underground rock concerts and festivals. In 1972 Boris Grebenshchikov founded the band Aquarium, that later grew to huge popularity. Since then "Peter's rock" music style was formed.
In the 1970s many bands came out from "underground" and eventually founded the Leningrad rock club which has been providing stage to such bands as Piknik, DDT, Kino, headed by the legendary Viktor Tsoi, Igry, Mify, Zemlyane, Alisa and many other popular groups. The first Russian-style happening show Pop mekhanika, mixing over 300 people and animals on stage, was directed by the multi-talented Sergey Kuryokhin in the 1980s.
Today's Saint Petersburg boasts many notable musicians of various genres, from popular Leningrad's Sergei Shnurov and Tequilajazzz, to rock veterans Yuri Shevchuk, Vyacheslav Butusov and Mikhail Boyarsky.
The White Nights Festival in Saint Petersburg is famous for spectacular fireworks and massive show celebrating the end of school year.
Over 250 international and Russian movies were filmed in Saint Petersburg. International Movie Database Well over a thousand feature films about tsars, revolution, people and stories set in Saint Petersburg were produced worldwide, but were not filmed in the city. First film studios were founded in Saint Petersburg in the 1900s, and since the 1920s Lenfilm has been the largest film studio based in Saint Petersburg. The first foreign feature movie filmed entirely in Saint Petersburg was the 1997 production of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, starring Sophie Marceau and Sean Bean, and made by international team of British, American, French and Russian filmmakers.
The cult comedy Irony of Fate (also ÐÑÐ¾Ð½Ð¸Ñ ÑÑдÑбÑ, или С лÑгким паÑом!) is set in Saint Petersburg and pokes fun at Soviet city planning. The 1985 film White Nights received considerable Western attention for having captured genuine Leningrad street scenes at a time when filming in the Soviet Union by Western production companies was generally unheard of. Other movies include GoldenEye (1995), Midnight in Saint Petersburg (1996), and Brother (1997). Onegin (1999) is based on the Pushkin poem and showcases many tourist attractions. In addition, the Russian romantic comedy, ÐиÑÐµÑ FM, showcases the cityscape significantly, almost as if it was a main character in the film.
Several international film festivals are held annually, such as the Festival of Festivals, St. Petersburg, as well as the Message to Man International Documentary Film Festival, since its inauguration in 1988 during the White Nights.
Saint Petersburg has a longstanding and world famous tradition in literature. Dostoyevsky called it âThe most abstract and intentional city in the world," emphasizing its artificiality, but it was also a symbol of modern disorder in a changing Russia. It frequently appeared to Russian writers as a menacing and inhuman mechanism. The grotesque and often nightmarish image of the city is featured in Pushkin's last poems, the Petersburg stories of Gogol, the novels of Dostoyevsky, the verse of Alexander Blok and Osip Mandelshtam, and in the symbolist novel Petersburg by Andrey Bely. According to Lotman in his chapter, 'The Symbolism of Saint Petersburg' in Universe and the Mind, these writers were inspired from symbolism from within the city itself. The effect of life in Saint Petersburg on the plight of the poor clerk in a society obsessed with hierarchy and status also became an important theme for authors such as Pushkin, Gogol, and Dostoyevsky. Another important feature of early Saint Petersburg literature is its mythical element, which incorporates urban legends and popular ghost stories, as the stories of Pushkin and Gogol included ghosts returning to Saint Petersburg to haunt other characters as well as other fantastical elements, creating a surreal and abstract image of Saint Petersburg.
Twentieth century writers from Saint Petersburg, such as Vladimir Nabokov, Ayn Rand, Andrey Bely and Yevgeny Zamyatin, along with his apprentices, The Serapion Brothers, created entire new styles in literature and contributed new insights to the understanding of society through their experience in this city. Anna Akhmatova became an important leader for Russian poetry. Her poem Requiem focuses on the tragedies of living during the time of the Stalinist terror. Another notable 20th century writer from Saint Petersburg is Joseph Brodsky, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1987). While living in the United States, his writings in English reflected on life in Saint Petersburg from the unique perspective of being both an insider and an outsider to the city in essays such as, "A Guide to a Renamed City" and the nostalgic "In a Room and a Half". Joseph Brodsky. Less Than One: Selected Essays, 1986
FC Zenit's home Petrovsky stadium
Leningrad hosted part of the football tournament during the 1980 Summer Olympics. The 1994 Goodwill Games were held here.
The first competition here was the 1703 rowing event initiated by Peter the Great, after the victory over the Swedish fleet. Yachting events were held by the Russian Navy since the foundation of the city. Yacht clubs: St. Petersburg River Yacht Club, Neva Yacht Club, the latter is the oldest yacht club in the world. In the winter, when the sea and lake surfaces are frozen and yachts and dinghies cannot be used, local people sail on ice boats.
Equestrianism has been a long tradition, popular among the Tsars and aristocracy, as well as part of the military training. Several historic sports arenas were built for Equestrianism since the 18th century, to maintain training all year round, such as the Zimny Stadion and Konnogvardeisky Manezh among others.
Chess tradition was highlighted by the 1914 international tournament, in which the title "Grandmaster" was first formally conferred by Russian Tsar Nicholas II to five players: Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine, Tarrasch and Marshall, and which the Tsar had partially funded.
Kirov Stadium (now demolished) was one of the largest stadiums anywhere in the world, and the home to FC Zenit St. Petersburg in 1950-1993 and 1995. In 1951 the attendance of 110,000 set the record for the Soviet football. In 2007 Zenit became champions of the Russian Premier League, won the UEFA Cup 2007â08 season and the 2008 UEFA Supercup. Zenit now plays their home games at Petrovsky Stadium.
As of 2006/2007 there were 1024 kindergartens, 716 public schools and 80 vocational schools in Saint Petersburg. SPB.ru The largest of the higher education institutions are Saint Petersburg State University, enrolling approximately 32,000 undergraduate students, Saint Petersburg Polytechnical University and Herzen University. However, the universities are all federal property and don't belong to the city.
*List of consulates in Saint Petersburg
*List of museums in Saint Petersburg
*List of notable people from Saint Petersburg
*List of Saint Petersburg sister cities
*Amery, Colin, Brian Curran & Yuri Molodkovets. St. Petersburg. London: Frances Lincoln, 2006. ISBN 0711224927.
*Bater, James H. St. Petersburg: Industrialization and Change. Montreal: McGuill-Queenâs University Press, 1976. ISBN 0773502661.
*Berelowitch, Wladimir & Olga Medvedkova. Histoire de Saint-Pétersbourg. Paris: Fayard, 1996. ISBN 2213596018.
*Buckler, Julie. Mapping St. Petersburg: Imperial Text and Cityshape. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005 ISBN0691113491.
*Clark, Katerina, Petersburg, Crucible of Revolution. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995.
*Cross, Anthony (ed.). St. Petersburg, 1703-1825. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. ISBN 1403915709.
*George, Arthur L. & Elena George. St. Petersburg: Russia's Window to the Future, The First Three Centuries. Lanham: Taylor Trade Publishing, 2003. ISBN 1589790170.
*Glantz, David M. The Battle for Leningrad, 1941-1944. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002. ISBN 0700612084.
*Hellberg-Hirn, Elena. Imperial Imprints: Post-Soviet St. Petersburg. Helsinki: SKS Finnish Literature Society, 2003. ISBN 9517464916.
*Knopf Guide: Sat. Petersburg. New York: Knopf, 1995. ISBN 0679762027.
*Eyewitness Guide: St. Petersburg.
*Lincoln, W. Bruce. Sunlight at Midnight: St. Petersburg and the Rise of Modern Russia. New York: Basic Books, 2000. ISBN 0465083234.
*Orttung, Robert W. From Leningrad to St. Petersburg: Democratization in a Russian City. New York: St. Martinâs, 1995. ISBN 0312175612.
*Ruble, Blair A. Leningrad: Shaping a Soviet City. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. ISBN 0877723478.
*Shvidkovsky, Dmitry O. & Alexander Orloff. St. Petersburg: Architecture of the Tsars. New York: Abbeville Press, 1996. ISBN 0789202174.
*Volkov, Solomon. St. Petersburg: A Cultural History. New York: Free Press, 1995. ISBN 0028740521.
*St. Petersburg:Architecture of the Tsars. 360 pages. Abbeville Press, 1996. ISBN 0789202174
*Saint Petersburg: Museums, Palaces, and Historic Collections: A Guide to the Lesser Known Treasures of St. Petersburg. 2003. ISBN 1593730004.
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овÑкий Ð . Ð. Река Ðева и ÐевÑÐºÐ°Ñ Ð³Ñба, Leningrad, ÐидÑомеÑеоиздаÑ, 1981.
* Official presentation of Saint Petersburg
* Official Portal of the City Government: Saint Petersburg
* Encyclopaedia of Saint Petersburg
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* Saint Petersburg in 1900
* Saint Petersburg, entry in the World Monuments Fund's 2008 watchlist
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Saint_Petersburg | What festival features fireworks celebrating the end of the school year? | The White Nights Festival in Saint Petersburg | data/set3/a10 | Saint_Petersburg
Saint Petersburg ( , ) is a city and a federal subject (a federal city) of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The city's other names were Petrograd ( , 1914â1924) and Leningrad ( , 1924â1991). It is often called just Petersburg ( ) and is informally known as Piter ( ).
Founded by Tsar Peter I of Russia on 27 May 1703, it was the capital of the Russian Empire for more than two hundred years (1713â1728, 1732â1918). Saint Petersburg ceased being the capital in 1918 after the Russian Revolution of 1917. Nicholas and Alexandra: An Intimate Account of the Last of the Romanovs and the Fall of Imperial Russia (Athenum, 1967) by Robert K. Massie, ASIN B000CGP8M2 (also, Ballantine Books, 2000, ISBN 0-345-43831-0 and Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, 2005, ISBN 1-57912-433-X) It is Russia's second largest city after Moscow with 4.6 million inhabitants, and over 6 million people live in its vicinity. Saint Petersburg is a major European cultural centre, and an important Russian port on the Baltic Sea.
Saint Petersburg is often described as the most Western city of Russia. V. Morozov. The Discourses of Saint Petersburg and the Shaping of a Wider Europe. Copenhagen Peace Research Institute. 2002. Ciaonet.org Among cities of the world with over one million people, Saint Petersburg is the northernmost. The Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments constitute a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Saint Petersburg is also home to The Hermitage, the largest art museum in the world. /ref> Russia's political and cultural centre for 200 years, the city is sometimes referred to in Russia as the northern capital. A large number of foreign consulates, international corporations, banks and other businesses are located in Saint Petersburg.
On 1 May 1703 (Julian calendar), during the Great Northern War, Peter the Great captured the Swedish fortress of Nyenskans on the Neva river in Ingria. A few weeks later, on 27 May 1703 (May 16, Old Style), lower on the river, on Zayachy (Hare) Island, three miles (5 km) inland from the gulf, he laid down the Peter and Paul Fortress, which became the first brick and stone building of the new city. He named the city after his patron saint, Saint Peter, the apostle. The original name was meant to sound like Dutch due to Peter's obsession with the Dutch culture. Peter the Great: His Life and World (Knopf, 1980) by Robert K. Massie, ISBN 0-394-50032-6
The city was built by conscripted serfs from all over Russia and also by Swedish prisoners of war under the supervision of Alexander Menshikov and later became the centre of Saint Petersburg Governorate. Peter moved the capital from Moscow to Saint Petersburg in 1712, before the Treaty of Nystad of 1721 ended the war.
The Bronze Horseman, monument to Peter the Great.
Palace Square, as the main square of the Russian Empire it was the setting of many events of great historical significance
Lenin statue outside the Finland station. Between 1924 and 1991 the city was known as Leningrad.
Map of Saint Petersburg, 1903.
Church of the Savior on Blood.
During the first few years of its existence the city grew spontaneously around Trinity Square on the right bank of the Neva, near the Peter and Paul Fortress. However, Saint Petersburg soon started to develop according to a plan. By 1716 Domenico Trezzini had elaborated a project whereby the city centre would be located on Vasilievsky Island and shaped by a rectangular grid of canals. The project was not completed, but is still evident in the layout of the streets. In 1716 Jean-Baptiste Alexandre Le Blond was appointed chief architect of Saint Petersburg by Peter the Great.
The style of Petrine Baroque, developed by Trezzini and other architects and exemplified by such buildings as the Menshikov Palace, Kunstkamera, Peter and Paul Cathedral, Twelve Collegia, became prominent in the city architecture of the early 18th century. In 1724 the Academy of Sciences, University and Academic Gymnasium were established in Saint Petersburg by Peter the Great.
However, in 1725 Peter died. His near-lifelong autocratic push for modernisation of Russia had met with considerable opposition from the old-fashioned Russian nobility â resulting in several attempts on his life and a treason case involving his own son. Matthew S. Anderson, Peter the Great (London: Thames and Hudson, 1978) Thus, in 1728, Peter II of Russia moved his seat back to Moscow. But four years later, in 1732, under Empress Anna of Russia, Saint Petersburg again became the capital of the Russian Empire and remained the seat of the government for 186 years.
In 1736-1737 the city suffered from catastrophic fires. In order to rebuild the damaged boroughs, in 1737 a new plan was commissioned by a committee under Burkhard Christoph von Munnich. The city was divided into five boroughs, and the city centre was moved to the Admiralty borough, situated on the east bank between the Neva and Fontanka.
It developed along three radial streets, which meet at the Admiralty and are now known as Nevsky Prospekt (which is now perceived as the main street of the city), Gorokhovaya Street and Voznesensky Prospekt. The style of Baroque dominated the city architecture during the first sixty years, culminating in the Elizabethan Baroque, represented most notably by Bartolomeo Rastrelli with such buildings as the Winter Palace. In the 1760s the Baroque architecture was succeeded by the neoclassical architecture.
The Commission of Stone Buildings of Moscow and Saint Petersburg established in 1762 ruled that no structure in the city be higher than the Winter Palace and prohibited spacing between buildings. During the reign of Catherine the Great in the 1760s-1780s the banks of the Neva were lined with granite embankments.
However, it wasn't until 1850 that it was allowed to open the first permanent bridge across the Neva, Blagoveshchensky Bridge. Before that, only pontoon bridges were allowed. Obvodny Canal (dug in 1769-1833) became the southern limit of the city.
Some of the most important neoclassical architects in Saint Petersburg (including those working within the Empire style) were Jean-Baptiste Vallin de la Mothe (Imperial Academy of Arts, Small Hermitage, Gostiny Dvor, New Holland Arch, Catholic Church of St. Catherine), Antonio Rinaldi (Marble Palace), Yury Felten (Old Hermitage, Chesme Church), Giacomo Quarenghi (Academy of Sciences, Hermitage Theatre, Yusupov Palace), Andrey Voronikhin (Mining Institute, Kazan Cathedral), Andreyan Zakharov (Admiralty building), Jean-François Thomas de Thomon (Spit of Vasilievsky Island), Carlo Rossi (Yelagin Palace, Mikhailovsky Palace, Alexandrine Theatre, Senate and Synod Buildings, General Staff Building, design of many streets and squares), Vasily Stasov (Moscow Triumphal Gate, Trinity Cathedral), Auguste de Montferrand (Saint Isaac's Cathedral, Alexander Column). The victory over Napoleonic France in the Patriotic War of 1812 was commemorated with many monuments, including Alexander Column by Montferrand, erected in 1834, and Narva Triumphal Gate.
In 1825 the suppressed Decembrist revolt against Nicholas I of Russia took place on the Senate Square in the city, a day after he assumed the throne.
By the 1840s the neoclassical architecture had given place to various romanticist styles, which were dominant until the 1890s, represented by such architects as Andrei Stackenschneider (Mariinsky Palace, Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace, Nicholas Palace, New Michael Palace) and Konstantin Thon (Moskovsky Rail Terminal). The Church of the Savior on Blood designed in the Russian revival style commemorated the place where Alexander II of Russia was assassinated in 1881.
With the emancipation of the serfs undertaken by Alexander II in 1861 and the industrial revolution the influx of former peasants into the capital increased greatly. Poor boroughs spontaneously emerged on the outskirts of the city. Saint Petersburg surpassed Moscow in population and industrial growth and grew into one of the largest industrial hubs and cities in Europe.
The Revolution of 1905 began in Saint Petersburg and spread rapidly into the provinces. With the start of World War I, the name Saint Petersburg was perceived to be too German, so in 1914 the city was renamed Petrograd. The Romanovs: The Final Chapter (Random House, 1995) by Robert K. Massie, ISBN 0-394-58048-6 and ISBN 0-679-43572-7 In 1917 the February Revolution, which put an end to the Russian monarchy, and the October Revolution, which ultimately brought Vladimir Lenin to power, broke out in Petrograd. Rex A. Wade The Russian Revolution, 1917 2005 Cambridge University Press ISBN 0521841550 The city's proximity to the border and anti-Soviet armies forced the Bolsheviks under Lenin to transfer the capital to Moscow on March 12, 1918.
In 1919 during the ensuing Russian Civil War Nikolay Yudenich advancing from Estonia was about to capture the city from the Bolsheviks, but Leon Trotsky ultimately managed to mobilise the population and make him retreat. Many people fled the city in 1917-1920 or were repressed in the Red Terror, Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe. By Robert Gellately, 2007, Random House, 720 pages. ISBN 1400040051 so its population decreased dramatically. On January 26, 1924, three days after Lenin's death, Petrograd was renamed Leningrad. For decades Leningrad was glorified by the Soviet propaganda as "the cradle of the revolution" and "the city of three revolutions", many spots related to Lenin and the revolutions, such as the cruiser Aurora, were carefully preserved. Many streets and other toponyms were renamed accordingly.
In the 1920s-1930s the poor outskirts were reconstructed into regularly planned boroughs. The constructivist architecture flourished around that time. The Soviets nationalised housing and forced many residents to share communal apartments (kommunalkas). With 68% living in shared apartments in the 1930s, Leningrad was the city with the largest number of kommunalkas. In 1935 a new general plan was outlined, whereby the city should expand to the south and its centre should move there. The constructivism was rejected in favor of the pompous Stalinist architecture. Stalin ordered the construction of the new city hall on Moskovsky Prospect thus making it the new main street of Leningrad during the Soviet rule.
Since December 1931 Leningrad has been administratively separate from Leningrad Oblast. At that time it included Leningrad Suburban District, some parts of which were transferred back to Leningrad Oblast in 1936 and turned into Vsevolozhsky District, Krasnoselsky District, Pargolovsky District and Slutsky District (renamed Pavlovsky District in 1944).
On December 1, 1934, Sergey Kirov, popular communist leader of Leningrad, was assassinated, which was used to start the Great Purge. Stalin's Terror: High Politics and Mass Repression in the Soviet Union by Barry McLoughlin and Kevin McDermott (eds). Palgrave Macmillan, 2002, p. 6 The sizeable minorities of Germans, Poles, Finns, Estonians and Latvians were almost completely expelled from Leningrad by the Soviet government during the 1930s. Martin, Terry (1998). The Origins of Soviet Ethnic Cleansing. The Journal of Modern History 70.4, 813-861.
During World War II, Leningrad was besieged by Nazi Germany and co-belligerent Finland. Siege of Leningrad. Encyclopædia Britannica The siege lasted 872 days from September 1941 to January 1944. Baldack, Richard H. "Leningrad, Siege of" World Book Encyclopedia, Chicago, 2002, vol.12, page 195 The Siege of Leningrad was one of the longest, most destructive, and most lethal sieges of major cities in modern history. It isolated the city from most supplies except those provided through the Road of Life across Lake Ladoga, and more than a million civilians died, mainly from starvation. Many others were eventually evacuated or escaped by themselves, so the city became largely depopulated. For the heroic resistance of the city and tenacity of the survivors of the Siege, in 1945 Leningrad became the first city in the Soviet Union awarded the title Hero City. In October 1946 some former Finnish territories along the northern coast of the Gulf of Finland captured in the Winter War and Continuation War were transferred from Leningrad Oblast to Leningrad and divided into Sestroretsky District and Kurortny District, including the town of Terijoki (renamed Zelenogorsk in 1948).
Leningrad and many of its suburbs were rebuilt over the post-war decades, partially according to the pre-war plans. The 1948 general plan of Leningrad featured radial urban development in the north as well as in the south. The Leningrad Metro, underground rapid transit system which was designed before the war in the 1930s, was opened in 1955 with its first seven stations decorated with marble and bronze. Meanwhile, in 1949-1951 a large number of prominent Leningrad members of the Communist Party and their families were charged with treason and intention to create an anti-Soviet organization out of their local party cell. Many were imprisoned or executed in the Leningrad Affair fabricated by the central Soviet leadership. Dmitri Volkogonov. Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy, 1996, ISBN 0761507183 Russian publication: ÐенингÑадÑкое дело â надо ли ÑÑавиÑÑ ÐºÐ°Ð²ÑÑки?: Contr-tv.ru
In 1953 Pavlovsky District of Leningrad Oblast was abolished, and parts of its territory including Pavlovsk merged with Leningrad. In 1954 the settlements Levashovo, Pargolovo and Pesochny merged with Leningrad.
After the death of Stalin the perceived ornamental excesses of the Stalinist architecture were abandoned. In the 1960s-1980s, as many new residential boroughs were built on the outskirts with few series of functionalist apartment blocks identical to each other, many families moved there from kommunalkas in the city centre in order to live in separate apartments. Uritsk was re-named Ligovo and merged with Leningrad in 1963, Lomonosov merged in 1978.
On June 12, 1991, in a referendum held on the same day as the first Russian presidential election, 54% of voters chose to restore the name "Saint Petersburg" (the change officially took effect on September 6, 1991). Many other Soviet-era toponyms in the city were also renamed soon afterwards. In the same election Anatoly Sobchak became the first democratically elected mayor of the city. Jack F. Matlock, Jr., Autopsy on an Empire: The American Ambassador's Account of the Collapse of the Soviet Union, Random House, 1995, ISBN 0679413766
By the end of 1991 the deteriorating planned economy of the collapsing Soviet Union had put the city on the verge of starvation. For the first time since World War II food rationing was introduced, and the city received humanitarian food aid from abroad. The city somewhat recovered with the market reforms in Russia. In 1995-2004 a northern section of the Metro's Kirovsko-Vyborgskaya Line was cut off by underground flooding, which was a major obstacle to the city development.
In 1996, Vladimir Yakovlev was elected as head of the Saint Petersburg City Administration. The title of the city head was changed in advance from "mayor" to "governor". In 2003, Yakovlev resigned a year before his second term expired. Valentina Matviyenko was elected governor. In 2006 she was reapproved as governor by the city legislature. The residential building had intensified again, real estate prices inflated greatly, and this situation causes many new problems for the historical part of the city.
In spite of the fact that the central part of the city is watched by UNESCO, the safety of its historical and architectural environment is in danger. Sergey Zagraevsky. Will Saint Petersburg share the same fate as Moscow? Zagraevsky.com There are still about 8000 architectural monuments in Saint Petersburg, but since 2005 the destruction of older buildings in the historical centre has continued. A number of new building projects are underway, including the Gazprom skyscraper in Okhta.
Territory of the federal subject of Saint Petersburg.
The area of Saint Petersburg city proper is . The area of the federal subject is , which contains the Saint Petersburg proper (consisting of 81 okrugs), nine suburban towns (Kolpino, Krasnoye Selo, Kronstadt, Lomonosov, Pavlovsk, Peterhof, Pushkin, Sestroretsk and Zelenogorsk) and 21 municipal settlements.
Saint Petersburg is situated on the middle taiga lowlands along the shores of the Neva Bay of the Gulf of Finland, and islands of the river delta. The largest are Vasilyevsky island (besides the artificial island between Obvodny canal and Fontanka, and Kotlin in the Neva Bay), Petrogradsky, Dekabristov and Krestovsky. The latter together with Yelagin and Kamenny island are covered mostly by parks. The Karelian Isthmus, North of the city, is a popular resort area. In the south Saint Petersburg crosses the Baltic-Ladoga Klint and meets the Izhora Plateau.
The elevation of Saint Petersburg ranges from the sea level to its highest point of at the Orekhovaya Hill in the Duderhof Heights in the south. Part of the city's territory west of Liteyny Prospekt is no higher than above sea level, and has suffered from numerous floods. Floods in Saint Petersburg are triggered by a long wave in the Baltic Sea, caused by meteorological conditions, winds and shallowness of the Neva Bay. The four most disastrous floods occurred in 1824 ( above sea-level, during which over 300 buildings were destroyed The level of flooding is measured near Saint Petersburg Mining Institute, which is normally a.s.l. ), 1924 , 1777 , 1955 and 1975 . To prevent floods, the Saint Petersburg Dam has been under construction since 1979. ÐежиÑ
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Since the 18th century the terrain in the city has been raised artificially, at some places by more than , making mergers of several islands, and changing the hydrology of the city. Besides the Neva and its distributaries, other important rivers of the federal subject of Saint Petersburg are Sestra, Okhta and Izhora. The largest lake is Sestroretsky Razliv in the north, followed by Lakhtinsky Razliv, Suzdal Lakes and other smaller lakes.
Saint Petersburg's position on the latitude of ca. 60° N causes variation in day length across seasons, ranging from 5:53 to 18:50. Twilight may last all night in early summer, from mid-May to mid-July, the celebrated phenomenon known as the white nights.
Snow falling on the morning of May 14, 2008 at Srednyaya Rogatka (district in the south of St. Petersburg)
Saint Petersburg experiences a humid continental climate of the cool summer subtype (Köppen: Dfb), due to the distinct moderating influence of the Baltic Sea cyclones, with warm, humid and short summers and long, cold winters.
The average daily temperature in July is ; summer maximum is about , winter minimum is about . The record low temperature is , recorded in 1883. The average annual temperature is . The River Neva within the city limits usually freezes up in November-December, break-up occurs in April. From December to March there are 123 days average with snow cover, which reaches the average of by February. The frost-free period in the city lasts on average for about 135 days. The city has a climate slightly warmer than its suburbs. Weather conditions are quite variable all year round. See Historical weather records for Saint Petersburg (since 1932) and Historical weather in Saint Petersburg for further information.
Average annual precipitation varies across the city, averaging per year and reaching maximum in late summer. Soil moisture is almost always high because of lower evapotranspiration due to the cool climate. Air humidity is 78% on average, while overcast is 165 days a year on average.
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Saint Petersburg is the second largest city in Russia. The 2002 census recorded a population of the federal subject of 4,661,219, or 3.21% of the total population of Russia. The 2002 census recorded twenty-two ethnic groups of more than two thousand persons each. The ethnic composition was: Russian 84.72%, Ukrainian 1.87%, Belarusians 1.17%, Jewish 0.78%, Tatar 0.76%, Armenian 0.41%, Azeri 0.36%, Georgian 0.22%, Chuvash 0.13%, Polish 0.10%, and many other smaller ethnic groups, while 7.89% of the inhabitants declined to state their ethnicity.
The 20th century saw hectic ups and downs in population. From 2.4 million in 1916 it had dropped to less than 740,000 by 1920 during the Russian Revolution of 1917 and Russian Civil War. The sizeable minorities of Germans, Poles, Finns, Estonians and Latvians were almost completely expelled from Leningrad by the Soviet government during the 1930s. From 1941 to the end of 1943, population dropped from 3 million to less than 700,000, as people died in battles, starved to death during the Siege of Leningrad, or were evacuated. After the siege, some of the evacuees returned, but most influx was due to migration from other parts of the Soviet Union. The city absorbed about 3 million people in the 1950s and grew to over 5 million in the 1980s. From 1991 to 2006 the city's population decreased to the current 4.6 million, while the suburban population increased due to privatization of land and massive move to suburbs. ЧиÑÑÑкова Ð. ТÑеÑÑе ÑокÑаÑение ÑиÑленноÑÑи наÑелениÑ... и поÑледнее? ÐемоÑкоп Weekly 163 â 164, August 1â15, 2004. Russian source: "Encyclopedia of Saint Petersburg" ЧиÑÑÑков Ð. Ю. ÐаÑеление (обзоÑÐ½Ð°Ñ ÑÑаÑÑÑ). ÐнÑÐ¸ÐºÐ»Ð¾Ð¿ÐµÐ´Ð¸Ñ Ð¡Ð°Ð½ÐºÑ-ÐеÑеÑбÑÑга The birth rate remains lower than the death rate; people over 65 constitute more than twenty percent of the population; and the median age is about 40 years. Russian statistics ÐÑновнÑе показаÑели ÑоÑиалÑно-демогÑаÑиÑеÑкой ÑиÑÑаÑии в СанкÑ-ÐеÑеÑбÑÑге
People in urban Saint Petersburg live mostly in apartments. Between 1918 and the 1990s, the Soviets nationalised housing and forced residents to share communal apartments (kommunalkas). With 68% living in shared flats in the 1930s, Leningrad was the city in the USSR with the largest number of kommunalkas. Resettling residents of kommunalkas is now on the way out, albeit shared apartments are still not uncommon. As new boroughs were built on the outskirts in the 1950s-1980s, over half a million low income families eventually received free apartments, and about an additional hundred thousand condos were purchased. While economic and social activity is concentrated in the historic city centre, the richest part of Saint Petersburg, most people live in commuter areas. For the first half of 2007, the birth rate was 9.1 per 1000.
Smolny Institute, the seat of the governor.
Saint Petersburg is a federal subject of Russia. The political life of Saint Petersburg is regulated by the city charter adopted by the city legislature in 1998. The superior executive body is the Saint Petersburg City Administration, led by the governor (mayor before 1996). Saint Petersburg has a single-chamber legislature, the Saint Petersburg Legislative Assembly.
According to the federal law passed in 2004, heads of federal subjects, including the governor of Saint Petersburg, are nominated by the President of Russia and approved by local legislatures. If the legislature disapproves the nominee, it is dissolved. The current governor, Valentina Matviyenko, was approved according to the new system in December 2006. She is currently the only woman governor in the whole of Russia.
Saint Petersburg city is currently divided into eighteen districts. Saint Petersburg is also the administrative centre of Leningrad Oblast, and of the Northwestern Federal District. The Constitutional Court of Russia moved to Saint Petersburg from Moscow in May 2008.
Saint Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast, being two different federal subjects, share a number of local departments of federal executive agencies and courts, such as court of arbitration, police, FSB, postal service, drug enforcement administration, penitentiary service, federal registration service, and other federal services.
The Old Saint Petersburg Stock Exchange, or Bourse, houses the Central Naval Museum
Saint Petersburg is a major trade gateway, financial and industrial centre of Russia specialising in oil and gas trade, shipbuilding yards, aerospace industry, radio and electronics, software and computers; machine building, heavy machinery and transport, including tanks and other military equipment, mining, instrument manufacture, ferrous and nonferrous metallurgy (production of aluminium alloys), chemicals, pharmaceuticals, medical equipment, publishing and printing, food and catering, wholesale and retail, textile and apparel industries, and many other businesses. It was also home to Lessner, one of Russia's two pioneering automobile manufacturers (along with Russo-Baltic), Lessner; founded by machine tool and boiler maker G. A. Lessner in 1904, with designs by Boris Loutsky, it survived until 1910. Georgano, G. N. Cars: Early and Vintage, 1886-1930. (London: Grange-Universal, 1985)
10% of the world's power turbines are made there at the LMZ, which built over two thousand turbines for power plants across the world. Major local industries are Admiralty Shipyard, Baltic Shipyard, LOMO, Kirov Plant, Elektrosila, Izhorsky Zavod; also registered in Saint Petersburg are Sovkomflot, Petersburg Fuel Company and SIBUR among other major Russian and international companies.
The Saint Petersburg docks at dawn.
Saint Petersburg has three large cargo seaports: Bolshoi Port Saint Petersburg, Kronstadt, and Lomonosov. International cruise liners have been served at the passenger port at Morskoy Vokzal on the south-west of Vasilevsky Island. In 2008 the first two berths were opened at the New Passenger Port on the west of the island. Discoverthebaltic.com Discover the Baltic online guide to Baltic cruise ports The new port is part of the city's "Marine Facade" development project Mfspb.ru St Petersburg "Marine Facade" development project and is due to have seven berths in operation by 2010.
A complex system of riverports on both banks of the Neva river are interconnected with the system of seaports, thus making Saint Petersburg the main link between the Baltic sea and the rest of Russia through the Volga-Baltic Waterway.
The Saint Petersburg Mint (Monetny Dvor), founded in 1724, is one of the largest mints in the world, it mints Russian coins, medals and badges. Saint Petersburg is also home to the oldest and largest Russian foundry, Monumentskulptura, which made thousands of sculptures and statues that are now gracing public parks of Saint Petersburg, as well as many other cities. Monuments and bronze statues of the Czars, as well as other important historic figures and dignitaries, and other world famous monuments, such as the sculptures by Peter Clodt von Jürgensburg, Paolo Troubetzkoy, Pavel Antokolsky, and others, were made there.
In 2007 Toyota opened a Camry plant after investing 5 billion dollars in Shushary, one of the southern suburbs of Saint Petersburg. General Motors, Hyundai and Nissan have signed deals with the Russian government to build their automotive plants in Saint Petersburg too. Automotive and auto-parts industry is on the rise there during the last decade. Saint Petersburg is also known as the "beer capital" of Russia, due to the supply and quality of local water, contributing over 30% of the domestic production of beer with its five large-scale breweries including Europe's second largest brewery Baltika, Vena (both operated by BBH), Heineken Brewery, Stepan Razin (both by Heineken) and Tinkoff brewery (SUN-InBev). Saint Petersburg has the second largest construction industry in Russia, including commercial, housing and road construction.
In 2006 Saint Petersburg's city budget was 179,9 billion rubles, and is planned to double by 2012. The federal subject's gross regional product as of 2005 was 667,905.4 million Russian rubles, ranked 4th in Russia, after Moscow, Tyumen Oblast, and Moscow Oblast, or 145,503.3 rubles per capita, ranked 12th among Russia's federal subjects, contributed mostly by wholesale and retail trade and repair services (24.7%) as well as processing industry (20.9%) and transportation and telecommunications (15.1%).
The Kresty prison.
Russia historically had a high level of crime that increased significantly after the October revolution. Edward Hallett Carr The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1923, 1985 ISBN 0393301990 Google preview Perestroika-time turmoils saw additional increase of the crime level.
Saint Petersburg experiences significant levels of street crime and bribery. In addition, in recent years there has been a notable increase in racially motivated violence, especially towards tourists and foreign students. One of the well known white supremacist groups Belaya Energia (White Energy, originally comes from White Power), has reportedly been one of the main gangs involved in murdering foreign university students. Russia: Racist Attacks Plague St. Petersburg Radio Free Europe September 30, 2005
At the end of the 1980s â beginning of the 1990s, Leningrad became home to a number of organised criminal groups as Tambov Gang, Malyshev Gang, Kazan Gang and ethnic criminal groups, engaged in a racket, extortion, paying off local government, and violent clashes with each other. Russian Mafia Shakes Down the Country by Steven R. Van Hook, Santa Barbara News-Press, November 20, 1994
In 2008, a car bomb killed three people (including a four-year old child), and injured one.
After the assassinations of City Property Committee Chairman and vice-Governor Mikhail Manevich(1997), State Duma deputy Galina Starovoytova (1998), acting City Legislature Speaker Viktor Novosyolov (1999) and a number of prominent businesspeople, Saint Petersburg was dubbed Capital of Crime in the Russian press. Trumbull, Nathaniel S. (2003) The impacts of globalization on Saint Petersburg: A secondary world city in from the cold? The Annals of Regional Science 37:533â546 Powell, Bill & Brian Whitmore. The Capital Of Crime.(Saint Petersburg, Russia). Newsweek International, May 15, 2000. There were a number of movies filmed in Saint Petersburg about the life of crime; , Brother (1997) reinforcing its image as the Crime Capital of Russia.
One of the oldest and most infamous remand facilities in Saint Petersburg, Kresty prison is located near downtown.
However, crime rates in St. Petersburg have declined since the end of the 1990s; the aforementioned criminal gangs have mostly dispersed. Even the Kresty prison is no longer in use, as more modern penal institutions are being built farther from the city centre.
The decoration of Saint Petersburg Metro (Kirovsky Zavod Station).
Saint Petersburg is a major transport hub. The first Russian railway was built here, in 1837. Today, the city is the final destination of a web of intercity and suburban railways, served by five different railway terminals (Baltiysky, Finlyandsky, Ladozhsky, Moskovsky, and Vitebsky), Until 2001, the Varshavsky Rail Terminal served as a major station; it now is a railway museum. Reconstruction of the Warsaw Railway Station as well as dozens of non-terminal railway stations within the federal subject. Saint Petersburg has international railway connections to Helsinki, Finland, Berlin, Germany, and all former republics of the USSR. The Helsinki railway was built in 1870, , commutes three times a day, in a journey lasting about five and a half hours. The Moscow-Saint Petersburg Railway opened in 1851, ; the commute to Moscow now requires about four and a half to nine hours. Saint Petersburg is also served by Pulkovo International Airport, Rossiya (Pulkovo): Pulkovo Aviation Enterprise and by three smaller commercial and cargo airports in the suburbs. There is a regular, 24/7, rapid-bus transit connection between Pulkovo airport and the city centre.
The city is also served by the passenger and cargo seaports in the Neva Bay of the Gulf of Finland, Baltic Sea, the river port higher up the Neva, and tens of smaller passenger stations on both banks of the Neva river. It is a terminus of the Volga-Baltic and White Sea-Baltic waterways. In 2004 the first high bridge that doesn't need to be drawn, a long Big Obukhovsky Bridge, was opened. Meteor hydrofoils link the city centre to the coastal towns of Kronstadt, Lomonosov, Peterhof, Sestroretsk and Zelenogorsk from May through October.
Pulkovo International Airport.
Saint Petersburg has an extensive city-funded network of public transport (buses, trams, trolleybuses) and several hundred routes served by marshrutkas. Trams in Saint Petersburg used to be the main transport; in the 1980s, Leningrad had the largest tramway network in the world, but many tramway rail tracks were dismantled in the 2000s. Buses carry up to 3 million passengers daily, serving over 250 urban and a number of suburban bus routes. Saint Petersburg Metro underground rapid transit system was opened in 1955; it now has five lines with 63 stations, connecting all five railway terminals, and carrying 3.4 million passengers daily. Metro stations are decorated in marble and bronze.
Traffic jams are common in the city, because of high daily traffic volumes between the commuter boroughs and the city centre, intercity traffic, and at times excessive snow in winter. Five segments of the Saint Petersburg Ring Road were opened between 2002 and 2006, and full ring is planned to open in 2010.
Saint Petersburg is part of the important transport corridor linking Scandinavia to Russia and Eastern Europe. The city is a node of the international European routes E18 towards Helsinki, E20 towards Tallinn, E95 towards Pskov, Kiev and Odessa and E105 towards Petrozavodsk, Murmansk and Kirkenes (north) and towards Moscow and Kharkiv (south).
Kazan Cathedral
Griboyedov Canal
A bridge over the river Neva
As of now, Saint Petersburg has no skyscrapers and a relatively low skyline. Current regulations forbid construction of high buildings in the city centre. The 310 metre tall Saint Petersburg TV Tower is the tallest structure in the city, while the 122.5 m Peter and Paul Cathedral is by far the highest building. However, there is a controversial project endorsed by the city authorities and known as the Ohkta Centre to build a 396 m supertall skyscraper. In 2008 the World Monuments Fund included the Saint Petersburg historic skyline within the watch list of 100 most endangered sites due to the expected construction, which threatens to alter it drastically.
Unlike in Moscow, in Saint Petersburg the historic architecture of the city centre, mostly consisting of Baroque and neoclassical buildings of the 18th and 19th centuries, has been largely preserved, although a number of buildings were demolished after the Bolsheviks' seizure of power, during the Siege of Leningrad and in recent years. The oldest of the remaining building is a wooden house built for Peter I in 1703 on the shore of the Neva near Trinity Square. Since 1991 the Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments in Saint Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast have been listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.
The ensemble of Peter and Paul Fortress with the Peter and Paul Cathedral takes dominant position on Zayachy Island along the right bank of the River Neva. Each noon a cannon fires a blank shot from the fortress. The Saint Petersburg Mosque, the largest mosque in Europe when opened in 1913, is situated on the right bank nearby. The spit of Vasilievsky Island, which splits the river into two largest armlets, the Bolshaya Neva and Malaya Neva, is connected to the northern bank (Petrogradsky Island) via the Exchange Bridge and occupied by the Old Saint Petersburg Stock Exchange and Rostral Columns. The southern coast of Vasilievsky Island along the Bolshaya Neva features some of the city's oldest buildings, dating from the 18th century, including the Kunstkamera, Twelve Collegia, Menshikov Palace and Imperial Academy of Arts. It hosts one of two campuses of Saint Petersburg State University.
On the southern, left bank of the Neva, connected to the spit of Vasilievsky Island via the Palace Bridge, lie the Admiralty Building, the vast Hermitage Museum complex stretching along the Palace Embankment, which includes the baroque Winter Palace, former official residence of Russian emperors, as well as the neoclassical Marble Palace. The Winter Palace faces Palace Square, the city's main square with the Alexander Column.
Nevsky Prospekt, also situated on the left bank of the Neva, is the main avenue in the city. It starts at the Admiralty and runs eastwards next to Palace Square. Nevsky Prospekt crosses the Moika (Green Bridge), Griboyedov Canal (Kazansky Bridge), Garden Street, the Fontanka (Anichkov Bridge), meets Liteyny Prospekt and proceeds to Uprising Square near the Moskovsky railway station, where it meets Ligovsky Prospekt and turns to the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. The Passage, Catholic Church of St. Catherine, Book House (former Singer Manufacturing Company Building in the Art Nouveau style), Grand Hotel Europe, Lutheran Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, Gostiny Dvor, Russian National Library, Alexandrine Theatre behind Mikeshin's statue of Catherine the Great, Kazan Cathedral, Stroganov Palace, Anichkov Palace and Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace are all situated along that avenue.
The Alexander Nevsky Lavra, intended to house the relics of St. Alexander Nevsky, is an important centre of Christian education in Russia. It also contains the Tikhvin Cemetery with graves of many notable Petersburgers.
On the territory between the Neva and Nevsky Prospekt the Church of the Savior on Blood, Mikhailovsky Palace housing the Russian Museum, Field of Mars, St. Michael's Castle, Summer Garden, Tauride Palace, Smolny Institute and Smolny Convent are located.
Many notable landmarks are situated to the west and south of the Admiralty Building, including the Trinity Cathedral, Mariinsky Palace, Hotel Astoria, famous Mariinsky Theatre, New Holland Island, Saint Isaac's Cathedral, the largest in the city, and Decembrists Square with the Bronze Horseman, 18th century equestrian monument to Peter the Great, which is considered among the city's most recognisable symbols.
Other symbols of Saint Petersburg include the weather vane in the shape of a small ship on top of the Admiralty's golden spire and the golden angel on top of the Peter and Paul Cathedral. The Palace Bridge drawn at night is yet another symbol of the city. Every night during the navigation period from April to November, 22 bridges across the Neva and main canals are drawn to let ships pass in and out of the Baltic Sea according to a schedule. Schedule for main drawbridges across the Neva river (Official Russian schedule): Mr-spb.ru It wasn't until 2004 that the first high bridge across the Neva, which doesn't need to be drawn, Big Obukhovsky Bridge, was opened. There are hundreds of smaller bridges in Saint Petersburg spanning across numerous canals and distributaries of the Neva, some of the most important of which are the Moika, Fontanka, Griboyedov Canal, Obvodny Canal, Karpovka and Smolenka. Due to the intricate web of canals, Saint Petersburg is often called Venice of the North. The rivers and canals in the city centre are lined with granite embankments. The embankments and bridges are separated from rivers and canals by granite or cast iron parapets.
Southern suburbs of the city feature former imperial residences, including Peterhof, with majestic fountain cascades and parks, Tsarskoe Selo, with the baroque Catherine Palace and the neoclassical Alexander Palace, and Pavlovsk, which contains a domed palace of Emperor Paul and one of the largest English-style parks in Europe. Some other residences situated nearby and making part of the world heritage site, including a castle and park in Gatchina, actually belong to Leningrad Oblast rather than Saint Petersburg. Another notable suburb is Kronstadt with its 19th century fortifications and naval monuments, occupying the Kotlin Island in the Gulf of Finland.
From XX century end in a city active building and reorganisation of old historical city districts is conducted.
The authorities are compelled to transfer control of private residences in city centre to private lessors.
Also sealing building and a superstructure of buildings is spent by penthouses.
Some of these structures, such as the Saint Petersburg Commodity and Stock Exchange" have been recognised as town-planning errors.
Interior of the Hermitage Museum.
Saint Petersburg is home to more than two hundred museums, many of them hosted in historic buildings. The largest of the museums is the Hermitage Museum, featuring interiors of the former imperial residence and a vast collection of art. The Russian Museum is a large museum devoted to the Russian fine art specifically. The apartments of some famous Petersburgers, including Alexander Pushkin, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Feodor Chaliapin, Alexander Blok, Vladimir Nabokov, Anna Akhmatova, Mikhail Zoshchenko, Joseph Brodsky, as well as some palace and park ensembles of the southern suburbs and notable architectural monuments such as St. Isaac's Cathedral, have also been turned into public museums.
The Kunstkamera, with its collection established in 1714 by Peter the Great to collect curiosities from all over the world, is sometimes considered the first museum in Russia, which has evolved into the present-day Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography. The Russian Ethnography Museum, which has been split from the Russian Museum, is devoted to the cultures of the people of Russia, the former Soviet Union and Russian Empire.
Other notable museums include the Central Naval Museum hosted in the building of the former stock exchange and Zoological Museum, the Railway Museum, Museum of the Siege of Leningrad, Saint Petersburg Museum of History in the Peter and Paul Fortress and Artillery Museum, which in fact includes not only artillery items, but also a huge collection of other military equipment, uniform and decorations.
The Grand Cascade.
Saint Petersburg is home to numerous parks and gardens, some of the most famous of which are situated in the southern suburbs, including one of the largest English gardens of Europe in Pavlovsk. Sosnovka is the largest park within the limits of the city proper, occupying 240 ha. The Summer Garden is the oldest one, dating back to the early 18th century and designed in the regular style. It is situated on the southern bank of the Neva at the head of the Fontanka and is famous for its cast iron railing and marble sculptures.
Among other notable parks are the Maritime Victory Park on Krestovsky Island and the Moscow Victory Park in the south, both commemorating the victory over Nazi Germany in the Second World War, as well as the Central Park of Culture and Leisure occupying Yelagin Island and the Tauride Garden around the Tauride Palace. The most common trees grown in the parks are the English oak, Norway maple, green ash, silver birch, Siberian larch, blue spruce, crack willow, limes and poplars. Important dendrological collections dating back to the 19th century are hosted by the Saint Petersburg Botanical Garden and the Park of the Forestry Academy.
Among the city's more than fifty theaters is the world-famous Mariinsky Theater (also known as the Kirov Theater in the USSR ), home to the Mariinsky Ballet company and opera. Leading ballet dancers, such as Vaslav Nijinsky, Anna Pavlova, Rudolph Nureyev, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Galina Ulanova and Natalia Makarova, were principal stars of the Mariinsky ballet.
Dmitri Shostakovich was born and brought up in Saint Petersburg, and dedicated his Seventh Symphony to the city, calling it the "Leningrad Symphony." He wrote the symphony while in Leningrad during the German siege. The 7th symphony was premiered in 1942; its performance in the besieged Leningrad at the Bolshoy Philharmonic Hall under the baton of conductor Karl Eliasberg was heard over the radio and lifted the spirits of the survivors. In 1992 a reunion performance of the 7th Symphony by the (then) 14 survivors was played in the same hall as they done half a century ago. The Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra remained one of the best known symphony orchestras in the world under the leadership of conductors Yevgeny Mravinsky and Yuri Temirkanov.
The Imperial Choral Capella was founded and modeled after the royal courts of other European capitals.
Saint Petersburg has been home to the newest movements in popular music in the country. The first jazz band in the Soviet Union was founded here by Leonid Utyosov in the 1920s, under the patronage of Isaak Dunayevsky. The first jazz club in the Soviet Union was founded here in the 1950s, and later was named jazz club Kvadrat. In 1956 the popular ensemble Druzhba was founded by Aleksandr Bronevitsky and Edita Piekha, becoming the first popular band in the 1950s USSR. In the 1960s student rock-groups Argonavty, Kochevniki and others pioneered a series of unofficial and underground rock concerts and festivals. In 1972 Boris Grebenshchikov founded the band Aquarium, that later grew to huge popularity. Since then "Peter's rock" music style was formed.
In the 1970s many bands came out from "underground" and eventually founded the Leningrad rock club which has been providing stage to such bands as Piknik, DDT, Kino, headed by the legendary Viktor Tsoi, Igry, Mify, Zemlyane, Alisa and many other popular groups. The first Russian-style happening show Pop mekhanika, mixing over 300 people and animals on stage, was directed by the multi-talented Sergey Kuryokhin in the 1980s.
Today's Saint Petersburg boasts many notable musicians of various genres, from popular Leningrad's Sergei Shnurov and Tequilajazzz, to rock veterans Yuri Shevchuk, Vyacheslav Butusov and Mikhail Boyarsky.
The White Nights Festival in Saint Petersburg is famous for spectacular fireworks and massive show celebrating the end of school year.
Over 250 international and Russian movies were filmed in Saint Petersburg. International Movie Database Well over a thousand feature films about tsars, revolution, people and stories set in Saint Petersburg were produced worldwide, but were not filmed in the city. First film studios were founded in Saint Petersburg in the 1900s, and since the 1920s Lenfilm has been the largest film studio based in Saint Petersburg. The first foreign feature movie filmed entirely in Saint Petersburg was the 1997 production of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, starring Sophie Marceau and Sean Bean, and made by international team of British, American, French and Russian filmmakers.
The cult comedy Irony of Fate (also ÐÑÐ¾Ð½Ð¸Ñ ÑÑдÑбÑ, или С лÑгким паÑом!) is set in Saint Petersburg and pokes fun at Soviet city planning. The 1985 film White Nights received considerable Western attention for having captured genuine Leningrad street scenes at a time when filming in the Soviet Union by Western production companies was generally unheard of. Other movies include GoldenEye (1995), Midnight in Saint Petersburg (1996), and Brother (1997). Onegin (1999) is based on the Pushkin poem and showcases many tourist attractions. In addition, the Russian romantic comedy, ÐиÑÐµÑ FM, showcases the cityscape significantly, almost as if it was a main character in the film.
Several international film festivals are held annually, such as the Festival of Festivals, St. Petersburg, as well as the Message to Man International Documentary Film Festival, since its inauguration in 1988 during the White Nights.
Saint Petersburg has a longstanding and world famous tradition in literature. Dostoyevsky called it âThe most abstract and intentional city in the world," emphasizing its artificiality, but it was also a symbol of modern disorder in a changing Russia. It frequently appeared to Russian writers as a menacing and inhuman mechanism. The grotesque and often nightmarish image of the city is featured in Pushkin's last poems, the Petersburg stories of Gogol, the novels of Dostoyevsky, the verse of Alexander Blok and Osip Mandelshtam, and in the symbolist novel Petersburg by Andrey Bely. According to Lotman in his chapter, 'The Symbolism of Saint Petersburg' in Universe and the Mind, these writers were inspired from symbolism from within the city itself. The effect of life in Saint Petersburg on the plight of the poor clerk in a society obsessed with hierarchy and status also became an important theme for authors such as Pushkin, Gogol, and Dostoyevsky. Another important feature of early Saint Petersburg literature is its mythical element, which incorporates urban legends and popular ghost stories, as the stories of Pushkin and Gogol included ghosts returning to Saint Petersburg to haunt other characters as well as other fantastical elements, creating a surreal and abstract image of Saint Petersburg.
Twentieth century writers from Saint Petersburg, such as Vladimir Nabokov, Ayn Rand, Andrey Bely and Yevgeny Zamyatin, along with his apprentices, The Serapion Brothers, created entire new styles in literature and contributed new insights to the understanding of society through their experience in this city. Anna Akhmatova became an important leader for Russian poetry. Her poem Requiem focuses on the tragedies of living during the time of the Stalinist terror. Another notable 20th century writer from Saint Petersburg is Joseph Brodsky, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1987). While living in the United States, his writings in English reflected on life in Saint Petersburg from the unique perspective of being both an insider and an outsider to the city in essays such as, "A Guide to a Renamed City" and the nostalgic "In a Room and a Half". Joseph Brodsky. Less Than One: Selected Essays, 1986
FC Zenit's home Petrovsky stadium
Leningrad hosted part of the football tournament during the 1980 Summer Olympics. The 1994 Goodwill Games were held here.
The first competition here was the 1703 rowing event initiated by Peter the Great, after the victory over the Swedish fleet. Yachting events were held by the Russian Navy since the foundation of the city. Yacht clubs: St. Petersburg River Yacht Club, Neva Yacht Club, the latter is the oldest yacht club in the world. In the winter, when the sea and lake surfaces are frozen and yachts and dinghies cannot be used, local people sail on ice boats.
Equestrianism has been a long tradition, popular among the Tsars and aristocracy, as well as part of the military training. Several historic sports arenas were built for Equestrianism since the 18th century, to maintain training all year round, such as the Zimny Stadion and Konnogvardeisky Manezh among others.
Chess tradition was highlighted by the 1914 international tournament, in which the title "Grandmaster" was first formally conferred by Russian Tsar Nicholas II to five players: Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine, Tarrasch and Marshall, and which the Tsar had partially funded.
Kirov Stadium (now demolished) was one of the largest stadiums anywhere in the world, and the home to FC Zenit St. Petersburg in 1950-1993 and 1995. In 1951 the attendance of 110,000 set the record for the Soviet football. In 2007 Zenit became champions of the Russian Premier League, won the UEFA Cup 2007â08 season and the 2008 UEFA Supercup. Zenit now plays their home games at Petrovsky Stadium.
As of 2006/2007 there were 1024 kindergartens, 716 public schools and 80 vocational schools in Saint Petersburg. SPB.ru The largest of the higher education institutions are Saint Petersburg State University, enrolling approximately 32,000 undergraduate students, Saint Petersburg Polytechnical University and Herzen University. However, the universities are all federal property and don't belong to the city.
*List of consulates in Saint Petersburg
*List of museums in Saint Petersburg
*List of notable people from Saint Petersburg
*List of Saint Petersburg sister cities
*Amery, Colin, Brian Curran & Yuri Molodkovets. St. Petersburg. London: Frances Lincoln, 2006. ISBN 0711224927.
*Bater, James H. St. Petersburg: Industrialization and Change. Montreal: McGuill-Queenâs University Press, 1976. ISBN 0773502661.
*Berelowitch, Wladimir & Olga Medvedkova. Histoire de Saint-Pétersbourg. Paris: Fayard, 1996. ISBN 2213596018.
*Buckler, Julie. Mapping St. Petersburg: Imperial Text and Cityshape. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005 ISBN0691113491.
*Clark, Katerina, Petersburg, Crucible of Revolution. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995.
*Cross, Anthony (ed.). St. Petersburg, 1703-1825. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. ISBN 1403915709.
*George, Arthur L. & Elena George. St. Petersburg: Russia's Window to the Future, The First Three Centuries. Lanham: Taylor Trade Publishing, 2003. ISBN 1589790170.
*Glantz, David M. The Battle for Leningrad, 1941-1944. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002. ISBN 0700612084.
*Hellberg-Hirn, Elena. Imperial Imprints: Post-Soviet St. Petersburg. Helsinki: SKS Finnish Literature Society, 2003. ISBN 9517464916.
*Knopf Guide: Sat. Petersburg. New York: Knopf, 1995. ISBN 0679762027.
*Eyewitness Guide: St. Petersburg.
*Lincoln, W. Bruce. Sunlight at Midnight: St. Petersburg and the Rise of Modern Russia. New York: Basic Books, 2000. ISBN 0465083234.
*Orttung, Robert W. From Leningrad to St. Petersburg: Democratization in a Russian City. New York: St. Martinâs, 1995. ISBN 0312175612.
*Ruble, Blair A. Leningrad: Shaping a Soviet City. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. ISBN 0877723478.
*Shvidkovsky, Dmitry O. & Alexander Orloff. St. Petersburg: Architecture of the Tsars. New York: Abbeville Press, 1996. ISBN 0789202174.
*Volkov, Solomon. St. Petersburg: A Cultural History. New York: Free Press, 1995. ISBN 0028740521.
*St. Petersburg:Architecture of the Tsars. 360 pages. Abbeville Press, 1996. ISBN 0789202174
*Saint Petersburg: Museums, Palaces, and Historic Collections: A Guide to the Lesser Known Treasures of St. Petersburg. 2003. ISBN 1593730004.
*ÐежиÑ
овÑкий Ð . Ð. Река Ðева и ÐевÑÐºÐ°Ñ Ð³Ñба, Leningrad, ÐидÑомеÑеоиздаÑ, 1981.
* Official presentation of Saint Petersburg
* Official Portal of the City Government: Saint Petersburg
* Encyclopaedia of Saint Petersburg
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* Saint Petersburg in 1900
* Saint Petersburg, entry in the World Monuments Fund's 2008 watchlist
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Saint_Petersburg | What festival features fireworks celebrating the end of the school year? | The White Nights Festival. | data/set3/a10 | Saint_Petersburg
Saint Petersburg ( , ) is a city and a federal subject (a federal city) of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The city's other names were Petrograd ( , 1914â1924) and Leningrad ( , 1924â1991). It is often called just Petersburg ( ) and is informally known as Piter ( ).
Founded by Tsar Peter I of Russia on 27 May 1703, it was the capital of the Russian Empire for more than two hundred years (1713â1728, 1732â1918). Saint Petersburg ceased being the capital in 1918 after the Russian Revolution of 1917. Nicholas and Alexandra: An Intimate Account of the Last of the Romanovs and the Fall of Imperial Russia (Athenum, 1967) by Robert K. Massie, ASIN B000CGP8M2 (also, Ballantine Books, 2000, ISBN 0-345-43831-0 and Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, 2005, ISBN 1-57912-433-X) It is Russia's second largest city after Moscow with 4.6 million inhabitants, and over 6 million people live in its vicinity. Saint Petersburg is a major European cultural centre, and an important Russian port on the Baltic Sea.
Saint Petersburg is often described as the most Western city of Russia. V. Morozov. The Discourses of Saint Petersburg and the Shaping of a Wider Europe. Copenhagen Peace Research Institute. 2002. Ciaonet.org Among cities of the world with over one million people, Saint Petersburg is the northernmost. The Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments constitute a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Saint Petersburg is also home to The Hermitage, the largest art museum in the world. /ref> Russia's political and cultural centre for 200 years, the city is sometimes referred to in Russia as the northern capital. A large number of foreign consulates, international corporations, banks and other businesses are located in Saint Petersburg.
On 1 May 1703 (Julian calendar), during the Great Northern War, Peter the Great captured the Swedish fortress of Nyenskans on the Neva river in Ingria. A few weeks later, on 27 May 1703 (May 16, Old Style), lower on the river, on Zayachy (Hare) Island, three miles (5 km) inland from the gulf, he laid down the Peter and Paul Fortress, which became the first brick and stone building of the new city. He named the city after his patron saint, Saint Peter, the apostle. The original name was meant to sound like Dutch due to Peter's obsession with the Dutch culture. Peter the Great: His Life and World (Knopf, 1980) by Robert K. Massie, ISBN 0-394-50032-6
The city was built by conscripted serfs from all over Russia and also by Swedish prisoners of war under the supervision of Alexander Menshikov and later became the centre of Saint Petersburg Governorate. Peter moved the capital from Moscow to Saint Petersburg in 1712, before the Treaty of Nystad of 1721 ended the war.
The Bronze Horseman, monument to Peter the Great.
Palace Square, as the main square of the Russian Empire it was the setting of many events of great historical significance
Lenin statue outside the Finland station. Between 1924 and 1991 the city was known as Leningrad.
Map of Saint Petersburg, 1903.
Church of the Savior on Blood.
During the first few years of its existence the city grew spontaneously around Trinity Square on the right bank of the Neva, near the Peter and Paul Fortress. However, Saint Petersburg soon started to develop according to a plan. By 1716 Domenico Trezzini had elaborated a project whereby the city centre would be located on Vasilievsky Island and shaped by a rectangular grid of canals. The project was not completed, but is still evident in the layout of the streets. In 1716 Jean-Baptiste Alexandre Le Blond was appointed chief architect of Saint Petersburg by Peter the Great.
The style of Petrine Baroque, developed by Trezzini and other architects and exemplified by such buildings as the Menshikov Palace, Kunstkamera, Peter and Paul Cathedral, Twelve Collegia, became prominent in the city architecture of the early 18th century. In 1724 the Academy of Sciences, University and Academic Gymnasium were established in Saint Petersburg by Peter the Great.
However, in 1725 Peter died. His near-lifelong autocratic push for modernisation of Russia had met with considerable opposition from the old-fashioned Russian nobility â resulting in several attempts on his life and a treason case involving his own son. Matthew S. Anderson, Peter the Great (London: Thames and Hudson, 1978) Thus, in 1728, Peter II of Russia moved his seat back to Moscow. But four years later, in 1732, under Empress Anna of Russia, Saint Petersburg again became the capital of the Russian Empire and remained the seat of the government for 186 years.
In 1736-1737 the city suffered from catastrophic fires. In order to rebuild the damaged boroughs, in 1737 a new plan was commissioned by a committee under Burkhard Christoph von Munnich. The city was divided into five boroughs, and the city centre was moved to the Admiralty borough, situated on the east bank between the Neva and Fontanka.
It developed along three radial streets, which meet at the Admiralty and are now known as Nevsky Prospekt (which is now perceived as the main street of the city), Gorokhovaya Street and Voznesensky Prospekt. The style of Baroque dominated the city architecture during the first sixty years, culminating in the Elizabethan Baroque, represented most notably by Bartolomeo Rastrelli with such buildings as the Winter Palace. In the 1760s the Baroque architecture was succeeded by the neoclassical architecture.
The Commission of Stone Buildings of Moscow and Saint Petersburg established in 1762 ruled that no structure in the city be higher than the Winter Palace and prohibited spacing between buildings. During the reign of Catherine the Great in the 1760s-1780s the banks of the Neva were lined with granite embankments.
However, it wasn't until 1850 that it was allowed to open the first permanent bridge across the Neva, Blagoveshchensky Bridge. Before that, only pontoon bridges were allowed. Obvodny Canal (dug in 1769-1833) became the southern limit of the city.
Some of the most important neoclassical architects in Saint Petersburg (including those working within the Empire style) were Jean-Baptiste Vallin de la Mothe (Imperial Academy of Arts, Small Hermitage, Gostiny Dvor, New Holland Arch, Catholic Church of St. Catherine), Antonio Rinaldi (Marble Palace), Yury Felten (Old Hermitage, Chesme Church), Giacomo Quarenghi (Academy of Sciences, Hermitage Theatre, Yusupov Palace), Andrey Voronikhin (Mining Institute, Kazan Cathedral), Andreyan Zakharov (Admiralty building), Jean-François Thomas de Thomon (Spit of Vasilievsky Island), Carlo Rossi (Yelagin Palace, Mikhailovsky Palace, Alexandrine Theatre, Senate and Synod Buildings, General Staff Building, design of many streets and squares), Vasily Stasov (Moscow Triumphal Gate, Trinity Cathedral), Auguste de Montferrand (Saint Isaac's Cathedral, Alexander Column). The victory over Napoleonic France in the Patriotic War of 1812 was commemorated with many monuments, including Alexander Column by Montferrand, erected in 1834, and Narva Triumphal Gate.
In 1825 the suppressed Decembrist revolt against Nicholas I of Russia took place on the Senate Square in the city, a day after he assumed the throne.
By the 1840s the neoclassical architecture had given place to various romanticist styles, which were dominant until the 1890s, represented by such architects as Andrei Stackenschneider (Mariinsky Palace, Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace, Nicholas Palace, New Michael Palace) and Konstantin Thon (Moskovsky Rail Terminal). The Church of the Savior on Blood designed in the Russian revival style commemorated the place where Alexander II of Russia was assassinated in 1881.
With the emancipation of the serfs undertaken by Alexander II in 1861 and the industrial revolution the influx of former peasants into the capital increased greatly. Poor boroughs spontaneously emerged on the outskirts of the city. Saint Petersburg surpassed Moscow in population and industrial growth and grew into one of the largest industrial hubs and cities in Europe.
The Revolution of 1905 began in Saint Petersburg and spread rapidly into the provinces. With the start of World War I, the name Saint Petersburg was perceived to be too German, so in 1914 the city was renamed Petrograd. The Romanovs: The Final Chapter (Random House, 1995) by Robert K. Massie, ISBN 0-394-58048-6 and ISBN 0-679-43572-7 In 1917 the February Revolution, which put an end to the Russian monarchy, and the October Revolution, which ultimately brought Vladimir Lenin to power, broke out in Petrograd. Rex A. Wade The Russian Revolution, 1917 2005 Cambridge University Press ISBN 0521841550 The city's proximity to the border and anti-Soviet armies forced the Bolsheviks under Lenin to transfer the capital to Moscow on March 12, 1918.
In 1919 during the ensuing Russian Civil War Nikolay Yudenich advancing from Estonia was about to capture the city from the Bolsheviks, but Leon Trotsky ultimately managed to mobilise the population and make him retreat. Many people fled the city in 1917-1920 or were repressed in the Red Terror, Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe. By Robert Gellately, 2007, Random House, 720 pages. ISBN 1400040051 so its population decreased dramatically. On January 26, 1924, three days after Lenin's death, Petrograd was renamed Leningrad. For decades Leningrad was glorified by the Soviet propaganda as "the cradle of the revolution" and "the city of three revolutions", many spots related to Lenin and the revolutions, such as the cruiser Aurora, were carefully preserved. Many streets and other toponyms were renamed accordingly.
In the 1920s-1930s the poor outskirts were reconstructed into regularly planned boroughs. The constructivist architecture flourished around that time. The Soviets nationalised housing and forced many residents to share communal apartments (kommunalkas). With 68% living in shared apartments in the 1930s, Leningrad was the city with the largest number of kommunalkas. In 1935 a new general plan was outlined, whereby the city should expand to the south and its centre should move there. The constructivism was rejected in favor of the pompous Stalinist architecture. Stalin ordered the construction of the new city hall on Moskovsky Prospect thus making it the new main street of Leningrad during the Soviet rule.
Since December 1931 Leningrad has been administratively separate from Leningrad Oblast. At that time it included Leningrad Suburban District, some parts of which were transferred back to Leningrad Oblast in 1936 and turned into Vsevolozhsky District, Krasnoselsky District, Pargolovsky District and Slutsky District (renamed Pavlovsky District in 1944).
On December 1, 1934, Sergey Kirov, popular communist leader of Leningrad, was assassinated, which was used to start the Great Purge. Stalin's Terror: High Politics and Mass Repression in the Soviet Union by Barry McLoughlin and Kevin McDermott (eds). Palgrave Macmillan, 2002, p. 6 The sizeable minorities of Germans, Poles, Finns, Estonians and Latvians were almost completely expelled from Leningrad by the Soviet government during the 1930s. Martin, Terry (1998). The Origins of Soviet Ethnic Cleansing. The Journal of Modern History 70.4, 813-861.
During World War II, Leningrad was besieged by Nazi Germany and co-belligerent Finland. Siege of Leningrad. Encyclopædia Britannica The siege lasted 872 days from September 1941 to January 1944. Baldack, Richard H. "Leningrad, Siege of" World Book Encyclopedia, Chicago, 2002, vol.12, page 195 The Siege of Leningrad was one of the longest, most destructive, and most lethal sieges of major cities in modern history. It isolated the city from most supplies except those provided through the Road of Life across Lake Ladoga, and more than a million civilians died, mainly from starvation. Many others were eventually evacuated or escaped by themselves, so the city became largely depopulated. For the heroic resistance of the city and tenacity of the survivors of the Siege, in 1945 Leningrad became the first city in the Soviet Union awarded the title Hero City. In October 1946 some former Finnish territories along the northern coast of the Gulf of Finland captured in the Winter War and Continuation War were transferred from Leningrad Oblast to Leningrad and divided into Sestroretsky District and Kurortny District, including the town of Terijoki (renamed Zelenogorsk in 1948).
Leningrad and many of its suburbs were rebuilt over the post-war decades, partially according to the pre-war plans. The 1948 general plan of Leningrad featured radial urban development in the north as well as in the south. The Leningrad Metro, underground rapid transit system which was designed before the war in the 1930s, was opened in 1955 with its first seven stations decorated with marble and bronze. Meanwhile, in 1949-1951 a large number of prominent Leningrad members of the Communist Party and their families were charged with treason and intention to create an anti-Soviet organization out of their local party cell. Many were imprisoned or executed in the Leningrad Affair fabricated by the central Soviet leadership. Dmitri Volkogonov. Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy, 1996, ISBN 0761507183 Russian publication: ÐенингÑадÑкое дело â надо ли ÑÑавиÑÑ ÐºÐ°Ð²ÑÑки?: Contr-tv.ru
In 1953 Pavlovsky District of Leningrad Oblast was abolished, and parts of its territory including Pavlovsk merged with Leningrad. In 1954 the settlements Levashovo, Pargolovo and Pesochny merged with Leningrad.
After the death of Stalin the perceived ornamental excesses of the Stalinist architecture were abandoned. In the 1960s-1980s, as many new residential boroughs were built on the outskirts with few series of functionalist apartment blocks identical to each other, many families moved there from kommunalkas in the city centre in order to live in separate apartments. Uritsk was re-named Ligovo and merged with Leningrad in 1963, Lomonosov merged in 1978.
On June 12, 1991, in a referendum held on the same day as the first Russian presidential election, 54% of voters chose to restore the name "Saint Petersburg" (the change officially took effect on September 6, 1991). Many other Soviet-era toponyms in the city were also renamed soon afterwards. In the same election Anatoly Sobchak became the first democratically elected mayor of the city. Jack F. Matlock, Jr., Autopsy on an Empire: The American Ambassador's Account of the Collapse of the Soviet Union, Random House, 1995, ISBN 0679413766
By the end of 1991 the deteriorating planned economy of the collapsing Soviet Union had put the city on the verge of starvation. For the first time since World War II food rationing was introduced, and the city received humanitarian food aid from abroad. The city somewhat recovered with the market reforms in Russia. In 1995-2004 a northern section of the Metro's Kirovsko-Vyborgskaya Line was cut off by underground flooding, which was a major obstacle to the city development.
In 1996, Vladimir Yakovlev was elected as head of the Saint Petersburg City Administration. The title of the city head was changed in advance from "mayor" to "governor". In 2003, Yakovlev resigned a year before his second term expired. Valentina Matviyenko was elected governor. In 2006 she was reapproved as governor by the city legislature. The residential building had intensified again, real estate prices inflated greatly, and this situation causes many new problems for the historical part of the city.
In spite of the fact that the central part of the city is watched by UNESCO, the safety of its historical and architectural environment is in danger. Sergey Zagraevsky. Will Saint Petersburg share the same fate as Moscow? Zagraevsky.com There are still about 8000 architectural monuments in Saint Petersburg, but since 2005 the destruction of older buildings in the historical centre has continued. A number of new building projects are underway, including the Gazprom skyscraper in Okhta.
Territory of the federal subject of Saint Petersburg.
The area of Saint Petersburg city proper is . The area of the federal subject is , which contains the Saint Petersburg proper (consisting of 81 okrugs), nine suburban towns (Kolpino, Krasnoye Selo, Kronstadt, Lomonosov, Pavlovsk, Peterhof, Pushkin, Sestroretsk and Zelenogorsk) and 21 municipal settlements.
Saint Petersburg is situated on the middle taiga lowlands along the shores of the Neva Bay of the Gulf of Finland, and islands of the river delta. The largest are Vasilyevsky island (besides the artificial island between Obvodny canal and Fontanka, and Kotlin in the Neva Bay), Petrogradsky, Dekabristov and Krestovsky. The latter together with Yelagin and Kamenny island are covered mostly by parks. The Karelian Isthmus, North of the city, is a popular resort area. In the south Saint Petersburg crosses the Baltic-Ladoga Klint and meets the Izhora Plateau.
The elevation of Saint Petersburg ranges from the sea level to its highest point of at the Orekhovaya Hill in the Duderhof Heights in the south. Part of the city's territory west of Liteyny Prospekt is no higher than above sea level, and has suffered from numerous floods. Floods in Saint Petersburg are triggered by a long wave in the Baltic Sea, caused by meteorological conditions, winds and shallowness of the Neva Bay. The four most disastrous floods occurred in 1824 ( above sea-level, during which over 300 buildings were destroyed The level of flooding is measured near Saint Petersburg Mining Institute, which is normally a.s.l. ), 1924 , 1777 , 1955 and 1975 . To prevent floods, the Saint Petersburg Dam has been under construction since 1979. ÐежиÑ
овÑкий Ð . Ð. Река Ðева и ÐевÑÐºÐ°Ñ Ð³Ñба, Leningrad: ÐидÑомеÑеоиздаÑ, 1981.
Since the 18th century the terrain in the city has been raised artificially, at some places by more than , making mergers of several islands, and changing the hydrology of the city. Besides the Neva and its distributaries, other important rivers of the federal subject of Saint Petersburg are Sestra, Okhta and Izhora. The largest lake is Sestroretsky Razliv in the north, followed by Lakhtinsky Razliv, Suzdal Lakes and other smaller lakes.
Saint Petersburg's position on the latitude of ca. 60° N causes variation in day length across seasons, ranging from 5:53 to 18:50. Twilight may last all night in early summer, from mid-May to mid-July, the celebrated phenomenon known as the white nights.
Snow falling on the morning of May 14, 2008 at Srednyaya Rogatka (district in the south of St. Petersburg)
Saint Petersburg experiences a humid continental climate of the cool summer subtype (Köppen: Dfb), due to the distinct moderating influence of the Baltic Sea cyclones, with warm, humid and short summers and long, cold winters.
The average daily temperature in July is ; summer maximum is about , winter minimum is about . The record low temperature is , recorded in 1883. The average annual temperature is . The River Neva within the city limits usually freezes up in November-December, break-up occurs in April. From December to March there are 123 days average with snow cover, which reaches the average of by February. The frost-free period in the city lasts on average for about 135 days. The city has a climate slightly warmer than its suburbs. Weather conditions are quite variable all year round. See Historical weather records for Saint Petersburg (since 1932) and Historical weather in Saint Petersburg for further information.
Average annual precipitation varies across the city, averaging per year and reaching maximum in late summer. Soil moisture is almost always high because of lower evapotranspiration due to the cool climate. Air humidity is 78% on average, while overcast is 165 days a year on average.
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Saint Petersburg is the second largest city in Russia. The 2002 census recorded a population of the federal subject of 4,661,219, or 3.21% of the total population of Russia. The 2002 census recorded twenty-two ethnic groups of more than two thousand persons each. The ethnic composition was: Russian 84.72%, Ukrainian 1.87%, Belarusians 1.17%, Jewish 0.78%, Tatar 0.76%, Armenian 0.41%, Azeri 0.36%, Georgian 0.22%, Chuvash 0.13%, Polish 0.10%, and many other smaller ethnic groups, while 7.89% of the inhabitants declined to state their ethnicity.
The 20th century saw hectic ups and downs in population. From 2.4 million in 1916 it had dropped to less than 740,000 by 1920 during the Russian Revolution of 1917 and Russian Civil War. The sizeable minorities of Germans, Poles, Finns, Estonians and Latvians were almost completely expelled from Leningrad by the Soviet government during the 1930s. From 1941 to the end of 1943, population dropped from 3 million to less than 700,000, as people died in battles, starved to death during the Siege of Leningrad, or were evacuated. After the siege, some of the evacuees returned, but most influx was due to migration from other parts of the Soviet Union. The city absorbed about 3 million people in the 1950s and grew to over 5 million in the 1980s. From 1991 to 2006 the city's population decreased to the current 4.6 million, while the suburban population increased due to privatization of land and massive move to suburbs. ЧиÑÑÑкова Ð. ТÑеÑÑе ÑокÑаÑение ÑиÑленноÑÑи наÑелениÑ... и поÑледнее? ÐемоÑкоп Weekly 163 â 164, August 1â15, 2004. Russian source: "Encyclopedia of Saint Petersburg" ЧиÑÑÑков Ð. Ю. ÐаÑеление (обзоÑÐ½Ð°Ñ ÑÑаÑÑÑ). ÐнÑÐ¸ÐºÐ»Ð¾Ð¿ÐµÐ´Ð¸Ñ Ð¡Ð°Ð½ÐºÑ-ÐеÑеÑбÑÑга The birth rate remains lower than the death rate; people over 65 constitute more than twenty percent of the population; and the median age is about 40 years. Russian statistics ÐÑновнÑе показаÑели ÑоÑиалÑно-демогÑаÑиÑеÑкой ÑиÑÑаÑии в СанкÑ-ÐеÑеÑбÑÑге
People in urban Saint Petersburg live mostly in apartments. Between 1918 and the 1990s, the Soviets nationalised housing and forced residents to share communal apartments (kommunalkas). With 68% living in shared flats in the 1930s, Leningrad was the city in the USSR with the largest number of kommunalkas. Resettling residents of kommunalkas is now on the way out, albeit shared apartments are still not uncommon. As new boroughs were built on the outskirts in the 1950s-1980s, over half a million low income families eventually received free apartments, and about an additional hundred thousand condos were purchased. While economic and social activity is concentrated in the historic city centre, the richest part of Saint Petersburg, most people live in commuter areas. For the first half of 2007, the birth rate was 9.1 per 1000.
Smolny Institute, the seat of the governor.
Saint Petersburg is a federal subject of Russia. The political life of Saint Petersburg is regulated by the city charter adopted by the city legislature in 1998. The superior executive body is the Saint Petersburg City Administration, led by the governor (mayor before 1996). Saint Petersburg has a single-chamber legislature, the Saint Petersburg Legislative Assembly.
According to the federal law passed in 2004, heads of federal subjects, including the governor of Saint Petersburg, are nominated by the President of Russia and approved by local legislatures. If the legislature disapproves the nominee, it is dissolved. The current governor, Valentina Matviyenko, was approved according to the new system in December 2006. She is currently the only woman governor in the whole of Russia.
Saint Petersburg city is currently divided into eighteen districts. Saint Petersburg is also the administrative centre of Leningrad Oblast, and of the Northwestern Federal District. The Constitutional Court of Russia moved to Saint Petersburg from Moscow in May 2008.
Saint Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast, being two different federal subjects, share a number of local departments of federal executive agencies and courts, such as court of arbitration, police, FSB, postal service, drug enforcement administration, penitentiary service, federal registration service, and other federal services.
The Old Saint Petersburg Stock Exchange, or Bourse, houses the Central Naval Museum
Saint Petersburg is a major trade gateway, financial and industrial centre of Russia specialising in oil and gas trade, shipbuilding yards, aerospace industry, radio and electronics, software and computers; machine building, heavy machinery and transport, including tanks and other military equipment, mining, instrument manufacture, ferrous and nonferrous metallurgy (production of aluminium alloys), chemicals, pharmaceuticals, medical equipment, publishing and printing, food and catering, wholesale and retail, textile and apparel industries, and many other businesses. It was also home to Lessner, one of Russia's two pioneering automobile manufacturers (along with Russo-Baltic), Lessner; founded by machine tool and boiler maker G. A. Lessner in 1904, with designs by Boris Loutsky, it survived until 1910. Georgano, G. N. Cars: Early and Vintage, 1886-1930. (London: Grange-Universal, 1985)
10% of the world's power turbines are made there at the LMZ, which built over two thousand turbines for power plants across the world. Major local industries are Admiralty Shipyard, Baltic Shipyard, LOMO, Kirov Plant, Elektrosila, Izhorsky Zavod; also registered in Saint Petersburg are Sovkomflot, Petersburg Fuel Company and SIBUR among other major Russian and international companies.
The Saint Petersburg docks at dawn.
Saint Petersburg has three large cargo seaports: Bolshoi Port Saint Petersburg, Kronstadt, and Lomonosov. International cruise liners have been served at the passenger port at Morskoy Vokzal on the south-west of Vasilevsky Island. In 2008 the first two berths were opened at the New Passenger Port on the west of the island. Discoverthebaltic.com Discover the Baltic online guide to Baltic cruise ports The new port is part of the city's "Marine Facade" development project Mfspb.ru St Petersburg "Marine Facade" development project and is due to have seven berths in operation by 2010.
A complex system of riverports on both banks of the Neva river are interconnected with the system of seaports, thus making Saint Petersburg the main link between the Baltic sea and the rest of Russia through the Volga-Baltic Waterway.
The Saint Petersburg Mint (Monetny Dvor), founded in 1724, is one of the largest mints in the world, it mints Russian coins, medals and badges. Saint Petersburg is also home to the oldest and largest Russian foundry, Monumentskulptura, which made thousands of sculptures and statues that are now gracing public parks of Saint Petersburg, as well as many other cities. Monuments and bronze statues of the Czars, as well as other important historic figures and dignitaries, and other world famous monuments, such as the sculptures by Peter Clodt von Jürgensburg, Paolo Troubetzkoy, Pavel Antokolsky, and others, were made there.
In 2007 Toyota opened a Camry plant after investing 5 billion dollars in Shushary, one of the southern suburbs of Saint Petersburg. General Motors, Hyundai and Nissan have signed deals with the Russian government to build their automotive plants in Saint Petersburg too. Automotive and auto-parts industry is on the rise there during the last decade. Saint Petersburg is also known as the "beer capital" of Russia, due to the supply and quality of local water, contributing over 30% of the domestic production of beer with its five large-scale breweries including Europe's second largest brewery Baltika, Vena (both operated by BBH), Heineken Brewery, Stepan Razin (both by Heineken) and Tinkoff brewery (SUN-InBev). Saint Petersburg has the second largest construction industry in Russia, including commercial, housing and road construction.
In 2006 Saint Petersburg's city budget was 179,9 billion rubles, and is planned to double by 2012. The federal subject's gross regional product as of 2005 was 667,905.4 million Russian rubles, ranked 4th in Russia, after Moscow, Tyumen Oblast, and Moscow Oblast, or 145,503.3 rubles per capita, ranked 12th among Russia's federal subjects, contributed mostly by wholesale and retail trade and repair services (24.7%) as well as processing industry (20.9%) and transportation and telecommunications (15.1%).
The Kresty prison.
Russia historically had a high level of crime that increased significantly after the October revolution. Edward Hallett Carr The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1923, 1985 ISBN 0393301990 Google preview Perestroika-time turmoils saw additional increase of the crime level.
Saint Petersburg experiences significant levels of street crime and bribery. In addition, in recent years there has been a notable increase in racially motivated violence, especially towards tourists and foreign students. One of the well known white supremacist groups Belaya Energia (White Energy, originally comes from White Power), has reportedly been one of the main gangs involved in murdering foreign university students. Russia: Racist Attacks Plague St. Petersburg Radio Free Europe September 30, 2005
At the end of the 1980s â beginning of the 1990s, Leningrad became home to a number of organised criminal groups as Tambov Gang, Malyshev Gang, Kazan Gang and ethnic criminal groups, engaged in a racket, extortion, paying off local government, and violent clashes with each other. Russian Mafia Shakes Down the Country by Steven R. Van Hook, Santa Barbara News-Press, November 20, 1994
In 2008, a car bomb killed three people (including a four-year old child), and injured one.
After the assassinations of City Property Committee Chairman and vice-Governor Mikhail Manevich(1997), State Duma deputy Galina Starovoytova (1998), acting City Legislature Speaker Viktor Novosyolov (1999) and a number of prominent businesspeople, Saint Petersburg was dubbed Capital of Crime in the Russian press. Trumbull, Nathaniel S. (2003) The impacts of globalization on Saint Petersburg: A secondary world city in from the cold? The Annals of Regional Science 37:533â546 Powell, Bill & Brian Whitmore. The Capital Of Crime.(Saint Petersburg, Russia). Newsweek International, May 15, 2000. There were a number of movies filmed in Saint Petersburg about the life of crime; , Brother (1997) reinforcing its image as the Crime Capital of Russia.
One of the oldest and most infamous remand facilities in Saint Petersburg, Kresty prison is located near downtown.
However, crime rates in St. Petersburg have declined since the end of the 1990s; the aforementioned criminal gangs have mostly dispersed. Even the Kresty prison is no longer in use, as more modern penal institutions are being built farther from the city centre.
The decoration of Saint Petersburg Metro (Kirovsky Zavod Station).
Saint Petersburg is a major transport hub. The first Russian railway was built here, in 1837. Today, the city is the final destination of a web of intercity and suburban railways, served by five different railway terminals (Baltiysky, Finlyandsky, Ladozhsky, Moskovsky, and Vitebsky), Until 2001, the Varshavsky Rail Terminal served as a major station; it now is a railway museum. Reconstruction of the Warsaw Railway Station as well as dozens of non-terminal railway stations within the federal subject. Saint Petersburg has international railway connections to Helsinki, Finland, Berlin, Germany, and all former republics of the USSR. The Helsinki railway was built in 1870, , commutes three times a day, in a journey lasting about five and a half hours. The Moscow-Saint Petersburg Railway opened in 1851, ; the commute to Moscow now requires about four and a half to nine hours. Saint Petersburg is also served by Pulkovo International Airport, Rossiya (Pulkovo): Pulkovo Aviation Enterprise and by three smaller commercial and cargo airports in the suburbs. There is a regular, 24/7, rapid-bus transit connection between Pulkovo airport and the city centre.
The city is also served by the passenger and cargo seaports in the Neva Bay of the Gulf of Finland, Baltic Sea, the river port higher up the Neva, and tens of smaller passenger stations on both banks of the Neva river. It is a terminus of the Volga-Baltic and White Sea-Baltic waterways. In 2004 the first high bridge that doesn't need to be drawn, a long Big Obukhovsky Bridge, was opened. Meteor hydrofoils link the city centre to the coastal towns of Kronstadt, Lomonosov, Peterhof, Sestroretsk and Zelenogorsk from May through October.
Pulkovo International Airport.
Saint Petersburg has an extensive city-funded network of public transport (buses, trams, trolleybuses) and several hundred routes served by marshrutkas. Trams in Saint Petersburg used to be the main transport; in the 1980s, Leningrad had the largest tramway network in the world, but many tramway rail tracks were dismantled in the 2000s. Buses carry up to 3 million passengers daily, serving over 250 urban and a number of suburban bus routes. Saint Petersburg Metro underground rapid transit system was opened in 1955; it now has five lines with 63 stations, connecting all five railway terminals, and carrying 3.4 million passengers daily. Metro stations are decorated in marble and bronze.
Traffic jams are common in the city, because of high daily traffic volumes between the commuter boroughs and the city centre, intercity traffic, and at times excessive snow in winter. Five segments of the Saint Petersburg Ring Road were opened between 2002 and 2006, and full ring is planned to open in 2010.
Saint Petersburg is part of the important transport corridor linking Scandinavia to Russia and Eastern Europe. The city is a node of the international European routes E18 towards Helsinki, E20 towards Tallinn, E95 towards Pskov, Kiev and Odessa and E105 towards Petrozavodsk, Murmansk and Kirkenes (north) and towards Moscow and Kharkiv (south).
Kazan Cathedral
Griboyedov Canal
A bridge over the river Neva
As of now, Saint Petersburg has no skyscrapers and a relatively low skyline. Current regulations forbid construction of high buildings in the city centre. The 310 metre tall Saint Petersburg TV Tower is the tallest structure in the city, while the 122.5 m Peter and Paul Cathedral is by far the highest building. However, there is a controversial project endorsed by the city authorities and known as the Ohkta Centre to build a 396 m supertall skyscraper. In 2008 the World Monuments Fund included the Saint Petersburg historic skyline within the watch list of 100 most endangered sites due to the expected construction, which threatens to alter it drastically.
Unlike in Moscow, in Saint Petersburg the historic architecture of the city centre, mostly consisting of Baroque and neoclassical buildings of the 18th and 19th centuries, has been largely preserved, although a number of buildings were demolished after the Bolsheviks' seizure of power, during the Siege of Leningrad and in recent years. The oldest of the remaining building is a wooden house built for Peter I in 1703 on the shore of the Neva near Trinity Square. Since 1991 the Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments in Saint Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast have been listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.
The ensemble of Peter and Paul Fortress with the Peter and Paul Cathedral takes dominant position on Zayachy Island along the right bank of the River Neva. Each noon a cannon fires a blank shot from the fortress. The Saint Petersburg Mosque, the largest mosque in Europe when opened in 1913, is situated on the right bank nearby. The spit of Vasilievsky Island, which splits the river into two largest armlets, the Bolshaya Neva and Malaya Neva, is connected to the northern bank (Petrogradsky Island) via the Exchange Bridge and occupied by the Old Saint Petersburg Stock Exchange and Rostral Columns. The southern coast of Vasilievsky Island along the Bolshaya Neva features some of the city's oldest buildings, dating from the 18th century, including the Kunstkamera, Twelve Collegia, Menshikov Palace and Imperial Academy of Arts. It hosts one of two campuses of Saint Petersburg State University.
On the southern, left bank of the Neva, connected to the spit of Vasilievsky Island via the Palace Bridge, lie the Admiralty Building, the vast Hermitage Museum complex stretching along the Palace Embankment, which includes the baroque Winter Palace, former official residence of Russian emperors, as well as the neoclassical Marble Palace. The Winter Palace faces Palace Square, the city's main square with the Alexander Column.
Nevsky Prospekt, also situated on the left bank of the Neva, is the main avenue in the city. It starts at the Admiralty and runs eastwards next to Palace Square. Nevsky Prospekt crosses the Moika (Green Bridge), Griboyedov Canal (Kazansky Bridge), Garden Street, the Fontanka (Anichkov Bridge), meets Liteyny Prospekt and proceeds to Uprising Square near the Moskovsky railway station, where it meets Ligovsky Prospekt and turns to the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. The Passage, Catholic Church of St. Catherine, Book House (former Singer Manufacturing Company Building in the Art Nouveau style), Grand Hotel Europe, Lutheran Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, Gostiny Dvor, Russian National Library, Alexandrine Theatre behind Mikeshin's statue of Catherine the Great, Kazan Cathedral, Stroganov Palace, Anichkov Palace and Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace are all situated along that avenue.
The Alexander Nevsky Lavra, intended to house the relics of St. Alexander Nevsky, is an important centre of Christian education in Russia. It also contains the Tikhvin Cemetery with graves of many notable Petersburgers.
On the territory between the Neva and Nevsky Prospekt the Church of the Savior on Blood, Mikhailovsky Palace housing the Russian Museum, Field of Mars, St. Michael's Castle, Summer Garden, Tauride Palace, Smolny Institute and Smolny Convent are located.
Many notable landmarks are situated to the west and south of the Admiralty Building, including the Trinity Cathedral, Mariinsky Palace, Hotel Astoria, famous Mariinsky Theatre, New Holland Island, Saint Isaac's Cathedral, the largest in the city, and Decembrists Square with the Bronze Horseman, 18th century equestrian monument to Peter the Great, which is considered among the city's most recognisable symbols.
Other symbols of Saint Petersburg include the weather vane in the shape of a small ship on top of the Admiralty's golden spire and the golden angel on top of the Peter and Paul Cathedral. The Palace Bridge drawn at night is yet another symbol of the city. Every night during the navigation period from April to November, 22 bridges across the Neva and main canals are drawn to let ships pass in and out of the Baltic Sea according to a schedule. Schedule for main drawbridges across the Neva river (Official Russian schedule): Mr-spb.ru It wasn't until 2004 that the first high bridge across the Neva, which doesn't need to be drawn, Big Obukhovsky Bridge, was opened. There are hundreds of smaller bridges in Saint Petersburg spanning across numerous canals and distributaries of the Neva, some of the most important of which are the Moika, Fontanka, Griboyedov Canal, Obvodny Canal, Karpovka and Smolenka. Due to the intricate web of canals, Saint Petersburg is often called Venice of the North. The rivers and canals in the city centre are lined with granite embankments. The embankments and bridges are separated from rivers and canals by granite or cast iron parapets.
Southern suburbs of the city feature former imperial residences, including Peterhof, with majestic fountain cascades and parks, Tsarskoe Selo, with the baroque Catherine Palace and the neoclassical Alexander Palace, and Pavlovsk, which contains a domed palace of Emperor Paul and one of the largest English-style parks in Europe. Some other residences situated nearby and making part of the world heritage site, including a castle and park in Gatchina, actually belong to Leningrad Oblast rather than Saint Petersburg. Another notable suburb is Kronstadt with its 19th century fortifications and naval monuments, occupying the Kotlin Island in the Gulf of Finland.
From XX century end in a city active building and reorganisation of old historical city districts is conducted.
The authorities are compelled to transfer control of private residences in city centre to private lessors.
Also sealing building and a superstructure of buildings is spent by penthouses.
Some of these structures, such as the Saint Petersburg Commodity and Stock Exchange" have been recognised as town-planning errors.
Interior of the Hermitage Museum.
Saint Petersburg is home to more than two hundred museums, many of them hosted in historic buildings. The largest of the museums is the Hermitage Museum, featuring interiors of the former imperial residence and a vast collection of art. The Russian Museum is a large museum devoted to the Russian fine art specifically. The apartments of some famous Petersburgers, including Alexander Pushkin, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Feodor Chaliapin, Alexander Blok, Vladimir Nabokov, Anna Akhmatova, Mikhail Zoshchenko, Joseph Brodsky, as well as some palace and park ensembles of the southern suburbs and notable architectural monuments such as St. Isaac's Cathedral, have also been turned into public museums.
The Kunstkamera, with its collection established in 1714 by Peter the Great to collect curiosities from all over the world, is sometimes considered the first museum in Russia, which has evolved into the present-day Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography. The Russian Ethnography Museum, which has been split from the Russian Museum, is devoted to the cultures of the people of Russia, the former Soviet Union and Russian Empire.
Other notable museums include the Central Naval Museum hosted in the building of the former stock exchange and Zoological Museum, the Railway Museum, Museum of the Siege of Leningrad, Saint Petersburg Museum of History in the Peter and Paul Fortress and Artillery Museum, which in fact includes not only artillery items, but also a huge collection of other military equipment, uniform and decorations.
The Grand Cascade.
Saint Petersburg is home to numerous parks and gardens, some of the most famous of which are situated in the southern suburbs, including one of the largest English gardens of Europe in Pavlovsk. Sosnovka is the largest park within the limits of the city proper, occupying 240 ha. The Summer Garden is the oldest one, dating back to the early 18th century and designed in the regular style. It is situated on the southern bank of the Neva at the head of the Fontanka and is famous for its cast iron railing and marble sculptures.
Among other notable parks are the Maritime Victory Park on Krestovsky Island and the Moscow Victory Park in the south, both commemorating the victory over Nazi Germany in the Second World War, as well as the Central Park of Culture and Leisure occupying Yelagin Island and the Tauride Garden around the Tauride Palace. The most common trees grown in the parks are the English oak, Norway maple, green ash, silver birch, Siberian larch, blue spruce, crack willow, limes and poplars. Important dendrological collections dating back to the 19th century are hosted by the Saint Petersburg Botanical Garden and the Park of the Forestry Academy.
Among the city's more than fifty theaters is the world-famous Mariinsky Theater (also known as the Kirov Theater in the USSR ), home to the Mariinsky Ballet company and opera. Leading ballet dancers, such as Vaslav Nijinsky, Anna Pavlova, Rudolph Nureyev, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Galina Ulanova and Natalia Makarova, were principal stars of the Mariinsky ballet.
Dmitri Shostakovich was born and brought up in Saint Petersburg, and dedicated his Seventh Symphony to the city, calling it the "Leningrad Symphony." He wrote the symphony while in Leningrad during the German siege. The 7th symphony was premiered in 1942; its performance in the besieged Leningrad at the Bolshoy Philharmonic Hall under the baton of conductor Karl Eliasberg was heard over the radio and lifted the spirits of the survivors. In 1992 a reunion performance of the 7th Symphony by the (then) 14 survivors was played in the same hall as they done half a century ago. The Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra remained one of the best known symphony orchestras in the world under the leadership of conductors Yevgeny Mravinsky and Yuri Temirkanov.
The Imperial Choral Capella was founded and modeled after the royal courts of other European capitals.
Saint Petersburg has been home to the newest movements in popular music in the country. The first jazz band in the Soviet Union was founded here by Leonid Utyosov in the 1920s, under the patronage of Isaak Dunayevsky. The first jazz club in the Soviet Union was founded here in the 1950s, and later was named jazz club Kvadrat. In 1956 the popular ensemble Druzhba was founded by Aleksandr Bronevitsky and Edita Piekha, becoming the first popular band in the 1950s USSR. In the 1960s student rock-groups Argonavty, Kochevniki and others pioneered a series of unofficial and underground rock concerts and festivals. In 1972 Boris Grebenshchikov founded the band Aquarium, that later grew to huge popularity. Since then "Peter's rock" music style was formed.
In the 1970s many bands came out from "underground" and eventually founded the Leningrad rock club which has been providing stage to such bands as Piknik, DDT, Kino, headed by the legendary Viktor Tsoi, Igry, Mify, Zemlyane, Alisa and many other popular groups. The first Russian-style happening show Pop mekhanika, mixing over 300 people and animals on stage, was directed by the multi-talented Sergey Kuryokhin in the 1980s.
Today's Saint Petersburg boasts many notable musicians of various genres, from popular Leningrad's Sergei Shnurov and Tequilajazzz, to rock veterans Yuri Shevchuk, Vyacheslav Butusov and Mikhail Boyarsky.
The White Nights Festival in Saint Petersburg is famous for spectacular fireworks and massive show celebrating the end of school year.
Over 250 international and Russian movies were filmed in Saint Petersburg. International Movie Database Well over a thousand feature films about tsars, revolution, people and stories set in Saint Petersburg were produced worldwide, but were not filmed in the city. First film studios were founded in Saint Petersburg in the 1900s, and since the 1920s Lenfilm has been the largest film studio based in Saint Petersburg. The first foreign feature movie filmed entirely in Saint Petersburg was the 1997 production of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, starring Sophie Marceau and Sean Bean, and made by international team of British, American, French and Russian filmmakers.
The cult comedy Irony of Fate (also ÐÑÐ¾Ð½Ð¸Ñ ÑÑдÑбÑ, или С лÑгким паÑом!) is set in Saint Petersburg and pokes fun at Soviet city planning. The 1985 film White Nights received considerable Western attention for having captured genuine Leningrad street scenes at a time when filming in the Soviet Union by Western production companies was generally unheard of. Other movies include GoldenEye (1995), Midnight in Saint Petersburg (1996), and Brother (1997). Onegin (1999) is based on the Pushkin poem and showcases many tourist attractions. In addition, the Russian romantic comedy, ÐиÑÐµÑ FM, showcases the cityscape significantly, almost as if it was a main character in the film.
Several international film festivals are held annually, such as the Festival of Festivals, St. Petersburg, as well as the Message to Man International Documentary Film Festival, since its inauguration in 1988 during the White Nights.
Saint Petersburg has a longstanding and world famous tradition in literature. Dostoyevsky called it âThe most abstract and intentional city in the world," emphasizing its artificiality, but it was also a symbol of modern disorder in a changing Russia. It frequently appeared to Russian writers as a menacing and inhuman mechanism. The grotesque and often nightmarish image of the city is featured in Pushkin's last poems, the Petersburg stories of Gogol, the novels of Dostoyevsky, the verse of Alexander Blok and Osip Mandelshtam, and in the symbolist novel Petersburg by Andrey Bely. According to Lotman in his chapter, 'The Symbolism of Saint Petersburg' in Universe and the Mind, these writers were inspired from symbolism from within the city itself. The effect of life in Saint Petersburg on the plight of the poor clerk in a society obsessed with hierarchy and status also became an important theme for authors such as Pushkin, Gogol, and Dostoyevsky. Another important feature of early Saint Petersburg literature is its mythical element, which incorporates urban legends and popular ghost stories, as the stories of Pushkin and Gogol included ghosts returning to Saint Petersburg to haunt other characters as well as other fantastical elements, creating a surreal and abstract image of Saint Petersburg.
Twentieth century writers from Saint Petersburg, such as Vladimir Nabokov, Ayn Rand, Andrey Bely and Yevgeny Zamyatin, along with his apprentices, The Serapion Brothers, created entire new styles in literature and contributed new insights to the understanding of society through their experience in this city. Anna Akhmatova became an important leader for Russian poetry. Her poem Requiem focuses on the tragedies of living during the time of the Stalinist terror. Another notable 20th century writer from Saint Petersburg is Joseph Brodsky, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1987). While living in the United States, his writings in English reflected on life in Saint Petersburg from the unique perspective of being both an insider and an outsider to the city in essays such as, "A Guide to a Renamed City" and the nostalgic "In a Room and a Half". Joseph Brodsky. Less Than One: Selected Essays, 1986
FC Zenit's home Petrovsky stadium
Leningrad hosted part of the football tournament during the 1980 Summer Olympics. The 1994 Goodwill Games were held here.
The first competition here was the 1703 rowing event initiated by Peter the Great, after the victory over the Swedish fleet. Yachting events were held by the Russian Navy since the foundation of the city. Yacht clubs: St. Petersburg River Yacht Club, Neva Yacht Club, the latter is the oldest yacht club in the world. In the winter, when the sea and lake surfaces are frozen and yachts and dinghies cannot be used, local people sail on ice boats.
Equestrianism has been a long tradition, popular among the Tsars and aristocracy, as well as part of the military training. Several historic sports arenas were built for Equestrianism since the 18th century, to maintain training all year round, such as the Zimny Stadion and Konnogvardeisky Manezh among others.
Chess tradition was highlighted by the 1914 international tournament, in which the title "Grandmaster" was first formally conferred by Russian Tsar Nicholas II to five players: Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine, Tarrasch and Marshall, and which the Tsar had partially funded.
Kirov Stadium (now demolished) was one of the largest stadiums anywhere in the world, and the home to FC Zenit St. Petersburg in 1950-1993 and 1995. In 1951 the attendance of 110,000 set the record for the Soviet football. In 2007 Zenit became champions of the Russian Premier League, won the UEFA Cup 2007â08 season and the 2008 UEFA Supercup. Zenit now plays their home games at Petrovsky Stadium.
As of 2006/2007 there were 1024 kindergartens, 716 public schools and 80 vocational schools in Saint Petersburg. SPB.ru The largest of the higher education institutions are Saint Petersburg State University, enrolling approximately 32,000 undergraduate students, Saint Petersburg Polytechnical University and Herzen University. However, the universities are all federal property and don't belong to the city.
*List of consulates in Saint Petersburg
*List of museums in Saint Petersburg
*List of notable people from Saint Petersburg
*List of Saint Petersburg sister cities
*Amery, Colin, Brian Curran & Yuri Molodkovets. St. Petersburg. London: Frances Lincoln, 2006. ISBN 0711224927.
*Bater, James H. St. Petersburg: Industrialization and Change. Montreal: McGuill-Queenâs University Press, 1976. ISBN 0773502661.
*Berelowitch, Wladimir & Olga Medvedkova. Histoire de Saint-Pétersbourg. Paris: Fayard, 1996. ISBN 2213596018.
*Buckler, Julie. Mapping St. Petersburg: Imperial Text and Cityshape. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005 ISBN0691113491.
*Clark, Katerina, Petersburg, Crucible of Revolution. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995.
*Cross, Anthony (ed.). St. Petersburg, 1703-1825. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. ISBN 1403915709.
*George, Arthur L. & Elena George. St. Petersburg: Russia's Window to the Future, The First Three Centuries. Lanham: Taylor Trade Publishing, 2003. ISBN 1589790170.
*Glantz, David M. The Battle for Leningrad, 1941-1944. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002. ISBN 0700612084.
*Hellberg-Hirn, Elena. Imperial Imprints: Post-Soviet St. Petersburg. Helsinki: SKS Finnish Literature Society, 2003. ISBN 9517464916.
*Knopf Guide: Sat. Petersburg. New York: Knopf, 1995. ISBN 0679762027.
*Eyewitness Guide: St. Petersburg.
*Lincoln, W. Bruce. Sunlight at Midnight: St. Petersburg and the Rise of Modern Russia. New York: Basic Books, 2000. ISBN 0465083234.
*Orttung, Robert W. From Leningrad to St. Petersburg: Democratization in a Russian City. New York: St. Martinâs, 1995. ISBN 0312175612.
*Ruble, Blair A. Leningrad: Shaping a Soviet City. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. ISBN 0877723478.
*Shvidkovsky, Dmitry O. & Alexander Orloff. St. Petersburg: Architecture of the Tsars. New York: Abbeville Press, 1996. ISBN 0789202174.
*Volkov, Solomon. St. Petersburg: A Cultural History. New York: Free Press, 1995. ISBN 0028740521.
*St. Petersburg:Architecture of the Tsars. 360 pages. Abbeville Press, 1996. ISBN 0789202174
*Saint Petersburg: Museums, Palaces, and Historic Collections: A Guide to the Lesser Known Treasures of St. Petersburg. 2003. ISBN 1593730004.
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* Official presentation of Saint Petersburg
* Official Portal of the City Government: Saint Petersburg
* Encyclopaedia of Saint Petersburg
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* Saint Petersburg in 1900
* Saint Petersburg, entry in the World Monuments Fund's 2008 watchlist
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Saint_Petersburg | Where do most people in urban Saint Petersburg live? | apartments | data/set3/a10 | Saint_Petersburg
Saint Petersburg ( , ) is a city and a federal subject (a federal city) of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The city's other names were Petrograd ( , 1914â1924) and Leningrad ( , 1924â1991). It is often called just Petersburg ( ) and is informally known as Piter ( ).
Founded by Tsar Peter I of Russia on 27 May 1703, it was the capital of the Russian Empire for more than two hundred years (1713â1728, 1732â1918). Saint Petersburg ceased being the capital in 1918 after the Russian Revolution of 1917. Nicholas and Alexandra: An Intimate Account of the Last of the Romanovs and the Fall of Imperial Russia (Athenum, 1967) by Robert K. Massie, ASIN B000CGP8M2 (also, Ballantine Books, 2000, ISBN 0-345-43831-0 and Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, 2005, ISBN 1-57912-433-X) It is Russia's second largest city after Moscow with 4.6 million inhabitants, and over 6 million people live in its vicinity. Saint Petersburg is a major European cultural centre, and an important Russian port on the Baltic Sea.
Saint Petersburg is often described as the most Western city of Russia. V. Morozov. The Discourses of Saint Petersburg and the Shaping of a Wider Europe. Copenhagen Peace Research Institute. 2002. Ciaonet.org Among cities of the world with over one million people, Saint Petersburg is the northernmost. The Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments constitute a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Saint Petersburg is also home to The Hermitage, the largest art museum in the world. /ref> Russia's political and cultural centre for 200 years, the city is sometimes referred to in Russia as the northern capital. A large number of foreign consulates, international corporations, banks and other businesses are located in Saint Petersburg.
On 1 May 1703 (Julian calendar), during the Great Northern War, Peter the Great captured the Swedish fortress of Nyenskans on the Neva river in Ingria. A few weeks later, on 27 May 1703 (May 16, Old Style), lower on the river, on Zayachy (Hare) Island, three miles (5 km) inland from the gulf, he laid down the Peter and Paul Fortress, which became the first brick and stone building of the new city. He named the city after his patron saint, Saint Peter, the apostle. The original name was meant to sound like Dutch due to Peter's obsession with the Dutch culture. Peter the Great: His Life and World (Knopf, 1980) by Robert K. Massie, ISBN 0-394-50032-6
The city was built by conscripted serfs from all over Russia and also by Swedish prisoners of war under the supervision of Alexander Menshikov and later became the centre of Saint Petersburg Governorate. Peter moved the capital from Moscow to Saint Petersburg in 1712, before the Treaty of Nystad of 1721 ended the war.
The Bronze Horseman, monument to Peter the Great.
Palace Square, as the main square of the Russian Empire it was the setting of many events of great historical significance
Lenin statue outside the Finland station. Between 1924 and 1991 the city was known as Leningrad.
Map of Saint Petersburg, 1903.
Church of the Savior on Blood.
During the first few years of its existence the city grew spontaneously around Trinity Square on the right bank of the Neva, near the Peter and Paul Fortress. However, Saint Petersburg soon started to develop according to a plan. By 1716 Domenico Trezzini had elaborated a project whereby the city centre would be located on Vasilievsky Island and shaped by a rectangular grid of canals. The project was not completed, but is still evident in the layout of the streets. In 1716 Jean-Baptiste Alexandre Le Blond was appointed chief architect of Saint Petersburg by Peter the Great.
The style of Petrine Baroque, developed by Trezzini and other architects and exemplified by such buildings as the Menshikov Palace, Kunstkamera, Peter and Paul Cathedral, Twelve Collegia, became prominent in the city architecture of the early 18th century. In 1724 the Academy of Sciences, University and Academic Gymnasium were established in Saint Petersburg by Peter the Great.
However, in 1725 Peter died. His near-lifelong autocratic push for modernisation of Russia had met with considerable opposition from the old-fashioned Russian nobility â resulting in several attempts on his life and a treason case involving his own son. Matthew S. Anderson, Peter the Great (London: Thames and Hudson, 1978) Thus, in 1728, Peter II of Russia moved his seat back to Moscow. But four years later, in 1732, under Empress Anna of Russia, Saint Petersburg again became the capital of the Russian Empire and remained the seat of the government for 186 years.
In 1736-1737 the city suffered from catastrophic fires. In order to rebuild the damaged boroughs, in 1737 a new plan was commissioned by a committee under Burkhard Christoph von Munnich. The city was divided into five boroughs, and the city centre was moved to the Admiralty borough, situated on the east bank between the Neva and Fontanka.
It developed along three radial streets, which meet at the Admiralty and are now known as Nevsky Prospekt (which is now perceived as the main street of the city), Gorokhovaya Street and Voznesensky Prospekt. The style of Baroque dominated the city architecture during the first sixty years, culminating in the Elizabethan Baroque, represented most notably by Bartolomeo Rastrelli with such buildings as the Winter Palace. In the 1760s the Baroque architecture was succeeded by the neoclassical architecture.
The Commission of Stone Buildings of Moscow and Saint Petersburg established in 1762 ruled that no structure in the city be higher than the Winter Palace and prohibited spacing between buildings. During the reign of Catherine the Great in the 1760s-1780s the banks of the Neva were lined with granite embankments.
However, it wasn't until 1850 that it was allowed to open the first permanent bridge across the Neva, Blagoveshchensky Bridge. Before that, only pontoon bridges were allowed. Obvodny Canal (dug in 1769-1833) became the southern limit of the city.
Some of the most important neoclassical architects in Saint Petersburg (including those working within the Empire style) were Jean-Baptiste Vallin de la Mothe (Imperial Academy of Arts, Small Hermitage, Gostiny Dvor, New Holland Arch, Catholic Church of St. Catherine), Antonio Rinaldi (Marble Palace), Yury Felten (Old Hermitage, Chesme Church), Giacomo Quarenghi (Academy of Sciences, Hermitage Theatre, Yusupov Palace), Andrey Voronikhin (Mining Institute, Kazan Cathedral), Andreyan Zakharov (Admiralty building), Jean-François Thomas de Thomon (Spit of Vasilievsky Island), Carlo Rossi (Yelagin Palace, Mikhailovsky Palace, Alexandrine Theatre, Senate and Synod Buildings, General Staff Building, design of many streets and squares), Vasily Stasov (Moscow Triumphal Gate, Trinity Cathedral), Auguste de Montferrand (Saint Isaac's Cathedral, Alexander Column). The victory over Napoleonic France in the Patriotic War of 1812 was commemorated with many monuments, including Alexander Column by Montferrand, erected in 1834, and Narva Triumphal Gate.
In 1825 the suppressed Decembrist revolt against Nicholas I of Russia took place on the Senate Square in the city, a day after he assumed the throne.
By the 1840s the neoclassical architecture had given place to various romanticist styles, which were dominant until the 1890s, represented by such architects as Andrei Stackenschneider (Mariinsky Palace, Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace, Nicholas Palace, New Michael Palace) and Konstantin Thon (Moskovsky Rail Terminal). The Church of the Savior on Blood designed in the Russian revival style commemorated the place where Alexander II of Russia was assassinated in 1881.
With the emancipation of the serfs undertaken by Alexander II in 1861 and the industrial revolution the influx of former peasants into the capital increased greatly. Poor boroughs spontaneously emerged on the outskirts of the city. Saint Petersburg surpassed Moscow in population and industrial growth and grew into one of the largest industrial hubs and cities in Europe.
The Revolution of 1905 began in Saint Petersburg and spread rapidly into the provinces. With the start of World War I, the name Saint Petersburg was perceived to be too German, so in 1914 the city was renamed Petrograd. The Romanovs: The Final Chapter (Random House, 1995) by Robert K. Massie, ISBN 0-394-58048-6 and ISBN 0-679-43572-7 In 1917 the February Revolution, which put an end to the Russian monarchy, and the October Revolution, which ultimately brought Vladimir Lenin to power, broke out in Petrograd. Rex A. Wade The Russian Revolution, 1917 2005 Cambridge University Press ISBN 0521841550 The city's proximity to the border and anti-Soviet armies forced the Bolsheviks under Lenin to transfer the capital to Moscow on March 12, 1918.
In 1919 during the ensuing Russian Civil War Nikolay Yudenich advancing from Estonia was about to capture the city from the Bolsheviks, but Leon Trotsky ultimately managed to mobilise the population and make him retreat. Many people fled the city in 1917-1920 or were repressed in the Red Terror, Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe. By Robert Gellately, 2007, Random House, 720 pages. ISBN 1400040051 so its population decreased dramatically. On January 26, 1924, three days after Lenin's death, Petrograd was renamed Leningrad. For decades Leningrad was glorified by the Soviet propaganda as "the cradle of the revolution" and "the city of three revolutions", many spots related to Lenin and the revolutions, such as the cruiser Aurora, were carefully preserved. Many streets and other toponyms were renamed accordingly.
In the 1920s-1930s the poor outskirts were reconstructed into regularly planned boroughs. The constructivist architecture flourished around that time. The Soviets nationalised housing and forced many residents to share communal apartments (kommunalkas). With 68% living in shared apartments in the 1930s, Leningrad was the city with the largest number of kommunalkas. In 1935 a new general plan was outlined, whereby the city should expand to the south and its centre should move there. The constructivism was rejected in favor of the pompous Stalinist architecture. Stalin ordered the construction of the new city hall on Moskovsky Prospect thus making it the new main street of Leningrad during the Soviet rule.
Since December 1931 Leningrad has been administratively separate from Leningrad Oblast. At that time it included Leningrad Suburban District, some parts of which were transferred back to Leningrad Oblast in 1936 and turned into Vsevolozhsky District, Krasnoselsky District, Pargolovsky District and Slutsky District (renamed Pavlovsky District in 1944).
On December 1, 1934, Sergey Kirov, popular communist leader of Leningrad, was assassinated, which was used to start the Great Purge. Stalin's Terror: High Politics and Mass Repression in the Soviet Union by Barry McLoughlin and Kevin McDermott (eds). Palgrave Macmillan, 2002, p. 6 The sizeable minorities of Germans, Poles, Finns, Estonians and Latvians were almost completely expelled from Leningrad by the Soviet government during the 1930s. Martin, Terry (1998). The Origins of Soviet Ethnic Cleansing. The Journal of Modern History 70.4, 813-861.
During World War II, Leningrad was besieged by Nazi Germany and co-belligerent Finland. Siege of Leningrad. Encyclopædia Britannica The siege lasted 872 days from September 1941 to January 1944. Baldack, Richard H. "Leningrad, Siege of" World Book Encyclopedia, Chicago, 2002, vol.12, page 195 The Siege of Leningrad was one of the longest, most destructive, and most lethal sieges of major cities in modern history. It isolated the city from most supplies except those provided through the Road of Life across Lake Ladoga, and more than a million civilians died, mainly from starvation. Many others were eventually evacuated or escaped by themselves, so the city became largely depopulated. For the heroic resistance of the city and tenacity of the survivors of the Siege, in 1945 Leningrad became the first city in the Soviet Union awarded the title Hero City. In October 1946 some former Finnish territories along the northern coast of the Gulf of Finland captured in the Winter War and Continuation War were transferred from Leningrad Oblast to Leningrad and divided into Sestroretsky District and Kurortny District, including the town of Terijoki (renamed Zelenogorsk in 1948).
Leningrad and many of its suburbs were rebuilt over the post-war decades, partially according to the pre-war plans. The 1948 general plan of Leningrad featured radial urban development in the north as well as in the south. The Leningrad Metro, underground rapid transit system which was designed before the war in the 1930s, was opened in 1955 with its first seven stations decorated with marble and bronze. Meanwhile, in 1949-1951 a large number of prominent Leningrad members of the Communist Party and their families were charged with treason and intention to create an anti-Soviet organization out of their local party cell. Many were imprisoned or executed in the Leningrad Affair fabricated by the central Soviet leadership. Dmitri Volkogonov. Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy, 1996, ISBN 0761507183 Russian publication: ÐенингÑадÑкое дело â надо ли ÑÑавиÑÑ ÐºÐ°Ð²ÑÑки?: Contr-tv.ru
In 1953 Pavlovsky District of Leningrad Oblast was abolished, and parts of its territory including Pavlovsk merged with Leningrad. In 1954 the settlements Levashovo, Pargolovo and Pesochny merged with Leningrad.
After the death of Stalin the perceived ornamental excesses of the Stalinist architecture were abandoned. In the 1960s-1980s, as many new residential boroughs were built on the outskirts with few series of functionalist apartment blocks identical to each other, many families moved there from kommunalkas in the city centre in order to live in separate apartments. Uritsk was re-named Ligovo and merged with Leningrad in 1963, Lomonosov merged in 1978.
On June 12, 1991, in a referendum held on the same day as the first Russian presidential election, 54% of voters chose to restore the name "Saint Petersburg" (the change officially took effect on September 6, 1991). Many other Soviet-era toponyms in the city were also renamed soon afterwards. In the same election Anatoly Sobchak became the first democratically elected mayor of the city. Jack F. Matlock, Jr., Autopsy on an Empire: The American Ambassador's Account of the Collapse of the Soviet Union, Random House, 1995, ISBN 0679413766
By the end of 1991 the deteriorating planned economy of the collapsing Soviet Union had put the city on the verge of starvation. For the first time since World War II food rationing was introduced, and the city received humanitarian food aid from abroad. The city somewhat recovered with the market reforms in Russia. In 1995-2004 a northern section of the Metro's Kirovsko-Vyborgskaya Line was cut off by underground flooding, which was a major obstacle to the city development.
In 1996, Vladimir Yakovlev was elected as head of the Saint Petersburg City Administration. The title of the city head was changed in advance from "mayor" to "governor". In 2003, Yakovlev resigned a year before his second term expired. Valentina Matviyenko was elected governor. In 2006 she was reapproved as governor by the city legislature. The residential building had intensified again, real estate prices inflated greatly, and this situation causes many new problems for the historical part of the city.
In spite of the fact that the central part of the city is watched by UNESCO, the safety of its historical and architectural environment is in danger. Sergey Zagraevsky. Will Saint Petersburg share the same fate as Moscow? Zagraevsky.com There are still about 8000 architectural monuments in Saint Petersburg, but since 2005 the destruction of older buildings in the historical centre has continued. A number of new building projects are underway, including the Gazprom skyscraper in Okhta.
Territory of the federal subject of Saint Petersburg.
The area of Saint Petersburg city proper is . The area of the federal subject is , which contains the Saint Petersburg proper (consisting of 81 okrugs), nine suburban towns (Kolpino, Krasnoye Selo, Kronstadt, Lomonosov, Pavlovsk, Peterhof, Pushkin, Sestroretsk and Zelenogorsk) and 21 municipal settlements.
Saint Petersburg is situated on the middle taiga lowlands along the shores of the Neva Bay of the Gulf of Finland, and islands of the river delta. The largest are Vasilyevsky island (besides the artificial island between Obvodny canal and Fontanka, and Kotlin in the Neva Bay), Petrogradsky, Dekabristov and Krestovsky. The latter together with Yelagin and Kamenny island are covered mostly by parks. The Karelian Isthmus, North of the city, is a popular resort area. In the south Saint Petersburg crosses the Baltic-Ladoga Klint and meets the Izhora Plateau.
The elevation of Saint Petersburg ranges from the sea level to its highest point of at the Orekhovaya Hill in the Duderhof Heights in the south. Part of the city's territory west of Liteyny Prospekt is no higher than above sea level, and has suffered from numerous floods. Floods in Saint Petersburg are triggered by a long wave in the Baltic Sea, caused by meteorological conditions, winds and shallowness of the Neva Bay. The four most disastrous floods occurred in 1824 ( above sea-level, during which over 300 buildings were destroyed The level of flooding is measured near Saint Petersburg Mining Institute, which is normally a.s.l. ), 1924 , 1777 , 1955 and 1975 . To prevent floods, the Saint Petersburg Dam has been under construction since 1979. ÐежиÑ
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Since the 18th century the terrain in the city has been raised artificially, at some places by more than , making mergers of several islands, and changing the hydrology of the city. Besides the Neva and its distributaries, other important rivers of the federal subject of Saint Petersburg are Sestra, Okhta and Izhora. The largest lake is Sestroretsky Razliv in the north, followed by Lakhtinsky Razliv, Suzdal Lakes and other smaller lakes.
Saint Petersburg's position on the latitude of ca. 60° N causes variation in day length across seasons, ranging from 5:53 to 18:50. Twilight may last all night in early summer, from mid-May to mid-July, the celebrated phenomenon known as the white nights.
Snow falling on the morning of May 14, 2008 at Srednyaya Rogatka (district in the south of St. Petersburg)
Saint Petersburg experiences a humid continental climate of the cool summer subtype (Köppen: Dfb), due to the distinct moderating influence of the Baltic Sea cyclones, with warm, humid and short summers and long, cold winters.
The average daily temperature in July is ; summer maximum is about , winter minimum is about . The record low temperature is , recorded in 1883. The average annual temperature is . The River Neva within the city limits usually freezes up in November-December, break-up occurs in April. From December to March there are 123 days average with snow cover, which reaches the average of by February. The frost-free period in the city lasts on average for about 135 days. The city has a climate slightly warmer than its suburbs. Weather conditions are quite variable all year round. See Historical weather records for Saint Petersburg (since 1932) and Historical weather in Saint Petersburg for further information.
Average annual precipitation varies across the city, averaging per year and reaching maximum in late summer. Soil moisture is almost always high because of lower evapotranspiration due to the cool climate. Air humidity is 78% on average, while overcast is 165 days a year on average.
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Saint Petersburg is the second largest city in Russia. The 2002 census recorded a population of the federal subject of 4,661,219, or 3.21% of the total population of Russia. The 2002 census recorded twenty-two ethnic groups of more than two thousand persons each. The ethnic composition was: Russian 84.72%, Ukrainian 1.87%, Belarusians 1.17%, Jewish 0.78%, Tatar 0.76%, Armenian 0.41%, Azeri 0.36%, Georgian 0.22%, Chuvash 0.13%, Polish 0.10%, and many other smaller ethnic groups, while 7.89% of the inhabitants declined to state their ethnicity.
The 20th century saw hectic ups and downs in population. From 2.4 million in 1916 it had dropped to less than 740,000 by 1920 during the Russian Revolution of 1917 and Russian Civil War. The sizeable minorities of Germans, Poles, Finns, Estonians and Latvians were almost completely expelled from Leningrad by the Soviet government during the 1930s. From 1941 to the end of 1943, population dropped from 3 million to less than 700,000, as people died in battles, starved to death during the Siege of Leningrad, or were evacuated. After the siege, some of the evacuees returned, but most influx was due to migration from other parts of the Soviet Union. The city absorbed about 3 million people in the 1950s and grew to over 5 million in the 1980s. From 1991 to 2006 the city's population decreased to the current 4.6 million, while the suburban population increased due to privatization of land and massive move to suburbs. ЧиÑÑÑкова Ð. ТÑеÑÑе ÑокÑаÑение ÑиÑленноÑÑи наÑелениÑ... и поÑледнее? ÐемоÑкоп Weekly 163 â 164, August 1â15, 2004. Russian source: "Encyclopedia of Saint Petersburg" ЧиÑÑÑков Ð. Ю. ÐаÑеление (обзоÑÐ½Ð°Ñ ÑÑаÑÑÑ). ÐнÑÐ¸ÐºÐ»Ð¾Ð¿ÐµÐ´Ð¸Ñ Ð¡Ð°Ð½ÐºÑ-ÐеÑеÑбÑÑга The birth rate remains lower than the death rate; people over 65 constitute more than twenty percent of the population; and the median age is about 40 years. Russian statistics ÐÑновнÑе показаÑели ÑоÑиалÑно-демогÑаÑиÑеÑкой ÑиÑÑаÑии в СанкÑ-ÐеÑеÑбÑÑге
People in urban Saint Petersburg live mostly in apartments. Between 1918 and the 1990s, the Soviets nationalised housing and forced residents to share communal apartments (kommunalkas). With 68% living in shared flats in the 1930s, Leningrad was the city in the USSR with the largest number of kommunalkas. Resettling residents of kommunalkas is now on the way out, albeit shared apartments are still not uncommon. As new boroughs were built on the outskirts in the 1950s-1980s, over half a million low income families eventually received free apartments, and about an additional hundred thousand condos were purchased. While economic and social activity is concentrated in the historic city centre, the richest part of Saint Petersburg, most people live in commuter areas. For the first half of 2007, the birth rate was 9.1 per 1000.
Smolny Institute, the seat of the governor.
Saint Petersburg is a federal subject of Russia. The political life of Saint Petersburg is regulated by the city charter adopted by the city legislature in 1998. The superior executive body is the Saint Petersburg City Administration, led by the governor (mayor before 1996). Saint Petersburg has a single-chamber legislature, the Saint Petersburg Legislative Assembly.
According to the federal law passed in 2004, heads of federal subjects, including the governor of Saint Petersburg, are nominated by the President of Russia and approved by local legislatures. If the legislature disapproves the nominee, it is dissolved. The current governor, Valentina Matviyenko, was approved according to the new system in December 2006. She is currently the only woman governor in the whole of Russia.
Saint Petersburg city is currently divided into eighteen districts. Saint Petersburg is also the administrative centre of Leningrad Oblast, and of the Northwestern Federal District. The Constitutional Court of Russia moved to Saint Petersburg from Moscow in May 2008.
Saint Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast, being two different federal subjects, share a number of local departments of federal executive agencies and courts, such as court of arbitration, police, FSB, postal service, drug enforcement administration, penitentiary service, federal registration service, and other federal services.
The Old Saint Petersburg Stock Exchange, or Bourse, houses the Central Naval Museum
Saint Petersburg is a major trade gateway, financial and industrial centre of Russia specialising in oil and gas trade, shipbuilding yards, aerospace industry, radio and electronics, software and computers; machine building, heavy machinery and transport, including tanks and other military equipment, mining, instrument manufacture, ferrous and nonferrous metallurgy (production of aluminium alloys), chemicals, pharmaceuticals, medical equipment, publishing and printing, food and catering, wholesale and retail, textile and apparel industries, and many other businesses. It was also home to Lessner, one of Russia's two pioneering automobile manufacturers (along with Russo-Baltic), Lessner; founded by machine tool and boiler maker G. A. Lessner in 1904, with designs by Boris Loutsky, it survived until 1910. Georgano, G. N. Cars: Early and Vintage, 1886-1930. (London: Grange-Universal, 1985)
10% of the world's power turbines are made there at the LMZ, which built over two thousand turbines for power plants across the world. Major local industries are Admiralty Shipyard, Baltic Shipyard, LOMO, Kirov Plant, Elektrosila, Izhorsky Zavod; also registered in Saint Petersburg are Sovkomflot, Petersburg Fuel Company and SIBUR among other major Russian and international companies.
The Saint Petersburg docks at dawn.
Saint Petersburg has three large cargo seaports: Bolshoi Port Saint Petersburg, Kronstadt, and Lomonosov. International cruise liners have been served at the passenger port at Morskoy Vokzal on the south-west of Vasilevsky Island. In 2008 the first two berths were opened at the New Passenger Port on the west of the island. Discoverthebaltic.com Discover the Baltic online guide to Baltic cruise ports The new port is part of the city's "Marine Facade" development project Mfspb.ru St Petersburg "Marine Facade" development project and is due to have seven berths in operation by 2010.
A complex system of riverports on both banks of the Neva river are interconnected with the system of seaports, thus making Saint Petersburg the main link between the Baltic sea and the rest of Russia through the Volga-Baltic Waterway.
The Saint Petersburg Mint (Monetny Dvor), founded in 1724, is one of the largest mints in the world, it mints Russian coins, medals and badges. Saint Petersburg is also home to the oldest and largest Russian foundry, Monumentskulptura, which made thousands of sculptures and statues that are now gracing public parks of Saint Petersburg, as well as many other cities. Monuments and bronze statues of the Czars, as well as other important historic figures and dignitaries, and other world famous monuments, such as the sculptures by Peter Clodt von Jürgensburg, Paolo Troubetzkoy, Pavel Antokolsky, and others, were made there.
In 2007 Toyota opened a Camry plant after investing 5 billion dollars in Shushary, one of the southern suburbs of Saint Petersburg. General Motors, Hyundai and Nissan have signed deals with the Russian government to build their automotive plants in Saint Petersburg too. Automotive and auto-parts industry is on the rise there during the last decade. Saint Petersburg is also known as the "beer capital" of Russia, due to the supply and quality of local water, contributing over 30% of the domestic production of beer with its five large-scale breweries including Europe's second largest brewery Baltika, Vena (both operated by BBH), Heineken Brewery, Stepan Razin (both by Heineken) and Tinkoff brewery (SUN-InBev). Saint Petersburg has the second largest construction industry in Russia, including commercial, housing and road construction.
In 2006 Saint Petersburg's city budget was 179,9 billion rubles, and is planned to double by 2012. The federal subject's gross regional product as of 2005 was 667,905.4 million Russian rubles, ranked 4th in Russia, after Moscow, Tyumen Oblast, and Moscow Oblast, or 145,503.3 rubles per capita, ranked 12th among Russia's federal subjects, contributed mostly by wholesale and retail trade and repair services (24.7%) as well as processing industry (20.9%) and transportation and telecommunications (15.1%).
The Kresty prison.
Russia historically had a high level of crime that increased significantly after the October revolution. Edward Hallett Carr The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1923, 1985 ISBN 0393301990 Google preview Perestroika-time turmoils saw additional increase of the crime level.
Saint Petersburg experiences significant levels of street crime and bribery. In addition, in recent years there has been a notable increase in racially motivated violence, especially towards tourists and foreign students. One of the well known white supremacist groups Belaya Energia (White Energy, originally comes from White Power), has reportedly been one of the main gangs involved in murdering foreign university students. Russia: Racist Attacks Plague St. Petersburg Radio Free Europe September 30, 2005
At the end of the 1980s â beginning of the 1990s, Leningrad became home to a number of organised criminal groups as Tambov Gang, Malyshev Gang, Kazan Gang and ethnic criminal groups, engaged in a racket, extortion, paying off local government, and violent clashes with each other. Russian Mafia Shakes Down the Country by Steven R. Van Hook, Santa Barbara News-Press, November 20, 1994
In 2008, a car bomb killed three people (including a four-year old child), and injured one.
After the assassinations of City Property Committee Chairman and vice-Governor Mikhail Manevich(1997), State Duma deputy Galina Starovoytova (1998), acting City Legislature Speaker Viktor Novosyolov (1999) and a number of prominent businesspeople, Saint Petersburg was dubbed Capital of Crime in the Russian press. Trumbull, Nathaniel S. (2003) The impacts of globalization on Saint Petersburg: A secondary world city in from the cold? The Annals of Regional Science 37:533â546 Powell, Bill & Brian Whitmore. The Capital Of Crime.(Saint Petersburg, Russia). Newsweek International, May 15, 2000. There were a number of movies filmed in Saint Petersburg about the life of crime; , Brother (1997) reinforcing its image as the Crime Capital of Russia.
One of the oldest and most infamous remand facilities in Saint Petersburg, Kresty prison is located near downtown.
However, crime rates in St. Petersburg have declined since the end of the 1990s; the aforementioned criminal gangs have mostly dispersed. Even the Kresty prison is no longer in use, as more modern penal institutions are being built farther from the city centre.
The decoration of Saint Petersburg Metro (Kirovsky Zavod Station).
Saint Petersburg is a major transport hub. The first Russian railway was built here, in 1837. Today, the city is the final destination of a web of intercity and suburban railways, served by five different railway terminals (Baltiysky, Finlyandsky, Ladozhsky, Moskovsky, and Vitebsky), Until 2001, the Varshavsky Rail Terminal served as a major station; it now is a railway museum. Reconstruction of the Warsaw Railway Station as well as dozens of non-terminal railway stations within the federal subject. Saint Petersburg has international railway connections to Helsinki, Finland, Berlin, Germany, and all former republics of the USSR. The Helsinki railway was built in 1870, , commutes three times a day, in a journey lasting about five and a half hours. The Moscow-Saint Petersburg Railway opened in 1851, ; the commute to Moscow now requires about four and a half to nine hours. Saint Petersburg is also served by Pulkovo International Airport, Rossiya (Pulkovo): Pulkovo Aviation Enterprise and by three smaller commercial and cargo airports in the suburbs. There is a regular, 24/7, rapid-bus transit connection between Pulkovo airport and the city centre.
The city is also served by the passenger and cargo seaports in the Neva Bay of the Gulf of Finland, Baltic Sea, the river port higher up the Neva, and tens of smaller passenger stations on both banks of the Neva river. It is a terminus of the Volga-Baltic and White Sea-Baltic waterways. In 2004 the first high bridge that doesn't need to be drawn, a long Big Obukhovsky Bridge, was opened. Meteor hydrofoils link the city centre to the coastal towns of Kronstadt, Lomonosov, Peterhof, Sestroretsk and Zelenogorsk from May through October.
Pulkovo International Airport.
Saint Petersburg has an extensive city-funded network of public transport (buses, trams, trolleybuses) and several hundred routes served by marshrutkas. Trams in Saint Petersburg used to be the main transport; in the 1980s, Leningrad had the largest tramway network in the world, but many tramway rail tracks were dismantled in the 2000s. Buses carry up to 3 million passengers daily, serving over 250 urban and a number of suburban bus routes. Saint Petersburg Metro underground rapid transit system was opened in 1955; it now has five lines with 63 stations, connecting all five railway terminals, and carrying 3.4 million passengers daily. Metro stations are decorated in marble and bronze.
Traffic jams are common in the city, because of high daily traffic volumes between the commuter boroughs and the city centre, intercity traffic, and at times excessive snow in winter. Five segments of the Saint Petersburg Ring Road were opened between 2002 and 2006, and full ring is planned to open in 2010.
Saint Petersburg is part of the important transport corridor linking Scandinavia to Russia and Eastern Europe. The city is a node of the international European routes E18 towards Helsinki, E20 towards Tallinn, E95 towards Pskov, Kiev and Odessa and E105 towards Petrozavodsk, Murmansk and Kirkenes (north) and towards Moscow and Kharkiv (south).
Kazan Cathedral
Griboyedov Canal
A bridge over the river Neva
As of now, Saint Petersburg has no skyscrapers and a relatively low skyline. Current regulations forbid construction of high buildings in the city centre. The 310 metre tall Saint Petersburg TV Tower is the tallest structure in the city, while the 122.5 m Peter and Paul Cathedral is by far the highest building. However, there is a controversial project endorsed by the city authorities and known as the Ohkta Centre to build a 396 m supertall skyscraper. In 2008 the World Monuments Fund included the Saint Petersburg historic skyline within the watch list of 100 most endangered sites due to the expected construction, which threatens to alter it drastically.
Unlike in Moscow, in Saint Petersburg the historic architecture of the city centre, mostly consisting of Baroque and neoclassical buildings of the 18th and 19th centuries, has been largely preserved, although a number of buildings were demolished after the Bolsheviks' seizure of power, during the Siege of Leningrad and in recent years. The oldest of the remaining building is a wooden house built for Peter I in 1703 on the shore of the Neva near Trinity Square. Since 1991 the Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments in Saint Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast have been listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.
The ensemble of Peter and Paul Fortress with the Peter and Paul Cathedral takes dominant position on Zayachy Island along the right bank of the River Neva. Each noon a cannon fires a blank shot from the fortress. The Saint Petersburg Mosque, the largest mosque in Europe when opened in 1913, is situated on the right bank nearby. The spit of Vasilievsky Island, which splits the river into two largest armlets, the Bolshaya Neva and Malaya Neva, is connected to the northern bank (Petrogradsky Island) via the Exchange Bridge and occupied by the Old Saint Petersburg Stock Exchange and Rostral Columns. The southern coast of Vasilievsky Island along the Bolshaya Neva features some of the city's oldest buildings, dating from the 18th century, including the Kunstkamera, Twelve Collegia, Menshikov Palace and Imperial Academy of Arts. It hosts one of two campuses of Saint Petersburg State University.
On the southern, left bank of the Neva, connected to the spit of Vasilievsky Island via the Palace Bridge, lie the Admiralty Building, the vast Hermitage Museum complex stretching along the Palace Embankment, which includes the baroque Winter Palace, former official residence of Russian emperors, as well as the neoclassical Marble Palace. The Winter Palace faces Palace Square, the city's main square with the Alexander Column.
Nevsky Prospekt, also situated on the left bank of the Neva, is the main avenue in the city. It starts at the Admiralty and runs eastwards next to Palace Square. Nevsky Prospekt crosses the Moika (Green Bridge), Griboyedov Canal (Kazansky Bridge), Garden Street, the Fontanka (Anichkov Bridge), meets Liteyny Prospekt and proceeds to Uprising Square near the Moskovsky railway station, where it meets Ligovsky Prospekt and turns to the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. The Passage, Catholic Church of St. Catherine, Book House (former Singer Manufacturing Company Building in the Art Nouveau style), Grand Hotel Europe, Lutheran Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, Gostiny Dvor, Russian National Library, Alexandrine Theatre behind Mikeshin's statue of Catherine the Great, Kazan Cathedral, Stroganov Palace, Anichkov Palace and Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace are all situated along that avenue.
The Alexander Nevsky Lavra, intended to house the relics of St. Alexander Nevsky, is an important centre of Christian education in Russia. It also contains the Tikhvin Cemetery with graves of many notable Petersburgers.
On the territory between the Neva and Nevsky Prospekt the Church of the Savior on Blood, Mikhailovsky Palace housing the Russian Museum, Field of Mars, St. Michael's Castle, Summer Garden, Tauride Palace, Smolny Institute and Smolny Convent are located.
Many notable landmarks are situated to the west and south of the Admiralty Building, including the Trinity Cathedral, Mariinsky Palace, Hotel Astoria, famous Mariinsky Theatre, New Holland Island, Saint Isaac's Cathedral, the largest in the city, and Decembrists Square with the Bronze Horseman, 18th century equestrian monument to Peter the Great, which is considered among the city's most recognisable symbols.
Other symbols of Saint Petersburg include the weather vane in the shape of a small ship on top of the Admiralty's golden spire and the golden angel on top of the Peter and Paul Cathedral. The Palace Bridge drawn at night is yet another symbol of the city. Every night during the navigation period from April to November, 22 bridges across the Neva and main canals are drawn to let ships pass in and out of the Baltic Sea according to a schedule. Schedule for main drawbridges across the Neva river (Official Russian schedule): Mr-spb.ru It wasn't until 2004 that the first high bridge across the Neva, which doesn't need to be drawn, Big Obukhovsky Bridge, was opened. There are hundreds of smaller bridges in Saint Petersburg spanning across numerous canals and distributaries of the Neva, some of the most important of which are the Moika, Fontanka, Griboyedov Canal, Obvodny Canal, Karpovka and Smolenka. Due to the intricate web of canals, Saint Petersburg is often called Venice of the North. The rivers and canals in the city centre are lined with granite embankments. The embankments and bridges are separated from rivers and canals by granite or cast iron parapets.
Southern suburbs of the city feature former imperial residences, including Peterhof, with majestic fountain cascades and parks, Tsarskoe Selo, with the baroque Catherine Palace and the neoclassical Alexander Palace, and Pavlovsk, which contains a domed palace of Emperor Paul and one of the largest English-style parks in Europe. Some other residences situated nearby and making part of the world heritage site, including a castle and park in Gatchina, actually belong to Leningrad Oblast rather than Saint Petersburg. Another notable suburb is Kronstadt with its 19th century fortifications and naval monuments, occupying the Kotlin Island in the Gulf of Finland.
From XX century end in a city active building and reorganisation of old historical city districts is conducted.
The authorities are compelled to transfer control of private residences in city centre to private lessors.
Also sealing building and a superstructure of buildings is spent by penthouses.
Some of these structures, such as the Saint Petersburg Commodity and Stock Exchange" have been recognised as town-planning errors.
Interior of the Hermitage Museum.
Saint Petersburg is home to more than two hundred museums, many of them hosted in historic buildings. The largest of the museums is the Hermitage Museum, featuring interiors of the former imperial residence and a vast collection of art. The Russian Museum is a large museum devoted to the Russian fine art specifically. The apartments of some famous Petersburgers, including Alexander Pushkin, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Feodor Chaliapin, Alexander Blok, Vladimir Nabokov, Anna Akhmatova, Mikhail Zoshchenko, Joseph Brodsky, as well as some palace and park ensembles of the southern suburbs and notable architectural monuments such as St. Isaac's Cathedral, have also been turned into public museums.
The Kunstkamera, with its collection established in 1714 by Peter the Great to collect curiosities from all over the world, is sometimes considered the first museum in Russia, which has evolved into the present-day Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography. The Russian Ethnography Museum, which has been split from the Russian Museum, is devoted to the cultures of the people of Russia, the former Soviet Union and Russian Empire.
Other notable museums include the Central Naval Museum hosted in the building of the former stock exchange and Zoological Museum, the Railway Museum, Museum of the Siege of Leningrad, Saint Petersburg Museum of History in the Peter and Paul Fortress and Artillery Museum, which in fact includes not only artillery items, but also a huge collection of other military equipment, uniform and decorations.
The Grand Cascade.
Saint Petersburg is home to numerous parks and gardens, some of the most famous of which are situated in the southern suburbs, including one of the largest English gardens of Europe in Pavlovsk. Sosnovka is the largest park within the limits of the city proper, occupying 240 ha. The Summer Garden is the oldest one, dating back to the early 18th century and designed in the regular style. It is situated on the southern bank of the Neva at the head of the Fontanka and is famous for its cast iron railing and marble sculptures.
Among other notable parks are the Maritime Victory Park on Krestovsky Island and the Moscow Victory Park in the south, both commemorating the victory over Nazi Germany in the Second World War, as well as the Central Park of Culture and Leisure occupying Yelagin Island and the Tauride Garden around the Tauride Palace. The most common trees grown in the parks are the English oak, Norway maple, green ash, silver birch, Siberian larch, blue spruce, crack willow, limes and poplars. Important dendrological collections dating back to the 19th century are hosted by the Saint Petersburg Botanical Garden and the Park of the Forestry Academy.
Among the city's more than fifty theaters is the world-famous Mariinsky Theater (also known as the Kirov Theater in the USSR ), home to the Mariinsky Ballet company and opera. Leading ballet dancers, such as Vaslav Nijinsky, Anna Pavlova, Rudolph Nureyev, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Galina Ulanova and Natalia Makarova, were principal stars of the Mariinsky ballet.
Dmitri Shostakovich was born and brought up in Saint Petersburg, and dedicated his Seventh Symphony to the city, calling it the "Leningrad Symphony." He wrote the symphony while in Leningrad during the German siege. The 7th symphony was premiered in 1942; its performance in the besieged Leningrad at the Bolshoy Philharmonic Hall under the baton of conductor Karl Eliasberg was heard over the radio and lifted the spirits of the survivors. In 1992 a reunion performance of the 7th Symphony by the (then) 14 survivors was played in the same hall as they done half a century ago. The Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra remained one of the best known symphony orchestras in the world under the leadership of conductors Yevgeny Mravinsky and Yuri Temirkanov.
The Imperial Choral Capella was founded and modeled after the royal courts of other European capitals.
Saint Petersburg has been home to the newest movements in popular music in the country. The first jazz band in the Soviet Union was founded here by Leonid Utyosov in the 1920s, under the patronage of Isaak Dunayevsky. The first jazz club in the Soviet Union was founded here in the 1950s, and later was named jazz club Kvadrat. In 1956 the popular ensemble Druzhba was founded by Aleksandr Bronevitsky and Edita Piekha, becoming the first popular band in the 1950s USSR. In the 1960s student rock-groups Argonavty, Kochevniki and others pioneered a series of unofficial and underground rock concerts and festivals. In 1972 Boris Grebenshchikov founded the band Aquarium, that later grew to huge popularity. Since then "Peter's rock" music style was formed.
In the 1970s many bands came out from "underground" and eventually founded the Leningrad rock club which has been providing stage to such bands as Piknik, DDT, Kino, headed by the legendary Viktor Tsoi, Igry, Mify, Zemlyane, Alisa and many other popular groups. The first Russian-style happening show Pop mekhanika, mixing over 300 people and animals on stage, was directed by the multi-talented Sergey Kuryokhin in the 1980s.
Today's Saint Petersburg boasts many notable musicians of various genres, from popular Leningrad's Sergei Shnurov and Tequilajazzz, to rock veterans Yuri Shevchuk, Vyacheslav Butusov and Mikhail Boyarsky.
The White Nights Festival in Saint Petersburg is famous for spectacular fireworks and massive show celebrating the end of school year.
Over 250 international and Russian movies were filmed in Saint Petersburg. International Movie Database Well over a thousand feature films about tsars, revolution, people and stories set in Saint Petersburg were produced worldwide, but were not filmed in the city. First film studios were founded in Saint Petersburg in the 1900s, and since the 1920s Lenfilm has been the largest film studio based in Saint Petersburg. The first foreign feature movie filmed entirely in Saint Petersburg was the 1997 production of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, starring Sophie Marceau and Sean Bean, and made by international team of British, American, French and Russian filmmakers.
The cult comedy Irony of Fate (also ÐÑÐ¾Ð½Ð¸Ñ ÑÑдÑбÑ, или С лÑгким паÑом!) is set in Saint Petersburg and pokes fun at Soviet city planning. The 1985 film White Nights received considerable Western attention for having captured genuine Leningrad street scenes at a time when filming in the Soviet Union by Western production companies was generally unheard of. Other movies include GoldenEye (1995), Midnight in Saint Petersburg (1996), and Brother (1997). Onegin (1999) is based on the Pushkin poem and showcases many tourist attractions. In addition, the Russian romantic comedy, ÐиÑÐµÑ FM, showcases the cityscape significantly, almost as if it was a main character in the film.
Several international film festivals are held annually, such as the Festival of Festivals, St. Petersburg, as well as the Message to Man International Documentary Film Festival, since its inauguration in 1988 during the White Nights.
Saint Petersburg has a longstanding and world famous tradition in literature. Dostoyevsky called it âThe most abstract and intentional city in the world," emphasizing its artificiality, but it was also a symbol of modern disorder in a changing Russia. It frequently appeared to Russian writers as a menacing and inhuman mechanism. The grotesque and often nightmarish image of the city is featured in Pushkin's last poems, the Petersburg stories of Gogol, the novels of Dostoyevsky, the verse of Alexander Blok and Osip Mandelshtam, and in the symbolist novel Petersburg by Andrey Bely. According to Lotman in his chapter, 'The Symbolism of Saint Petersburg' in Universe and the Mind, these writers were inspired from symbolism from within the city itself. The effect of life in Saint Petersburg on the plight of the poor clerk in a society obsessed with hierarchy and status also became an important theme for authors such as Pushkin, Gogol, and Dostoyevsky. Another important feature of early Saint Petersburg literature is its mythical element, which incorporates urban legends and popular ghost stories, as the stories of Pushkin and Gogol included ghosts returning to Saint Petersburg to haunt other characters as well as other fantastical elements, creating a surreal and abstract image of Saint Petersburg.
Twentieth century writers from Saint Petersburg, such as Vladimir Nabokov, Ayn Rand, Andrey Bely and Yevgeny Zamyatin, along with his apprentices, The Serapion Brothers, created entire new styles in literature and contributed new insights to the understanding of society through their experience in this city. Anna Akhmatova became an important leader for Russian poetry. Her poem Requiem focuses on the tragedies of living during the time of the Stalinist terror. Another notable 20th century writer from Saint Petersburg is Joseph Brodsky, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1987). While living in the United States, his writings in English reflected on life in Saint Petersburg from the unique perspective of being both an insider and an outsider to the city in essays such as, "A Guide to a Renamed City" and the nostalgic "In a Room and a Half". Joseph Brodsky. Less Than One: Selected Essays, 1986
FC Zenit's home Petrovsky stadium
Leningrad hosted part of the football tournament during the 1980 Summer Olympics. The 1994 Goodwill Games were held here.
The first competition here was the 1703 rowing event initiated by Peter the Great, after the victory over the Swedish fleet. Yachting events were held by the Russian Navy since the foundation of the city. Yacht clubs: St. Petersburg River Yacht Club, Neva Yacht Club, the latter is the oldest yacht club in the world. In the winter, when the sea and lake surfaces are frozen and yachts and dinghies cannot be used, local people sail on ice boats.
Equestrianism has been a long tradition, popular among the Tsars and aristocracy, as well as part of the military training. Several historic sports arenas were built for Equestrianism since the 18th century, to maintain training all year round, such as the Zimny Stadion and Konnogvardeisky Manezh among others.
Chess tradition was highlighted by the 1914 international tournament, in which the title "Grandmaster" was first formally conferred by Russian Tsar Nicholas II to five players: Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine, Tarrasch and Marshall, and which the Tsar had partially funded.
Kirov Stadium (now demolished) was one of the largest stadiums anywhere in the world, and the home to FC Zenit St. Petersburg in 1950-1993 and 1995. In 1951 the attendance of 110,000 set the record for the Soviet football. In 2007 Zenit became champions of the Russian Premier League, won the UEFA Cup 2007â08 season and the 2008 UEFA Supercup. Zenit now plays their home games at Petrovsky Stadium.
As of 2006/2007 there were 1024 kindergartens, 716 public schools and 80 vocational schools in Saint Petersburg. SPB.ru The largest of the higher education institutions are Saint Petersburg State University, enrolling approximately 32,000 undergraduate students, Saint Petersburg Polytechnical University and Herzen University. However, the universities are all federal property and don't belong to the city.
*List of consulates in Saint Petersburg
*List of museums in Saint Petersburg
*List of notable people from Saint Petersburg
*List of Saint Petersburg sister cities
*Amery, Colin, Brian Curran & Yuri Molodkovets. St. Petersburg. London: Frances Lincoln, 2006. ISBN 0711224927.
*Bater, James H. St. Petersburg: Industrialization and Change. Montreal: McGuill-Queenâs University Press, 1976. ISBN 0773502661.
*Berelowitch, Wladimir & Olga Medvedkova. Histoire de Saint-Pétersbourg. Paris: Fayard, 1996. ISBN 2213596018.
*Buckler, Julie. Mapping St. Petersburg: Imperial Text and Cityshape. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005 ISBN0691113491.
*Clark, Katerina, Petersburg, Crucible of Revolution. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995.
*Cross, Anthony (ed.). St. Petersburg, 1703-1825. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. ISBN 1403915709.
*George, Arthur L. & Elena George. St. Petersburg: Russia's Window to the Future, The First Three Centuries. Lanham: Taylor Trade Publishing, 2003. ISBN 1589790170.
*Glantz, David M. The Battle for Leningrad, 1941-1944. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002. ISBN 0700612084.
*Hellberg-Hirn, Elena. Imperial Imprints: Post-Soviet St. Petersburg. Helsinki: SKS Finnish Literature Society, 2003. ISBN 9517464916.
*Knopf Guide: Sat. Petersburg. New York: Knopf, 1995. ISBN 0679762027.
*Eyewitness Guide: St. Petersburg.
*Lincoln, W. Bruce. Sunlight at Midnight: St. Petersburg and the Rise of Modern Russia. New York: Basic Books, 2000. ISBN 0465083234.
*Orttung, Robert W. From Leningrad to St. Petersburg: Democratization in a Russian City. New York: St. Martinâs, 1995. ISBN 0312175612.
*Ruble, Blair A. Leningrad: Shaping a Soviet City. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. ISBN 0877723478.
*Shvidkovsky, Dmitry O. & Alexander Orloff. St. Petersburg: Architecture of the Tsars. New York: Abbeville Press, 1996. ISBN 0789202174.
*Volkov, Solomon. St. Petersburg: A Cultural History. New York: Free Press, 1995. ISBN 0028740521.
*St. Petersburg:Architecture of the Tsars. 360 pages. Abbeville Press, 1996. ISBN 0789202174
*Saint Petersburg: Museums, Palaces, and Historic Collections: A Guide to the Lesser Known Treasures of St. Petersburg. 2003. ISBN 1593730004.
*ÐежиÑ
овÑкий Ð . Ð. Река Ðева и ÐевÑÐºÐ°Ñ Ð³Ñба, Leningrad, ÐидÑомеÑеоиздаÑ, 1981.
* Official presentation of Saint Petersburg
* Official Portal of the City Government: Saint Petersburg
* Encyclopaedia of Saint Petersburg
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* Saint Petersburg in 1900
* Saint Petersburg, entry in the World Monuments Fund's 2008 watchlist
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Saint_Petersburg | Where do most people in urban Saint Petersburg live? | Apartments. | data/set3/a10 | Saint_Petersburg
Saint Petersburg ( , ) is a city and a federal subject (a federal city) of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The city's other names were Petrograd ( , 1914â1924) and Leningrad ( , 1924â1991). It is often called just Petersburg ( ) and is informally known as Piter ( ).
Founded by Tsar Peter I of Russia on 27 May 1703, it was the capital of the Russian Empire for more than two hundred years (1713â1728, 1732â1918). Saint Petersburg ceased being the capital in 1918 after the Russian Revolution of 1917. Nicholas and Alexandra: An Intimate Account of the Last of the Romanovs and the Fall of Imperial Russia (Athenum, 1967) by Robert K. Massie, ASIN B000CGP8M2 (also, Ballantine Books, 2000, ISBN 0-345-43831-0 and Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, 2005, ISBN 1-57912-433-X) It is Russia's second largest city after Moscow with 4.6 million inhabitants, and over 6 million people live in its vicinity. Saint Petersburg is a major European cultural centre, and an important Russian port on the Baltic Sea.
Saint Petersburg is often described as the most Western city of Russia. V. Morozov. The Discourses of Saint Petersburg and the Shaping of a Wider Europe. Copenhagen Peace Research Institute. 2002. Ciaonet.org Among cities of the world with over one million people, Saint Petersburg is the northernmost. The Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments constitute a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Saint Petersburg is also home to The Hermitage, the largest art museum in the world. /ref> Russia's political and cultural centre for 200 years, the city is sometimes referred to in Russia as the northern capital. A large number of foreign consulates, international corporations, banks and other businesses are located in Saint Petersburg.
On 1 May 1703 (Julian calendar), during the Great Northern War, Peter the Great captured the Swedish fortress of Nyenskans on the Neva river in Ingria. A few weeks later, on 27 May 1703 (May 16, Old Style), lower on the river, on Zayachy (Hare) Island, three miles (5 km) inland from the gulf, he laid down the Peter and Paul Fortress, which became the first brick and stone building of the new city. He named the city after his patron saint, Saint Peter, the apostle. The original name was meant to sound like Dutch due to Peter's obsession with the Dutch culture. Peter the Great: His Life and World (Knopf, 1980) by Robert K. Massie, ISBN 0-394-50032-6
The city was built by conscripted serfs from all over Russia and also by Swedish prisoners of war under the supervision of Alexander Menshikov and later became the centre of Saint Petersburg Governorate. Peter moved the capital from Moscow to Saint Petersburg in 1712, before the Treaty of Nystad of 1721 ended the war.
The Bronze Horseman, monument to Peter the Great.
Palace Square, as the main square of the Russian Empire it was the setting of many events of great historical significance
Lenin statue outside the Finland station. Between 1924 and 1991 the city was known as Leningrad.
Map of Saint Petersburg, 1903.
Church of the Savior on Blood.
During the first few years of its existence the city grew spontaneously around Trinity Square on the right bank of the Neva, near the Peter and Paul Fortress. However, Saint Petersburg soon started to develop according to a plan. By 1716 Domenico Trezzini had elaborated a project whereby the city centre would be located on Vasilievsky Island and shaped by a rectangular grid of canals. The project was not completed, but is still evident in the layout of the streets. In 1716 Jean-Baptiste Alexandre Le Blond was appointed chief architect of Saint Petersburg by Peter the Great.
The style of Petrine Baroque, developed by Trezzini and other architects and exemplified by such buildings as the Menshikov Palace, Kunstkamera, Peter and Paul Cathedral, Twelve Collegia, became prominent in the city architecture of the early 18th century. In 1724 the Academy of Sciences, University and Academic Gymnasium were established in Saint Petersburg by Peter the Great.
However, in 1725 Peter died. His near-lifelong autocratic push for modernisation of Russia had met with considerable opposition from the old-fashioned Russian nobility â resulting in several attempts on his life and a treason case involving his own son. Matthew S. Anderson, Peter the Great (London: Thames and Hudson, 1978) Thus, in 1728, Peter II of Russia moved his seat back to Moscow. But four years later, in 1732, under Empress Anna of Russia, Saint Petersburg again became the capital of the Russian Empire and remained the seat of the government for 186 years.
In 1736-1737 the city suffered from catastrophic fires. In order to rebuild the damaged boroughs, in 1737 a new plan was commissioned by a committee under Burkhard Christoph von Munnich. The city was divided into five boroughs, and the city centre was moved to the Admiralty borough, situated on the east bank between the Neva and Fontanka.
It developed along three radial streets, which meet at the Admiralty and are now known as Nevsky Prospekt (which is now perceived as the main street of the city), Gorokhovaya Street and Voznesensky Prospekt. The style of Baroque dominated the city architecture during the first sixty years, culminating in the Elizabethan Baroque, represented most notably by Bartolomeo Rastrelli with such buildings as the Winter Palace. In the 1760s the Baroque architecture was succeeded by the neoclassical architecture.
The Commission of Stone Buildings of Moscow and Saint Petersburg established in 1762 ruled that no structure in the city be higher than the Winter Palace and prohibited spacing between buildings. During the reign of Catherine the Great in the 1760s-1780s the banks of the Neva were lined with granite embankments.
However, it wasn't until 1850 that it was allowed to open the first permanent bridge across the Neva, Blagoveshchensky Bridge. Before that, only pontoon bridges were allowed. Obvodny Canal (dug in 1769-1833) became the southern limit of the city.
Some of the most important neoclassical architects in Saint Petersburg (including those working within the Empire style) were Jean-Baptiste Vallin de la Mothe (Imperial Academy of Arts, Small Hermitage, Gostiny Dvor, New Holland Arch, Catholic Church of St. Catherine), Antonio Rinaldi (Marble Palace), Yury Felten (Old Hermitage, Chesme Church), Giacomo Quarenghi (Academy of Sciences, Hermitage Theatre, Yusupov Palace), Andrey Voronikhin (Mining Institute, Kazan Cathedral), Andreyan Zakharov (Admiralty building), Jean-François Thomas de Thomon (Spit of Vasilievsky Island), Carlo Rossi (Yelagin Palace, Mikhailovsky Palace, Alexandrine Theatre, Senate and Synod Buildings, General Staff Building, design of many streets and squares), Vasily Stasov (Moscow Triumphal Gate, Trinity Cathedral), Auguste de Montferrand (Saint Isaac's Cathedral, Alexander Column). The victory over Napoleonic France in the Patriotic War of 1812 was commemorated with many monuments, including Alexander Column by Montferrand, erected in 1834, and Narva Triumphal Gate.
In 1825 the suppressed Decembrist revolt against Nicholas I of Russia took place on the Senate Square in the city, a day after he assumed the throne.
By the 1840s the neoclassical architecture had given place to various romanticist styles, which were dominant until the 1890s, represented by such architects as Andrei Stackenschneider (Mariinsky Palace, Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace, Nicholas Palace, New Michael Palace) and Konstantin Thon (Moskovsky Rail Terminal). The Church of the Savior on Blood designed in the Russian revival style commemorated the place where Alexander II of Russia was assassinated in 1881.
With the emancipation of the serfs undertaken by Alexander II in 1861 and the industrial revolution the influx of former peasants into the capital increased greatly. Poor boroughs spontaneously emerged on the outskirts of the city. Saint Petersburg surpassed Moscow in population and industrial growth and grew into one of the largest industrial hubs and cities in Europe.
The Revolution of 1905 began in Saint Petersburg and spread rapidly into the provinces. With the start of World War I, the name Saint Petersburg was perceived to be too German, so in 1914 the city was renamed Petrograd. The Romanovs: The Final Chapter (Random House, 1995) by Robert K. Massie, ISBN 0-394-58048-6 and ISBN 0-679-43572-7 In 1917 the February Revolution, which put an end to the Russian monarchy, and the October Revolution, which ultimately brought Vladimir Lenin to power, broke out in Petrograd. Rex A. Wade The Russian Revolution, 1917 2005 Cambridge University Press ISBN 0521841550 The city's proximity to the border and anti-Soviet armies forced the Bolsheviks under Lenin to transfer the capital to Moscow on March 12, 1918.
In 1919 during the ensuing Russian Civil War Nikolay Yudenich advancing from Estonia was about to capture the city from the Bolsheviks, but Leon Trotsky ultimately managed to mobilise the population and make him retreat. Many people fled the city in 1917-1920 or were repressed in the Red Terror, Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe. By Robert Gellately, 2007, Random House, 720 pages. ISBN 1400040051 so its population decreased dramatically. On January 26, 1924, three days after Lenin's death, Petrograd was renamed Leningrad. For decades Leningrad was glorified by the Soviet propaganda as "the cradle of the revolution" and "the city of three revolutions", many spots related to Lenin and the revolutions, such as the cruiser Aurora, were carefully preserved. Many streets and other toponyms were renamed accordingly.
In the 1920s-1930s the poor outskirts were reconstructed into regularly planned boroughs. The constructivist architecture flourished around that time. The Soviets nationalised housing and forced many residents to share communal apartments (kommunalkas). With 68% living in shared apartments in the 1930s, Leningrad was the city with the largest number of kommunalkas. In 1935 a new general plan was outlined, whereby the city should expand to the south and its centre should move there. The constructivism was rejected in favor of the pompous Stalinist architecture. Stalin ordered the construction of the new city hall on Moskovsky Prospect thus making it the new main street of Leningrad during the Soviet rule.
Since December 1931 Leningrad has been administratively separate from Leningrad Oblast. At that time it included Leningrad Suburban District, some parts of which were transferred back to Leningrad Oblast in 1936 and turned into Vsevolozhsky District, Krasnoselsky District, Pargolovsky District and Slutsky District (renamed Pavlovsky District in 1944).
On December 1, 1934, Sergey Kirov, popular communist leader of Leningrad, was assassinated, which was used to start the Great Purge. Stalin's Terror: High Politics and Mass Repression in the Soviet Union by Barry McLoughlin and Kevin McDermott (eds). Palgrave Macmillan, 2002, p. 6 The sizeable minorities of Germans, Poles, Finns, Estonians and Latvians were almost completely expelled from Leningrad by the Soviet government during the 1930s. Martin, Terry (1998). The Origins of Soviet Ethnic Cleansing. The Journal of Modern History 70.4, 813-861.
During World War II, Leningrad was besieged by Nazi Germany and co-belligerent Finland. Siege of Leningrad. Encyclopædia Britannica The siege lasted 872 days from September 1941 to January 1944. Baldack, Richard H. "Leningrad, Siege of" World Book Encyclopedia, Chicago, 2002, vol.12, page 195 The Siege of Leningrad was one of the longest, most destructive, and most lethal sieges of major cities in modern history. It isolated the city from most supplies except those provided through the Road of Life across Lake Ladoga, and more than a million civilians died, mainly from starvation. Many others were eventually evacuated or escaped by themselves, so the city became largely depopulated. For the heroic resistance of the city and tenacity of the survivors of the Siege, in 1945 Leningrad became the first city in the Soviet Union awarded the title Hero City. In October 1946 some former Finnish territories along the northern coast of the Gulf of Finland captured in the Winter War and Continuation War were transferred from Leningrad Oblast to Leningrad and divided into Sestroretsky District and Kurortny District, including the town of Terijoki (renamed Zelenogorsk in 1948).
Leningrad and many of its suburbs were rebuilt over the post-war decades, partially according to the pre-war plans. The 1948 general plan of Leningrad featured radial urban development in the north as well as in the south. The Leningrad Metro, underground rapid transit system which was designed before the war in the 1930s, was opened in 1955 with its first seven stations decorated with marble and bronze. Meanwhile, in 1949-1951 a large number of prominent Leningrad members of the Communist Party and their families were charged with treason and intention to create an anti-Soviet organization out of their local party cell. Many were imprisoned or executed in the Leningrad Affair fabricated by the central Soviet leadership. Dmitri Volkogonov. Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy, 1996, ISBN 0761507183 Russian publication: ÐенингÑадÑкое дело â надо ли ÑÑавиÑÑ ÐºÐ°Ð²ÑÑки?: Contr-tv.ru
In 1953 Pavlovsky District of Leningrad Oblast was abolished, and parts of its territory including Pavlovsk merged with Leningrad. In 1954 the settlements Levashovo, Pargolovo and Pesochny merged with Leningrad.
After the death of Stalin the perceived ornamental excesses of the Stalinist architecture were abandoned. In the 1960s-1980s, as many new residential boroughs were built on the outskirts with few series of functionalist apartment blocks identical to each other, many families moved there from kommunalkas in the city centre in order to live in separate apartments. Uritsk was re-named Ligovo and merged with Leningrad in 1963, Lomonosov merged in 1978.
On June 12, 1991, in a referendum held on the same day as the first Russian presidential election, 54% of voters chose to restore the name "Saint Petersburg" (the change officially took effect on September 6, 1991). Many other Soviet-era toponyms in the city were also renamed soon afterwards. In the same election Anatoly Sobchak became the first democratically elected mayor of the city. Jack F. Matlock, Jr., Autopsy on an Empire: The American Ambassador's Account of the Collapse of the Soviet Union, Random House, 1995, ISBN 0679413766
By the end of 1991 the deteriorating planned economy of the collapsing Soviet Union had put the city on the verge of starvation. For the first time since World War II food rationing was introduced, and the city received humanitarian food aid from abroad. The city somewhat recovered with the market reforms in Russia. In 1995-2004 a northern section of the Metro's Kirovsko-Vyborgskaya Line was cut off by underground flooding, which was a major obstacle to the city development.
In 1996, Vladimir Yakovlev was elected as head of the Saint Petersburg City Administration. The title of the city head was changed in advance from "mayor" to "governor". In 2003, Yakovlev resigned a year before his second term expired. Valentina Matviyenko was elected governor. In 2006 she was reapproved as governor by the city legislature. The residential building had intensified again, real estate prices inflated greatly, and this situation causes many new problems for the historical part of the city.
In spite of the fact that the central part of the city is watched by UNESCO, the safety of its historical and architectural environment is in danger. Sergey Zagraevsky. Will Saint Petersburg share the same fate as Moscow? Zagraevsky.com There are still about 8000 architectural monuments in Saint Petersburg, but since 2005 the destruction of older buildings in the historical centre has continued. A number of new building projects are underway, including the Gazprom skyscraper in Okhta.
Territory of the federal subject of Saint Petersburg.
The area of Saint Petersburg city proper is . The area of the federal subject is , which contains the Saint Petersburg proper (consisting of 81 okrugs), nine suburban towns (Kolpino, Krasnoye Selo, Kronstadt, Lomonosov, Pavlovsk, Peterhof, Pushkin, Sestroretsk and Zelenogorsk) and 21 municipal settlements.
Saint Petersburg is situated on the middle taiga lowlands along the shores of the Neva Bay of the Gulf of Finland, and islands of the river delta. The largest are Vasilyevsky island (besides the artificial island between Obvodny canal and Fontanka, and Kotlin in the Neva Bay), Petrogradsky, Dekabristov and Krestovsky. The latter together with Yelagin and Kamenny island are covered mostly by parks. The Karelian Isthmus, North of the city, is a popular resort area. In the south Saint Petersburg crosses the Baltic-Ladoga Klint and meets the Izhora Plateau.
The elevation of Saint Petersburg ranges from the sea level to its highest point of at the Orekhovaya Hill in the Duderhof Heights in the south. Part of the city's territory west of Liteyny Prospekt is no higher than above sea level, and has suffered from numerous floods. Floods in Saint Petersburg are triggered by a long wave in the Baltic Sea, caused by meteorological conditions, winds and shallowness of the Neva Bay. The four most disastrous floods occurred in 1824 ( above sea-level, during which over 300 buildings were destroyed The level of flooding is measured near Saint Petersburg Mining Institute, which is normally a.s.l. ), 1924 , 1777 , 1955 and 1975 . To prevent floods, the Saint Petersburg Dam has been under construction since 1979. ÐежиÑ
овÑкий Ð . Ð. Река Ðева и ÐевÑÐºÐ°Ñ Ð³Ñба, Leningrad: ÐидÑомеÑеоиздаÑ, 1981.
Since the 18th century the terrain in the city has been raised artificially, at some places by more than , making mergers of several islands, and changing the hydrology of the city. Besides the Neva and its distributaries, other important rivers of the federal subject of Saint Petersburg are Sestra, Okhta and Izhora. The largest lake is Sestroretsky Razliv in the north, followed by Lakhtinsky Razliv, Suzdal Lakes and other smaller lakes.
Saint Petersburg's position on the latitude of ca. 60° N causes variation in day length across seasons, ranging from 5:53 to 18:50. Twilight may last all night in early summer, from mid-May to mid-July, the celebrated phenomenon known as the white nights.
Snow falling on the morning of May 14, 2008 at Srednyaya Rogatka (district in the south of St. Petersburg)
Saint Petersburg experiences a humid continental climate of the cool summer subtype (Köppen: Dfb), due to the distinct moderating influence of the Baltic Sea cyclones, with warm, humid and short summers and long, cold winters.
The average daily temperature in July is ; summer maximum is about , winter minimum is about . The record low temperature is , recorded in 1883. The average annual temperature is . The River Neva within the city limits usually freezes up in November-December, break-up occurs in April. From December to March there are 123 days average with snow cover, which reaches the average of by February. The frost-free period in the city lasts on average for about 135 days. The city has a climate slightly warmer than its suburbs. Weather conditions are quite variable all year round. See Historical weather records for Saint Petersburg (since 1932) and Historical weather in Saint Petersburg for further information.
Average annual precipitation varies across the city, averaging per year and reaching maximum in late summer. Soil moisture is almost always high because of lower evapotranspiration due to the cool climate. Air humidity is 78% on average, while overcast is 165 days a year on average.
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Saint Petersburg is the second largest city in Russia. The 2002 census recorded a population of the federal subject of 4,661,219, or 3.21% of the total population of Russia. The 2002 census recorded twenty-two ethnic groups of more than two thousand persons each. The ethnic composition was: Russian 84.72%, Ukrainian 1.87%, Belarusians 1.17%, Jewish 0.78%, Tatar 0.76%, Armenian 0.41%, Azeri 0.36%, Georgian 0.22%, Chuvash 0.13%, Polish 0.10%, and many other smaller ethnic groups, while 7.89% of the inhabitants declined to state their ethnicity.
The 20th century saw hectic ups and downs in population. From 2.4 million in 1916 it had dropped to less than 740,000 by 1920 during the Russian Revolution of 1917 and Russian Civil War. The sizeable minorities of Germans, Poles, Finns, Estonians and Latvians were almost completely expelled from Leningrad by the Soviet government during the 1930s. From 1941 to the end of 1943, population dropped from 3 million to less than 700,000, as people died in battles, starved to death during the Siege of Leningrad, or were evacuated. After the siege, some of the evacuees returned, but most influx was due to migration from other parts of the Soviet Union. The city absorbed about 3 million people in the 1950s and grew to over 5 million in the 1980s. From 1991 to 2006 the city's population decreased to the current 4.6 million, while the suburban population increased due to privatization of land and massive move to suburbs. ЧиÑÑÑкова Ð. ТÑеÑÑе ÑокÑаÑение ÑиÑленноÑÑи наÑелениÑ... и поÑледнее? ÐемоÑкоп Weekly 163 â 164, August 1â15, 2004. Russian source: "Encyclopedia of Saint Petersburg" ЧиÑÑÑков Ð. Ю. ÐаÑеление (обзоÑÐ½Ð°Ñ ÑÑаÑÑÑ). ÐнÑÐ¸ÐºÐ»Ð¾Ð¿ÐµÐ´Ð¸Ñ Ð¡Ð°Ð½ÐºÑ-ÐеÑеÑбÑÑга The birth rate remains lower than the death rate; people over 65 constitute more than twenty percent of the population; and the median age is about 40 years. Russian statistics ÐÑновнÑе показаÑели ÑоÑиалÑно-демогÑаÑиÑеÑкой ÑиÑÑаÑии в СанкÑ-ÐеÑеÑбÑÑге
People in urban Saint Petersburg live mostly in apartments. Between 1918 and the 1990s, the Soviets nationalised housing and forced residents to share communal apartments (kommunalkas). With 68% living in shared flats in the 1930s, Leningrad was the city in the USSR with the largest number of kommunalkas. Resettling residents of kommunalkas is now on the way out, albeit shared apartments are still not uncommon. As new boroughs were built on the outskirts in the 1950s-1980s, over half a million low income families eventually received free apartments, and about an additional hundred thousand condos were purchased. While economic and social activity is concentrated in the historic city centre, the richest part of Saint Petersburg, most people live in commuter areas. For the first half of 2007, the birth rate was 9.1 per 1000.
Smolny Institute, the seat of the governor.
Saint Petersburg is a federal subject of Russia. The political life of Saint Petersburg is regulated by the city charter adopted by the city legislature in 1998. The superior executive body is the Saint Petersburg City Administration, led by the governor (mayor before 1996). Saint Petersburg has a single-chamber legislature, the Saint Petersburg Legislative Assembly.
According to the federal law passed in 2004, heads of federal subjects, including the governor of Saint Petersburg, are nominated by the President of Russia and approved by local legislatures. If the legislature disapproves the nominee, it is dissolved. The current governor, Valentina Matviyenko, was approved according to the new system in December 2006. She is currently the only woman governor in the whole of Russia.
Saint Petersburg city is currently divided into eighteen districts. Saint Petersburg is also the administrative centre of Leningrad Oblast, and of the Northwestern Federal District. The Constitutional Court of Russia moved to Saint Petersburg from Moscow in May 2008.
Saint Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast, being two different federal subjects, share a number of local departments of federal executive agencies and courts, such as court of arbitration, police, FSB, postal service, drug enforcement administration, penitentiary service, federal registration service, and other federal services.
The Old Saint Petersburg Stock Exchange, or Bourse, houses the Central Naval Museum
Saint Petersburg is a major trade gateway, financial and industrial centre of Russia specialising in oil and gas trade, shipbuilding yards, aerospace industry, radio and electronics, software and computers; machine building, heavy machinery and transport, including tanks and other military equipment, mining, instrument manufacture, ferrous and nonferrous metallurgy (production of aluminium alloys), chemicals, pharmaceuticals, medical equipment, publishing and printing, food and catering, wholesale and retail, textile and apparel industries, and many other businesses. It was also home to Lessner, one of Russia's two pioneering automobile manufacturers (along with Russo-Baltic), Lessner; founded by machine tool and boiler maker G. A. Lessner in 1904, with designs by Boris Loutsky, it survived until 1910. Georgano, G. N. Cars: Early and Vintage, 1886-1930. (London: Grange-Universal, 1985)
10% of the world's power turbines are made there at the LMZ, which built over two thousand turbines for power plants across the world. Major local industries are Admiralty Shipyard, Baltic Shipyard, LOMO, Kirov Plant, Elektrosila, Izhorsky Zavod; also registered in Saint Petersburg are Sovkomflot, Petersburg Fuel Company and SIBUR among other major Russian and international companies.
The Saint Petersburg docks at dawn.
Saint Petersburg has three large cargo seaports: Bolshoi Port Saint Petersburg, Kronstadt, and Lomonosov. International cruise liners have been served at the passenger port at Morskoy Vokzal on the south-west of Vasilevsky Island. In 2008 the first two berths were opened at the New Passenger Port on the west of the island. Discoverthebaltic.com Discover the Baltic online guide to Baltic cruise ports The new port is part of the city's "Marine Facade" development project Mfspb.ru St Petersburg "Marine Facade" development project and is due to have seven berths in operation by 2010.
A complex system of riverports on both banks of the Neva river are interconnected with the system of seaports, thus making Saint Petersburg the main link between the Baltic sea and the rest of Russia through the Volga-Baltic Waterway.
The Saint Petersburg Mint (Monetny Dvor), founded in 1724, is one of the largest mints in the world, it mints Russian coins, medals and badges. Saint Petersburg is also home to the oldest and largest Russian foundry, Monumentskulptura, which made thousands of sculptures and statues that are now gracing public parks of Saint Petersburg, as well as many other cities. Monuments and bronze statues of the Czars, as well as other important historic figures and dignitaries, and other world famous monuments, such as the sculptures by Peter Clodt von Jürgensburg, Paolo Troubetzkoy, Pavel Antokolsky, and others, were made there.
In 2007 Toyota opened a Camry plant after investing 5 billion dollars in Shushary, one of the southern suburbs of Saint Petersburg. General Motors, Hyundai and Nissan have signed deals with the Russian government to build their automotive plants in Saint Petersburg too. Automotive and auto-parts industry is on the rise there during the last decade. Saint Petersburg is also known as the "beer capital" of Russia, due to the supply and quality of local water, contributing over 30% of the domestic production of beer with its five large-scale breweries including Europe's second largest brewery Baltika, Vena (both operated by BBH), Heineken Brewery, Stepan Razin (both by Heineken) and Tinkoff brewery (SUN-InBev). Saint Petersburg has the second largest construction industry in Russia, including commercial, housing and road construction.
In 2006 Saint Petersburg's city budget was 179,9 billion rubles, and is planned to double by 2012. The federal subject's gross regional product as of 2005 was 667,905.4 million Russian rubles, ranked 4th in Russia, after Moscow, Tyumen Oblast, and Moscow Oblast, or 145,503.3 rubles per capita, ranked 12th among Russia's federal subjects, contributed mostly by wholesale and retail trade and repair services (24.7%) as well as processing industry (20.9%) and transportation and telecommunications (15.1%).
The Kresty prison.
Russia historically had a high level of crime that increased significantly after the October revolution. Edward Hallett Carr The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1923, 1985 ISBN 0393301990 Google preview Perestroika-time turmoils saw additional increase of the crime level.
Saint Petersburg experiences significant levels of street crime and bribery. In addition, in recent years there has been a notable increase in racially motivated violence, especially towards tourists and foreign students. One of the well known white supremacist groups Belaya Energia (White Energy, originally comes from White Power), has reportedly been one of the main gangs involved in murdering foreign university students. Russia: Racist Attacks Plague St. Petersburg Radio Free Europe September 30, 2005
At the end of the 1980s â beginning of the 1990s, Leningrad became home to a number of organised criminal groups as Tambov Gang, Malyshev Gang, Kazan Gang and ethnic criminal groups, engaged in a racket, extortion, paying off local government, and violent clashes with each other. Russian Mafia Shakes Down the Country by Steven R. Van Hook, Santa Barbara News-Press, November 20, 1994
In 2008, a car bomb killed three people (including a four-year old child), and injured one.
After the assassinations of City Property Committee Chairman and vice-Governor Mikhail Manevich(1997), State Duma deputy Galina Starovoytova (1998), acting City Legislature Speaker Viktor Novosyolov (1999) and a number of prominent businesspeople, Saint Petersburg was dubbed Capital of Crime in the Russian press. Trumbull, Nathaniel S. (2003) The impacts of globalization on Saint Petersburg: A secondary world city in from the cold? The Annals of Regional Science 37:533â546 Powell, Bill & Brian Whitmore. The Capital Of Crime.(Saint Petersburg, Russia). Newsweek International, May 15, 2000. There were a number of movies filmed in Saint Petersburg about the life of crime; , Brother (1997) reinforcing its image as the Crime Capital of Russia.
One of the oldest and most infamous remand facilities in Saint Petersburg, Kresty prison is located near downtown.
However, crime rates in St. Petersburg have declined since the end of the 1990s; the aforementioned criminal gangs have mostly dispersed. Even the Kresty prison is no longer in use, as more modern penal institutions are being built farther from the city centre.
The decoration of Saint Petersburg Metro (Kirovsky Zavod Station).
Saint Petersburg is a major transport hub. The first Russian railway was built here, in 1837. Today, the city is the final destination of a web of intercity and suburban railways, served by five different railway terminals (Baltiysky, Finlyandsky, Ladozhsky, Moskovsky, and Vitebsky), Until 2001, the Varshavsky Rail Terminal served as a major station; it now is a railway museum. Reconstruction of the Warsaw Railway Station as well as dozens of non-terminal railway stations within the federal subject. Saint Petersburg has international railway connections to Helsinki, Finland, Berlin, Germany, and all former republics of the USSR. The Helsinki railway was built in 1870, , commutes three times a day, in a journey lasting about five and a half hours. The Moscow-Saint Petersburg Railway opened in 1851, ; the commute to Moscow now requires about four and a half to nine hours. Saint Petersburg is also served by Pulkovo International Airport, Rossiya (Pulkovo): Pulkovo Aviation Enterprise and by three smaller commercial and cargo airports in the suburbs. There is a regular, 24/7, rapid-bus transit connection between Pulkovo airport and the city centre.
The city is also served by the passenger and cargo seaports in the Neva Bay of the Gulf of Finland, Baltic Sea, the river port higher up the Neva, and tens of smaller passenger stations on both banks of the Neva river. It is a terminus of the Volga-Baltic and White Sea-Baltic waterways. In 2004 the first high bridge that doesn't need to be drawn, a long Big Obukhovsky Bridge, was opened. Meteor hydrofoils link the city centre to the coastal towns of Kronstadt, Lomonosov, Peterhof, Sestroretsk and Zelenogorsk from May through October.
Pulkovo International Airport.
Saint Petersburg has an extensive city-funded network of public transport (buses, trams, trolleybuses) and several hundred routes served by marshrutkas. Trams in Saint Petersburg used to be the main transport; in the 1980s, Leningrad had the largest tramway network in the world, but many tramway rail tracks were dismantled in the 2000s. Buses carry up to 3 million passengers daily, serving over 250 urban and a number of suburban bus routes. Saint Petersburg Metro underground rapid transit system was opened in 1955; it now has five lines with 63 stations, connecting all five railway terminals, and carrying 3.4 million passengers daily. Metro stations are decorated in marble and bronze.
Traffic jams are common in the city, because of high daily traffic volumes between the commuter boroughs and the city centre, intercity traffic, and at times excessive snow in winter. Five segments of the Saint Petersburg Ring Road were opened between 2002 and 2006, and full ring is planned to open in 2010.
Saint Petersburg is part of the important transport corridor linking Scandinavia to Russia and Eastern Europe. The city is a node of the international European routes E18 towards Helsinki, E20 towards Tallinn, E95 towards Pskov, Kiev and Odessa and E105 towards Petrozavodsk, Murmansk and Kirkenes (north) and towards Moscow and Kharkiv (south).
Kazan Cathedral
Griboyedov Canal
A bridge over the river Neva
As of now, Saint Petersburg has no skyscrapers and a relatively low skyline. Current regulations forbid construction of high buildings in the city centre. The 310 metre tall Saint Petersburg TV Tower is the tallest structure in the city, while the 122.5 m Peter and Paul Cathedral is by far the highest building. However, there is a controversial project endorsed by the city authorities and known as the Ohkta Centre to build a 396 m supertall skyscraper. In 2008 the World Monuments Fund included the Saint Petersburg historic skyline within the watch list of 100 most endangered sites due to the expected construction, which threatens to alter it drastically.
Unlike in Moscow, in Saint Petersburg the historic architecture of the city centre, mostly consisting of Baroque and neoclassical buildings of the 18th and 19th centuries, has been largely preserved, although a number of buildings were demolished after the Bolsheviks' seizure of power, during the Siege of Leningrad and in recent years. The oldest of the remaining building is a wooden house built for Peter I in 1703 on the shore of the Neva near Trinity Square. Since 1991 the Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments in Saint Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast have been listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.
The ensemble of Peter and Paul Fortress with the Peter and Paul Cathedral takes dominant position on Zayachy Island along the right bank of the River Neva. Each noon a cannon fires a blank shot from the fortress. The Saint Petersburg Mosque, the largest mosque in Europe when opened in 1913, is situated on the right bank nearby. The spit of Vasilievsky Island, which splits the river into two largest armlets, the Bolshaya Neva and Malaya Neva, is connected to the northern bank (Petrogradsky Island) via the Exchange Bridge and occupied by the Old Saint Petersburg Stock Exchange and Rostral Columns. The southern coast of Vasilievsky Island along the Bolshaya Neva features some of the city's oldest buildings, dating from the 18th century, including the Kunstkamera, Twelve Collegia, Menshikov Palace and Imperial Academy of Arts. It hosts one of two campuses of Saint Petersburg State University.
On the southern, left bank of the Neva, connected to the spit of Vasilievsky Island via the Palace Bridge, lie the Admiralty Building, the vast Hermitage Museum complex stretching along the Palace Embankment, which includes the baroque Winter Palace, former official residence of Russian emperors, as well as the neoclassical Marble Palace. The Winter Palace faces Palace Square, the city's main square with the Alexander Column.
Nevsky Prospekt, also situated on the left bank of the Neva, is the main avenue in the city. It starts at the Admiralty and runs eastwards next to Palace Square. Nevsky Prospekt crosses the Moika (Green Bridge), Griboyedov Canal (Kazansky Bridge), Garden Street, the Fontanka (Anichkov Bridge), meets Liteyny Prospekt and proceeds to Uprising Square near the Moskovsky railway station, where it meets Ligovsky Prospekt and turns to the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. The Passage, Catholic Church of St. Catherine, Book House (former Singer Manufacturing Company Building in the Art Nouveau style), Grand Hotel Europe, Lutheran Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, Gostiny Dvor, Russian National Library, Alexandrine Theatre behind Mikeshin's statue of Catherine the Great, Kazan Cathedral, Stroganov Palace, Anichkov Palace and Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace are all situated along that avenue.
The Alexander Nevsky Lavra, intended to house the relics of St. Alexander Nevsky, is an important centre of Christian education in Russia. It also contains the Tikhvin Cemetery with graves of many notable Petersburgers.
On the territory between the Neva and Nevsky Prospekt the Church of the Savior on Blood, Mikhailovsky Palace housing the Russian Museum, Field of Mars, St. Michael's Castle, Summer Garden, Tauride Palace, Smolny Institute and Smolny Convent are located.
Many notable landmarks are situated to the west and south of the Admiralty Building, including the Trinity Cathedral, Mariinsky Palace, Hotel Astoria, famous Mariinsky Theatre, New Holland Island, Saint Isaac's Cathedral, the largest in the city, and Decembrists Square with the Bronze Horseman, 18th century equestrian monument to Peter the Great, which is considered among the city's most recognisable symbols.
Other symbols of Saint Petersburg include the weather vane in the shape of a small ship on top of the Admiralty's golden spire and the golden angel on top of the Peter and Paul Cathedral. The Palace Bridge drawn at night is yet another symbol of the city. Every night during the navigation period from April to November, 22 bridges across the Neva and main canals are drawn to let ships pass in and out of the Baltic Sea according to a schedule. Schedule for main drawbridges across the Neva river (Official Russian schedule): Mr-spb.ru It wasn't until 2004 that the first high bridge across the Neva, which doesn't need to be drawn, Big Obukhovsky Bridge, was opened. There are hundreds of smaller bridges in Saint Petersburg spanning across numerous canals and distributaries of the Neva, some of the most important of which are the Moika, Fontanka, Griboyedov Canal, Obvodny Canal, Karpovka and Smolenka. Due to the intricate web of canals, Saint Petersburg is often called Venice of the North. The rivers and canals in the city centre are lined with granite embankments. The embankments and bridges are separated from rivers and canals by granite or cast iron parapets.
Southern suburbs of the city feature former imperial residences, including Peterhof, with majestic fountain cascades and parks, Tsarskoe Selo, with the baroque Catherine Palace and the neoclassical Alexander Palace, and Pavlovsk, which contains a domed palace of Emperor Paul and one of the largest English-style parks in Europe. Some other residences situated nearby and making part of the world heritage site, including a castle and park in Gatchina, actually belong to Leningrad Oblast rather than Saint Petersburg. Another notable suburb is Kronstadt with its 19th century fortifications and naval monuments, occupying the Kotlin Island in the Gulf of Finland.
From XX century end in a city active building and reorganisation of old historical city districts is conducted.
The authorities are compelled to transfer control of private residences in city centre to private lessors.
Also sealing building and a superstructure of buildings is spent by penthouses.
Some of these structures, such as the Saint Petersburg Commodity and Stock Exchange" have been recognised as town-planning errors.
Interior of the Hermitage Museum.
Saint Petersburg is home to more than two hundred museums, many of them hosted in historic buildings. The largest of the museums is the Hermitage Museum, featuring interiors of the former imperial residence and a vast collection of art. The Russian Museum is a large museum devoted to the Russian fine art specifically. The apartments of some famous Petersburgers, including Alexander Pushkin, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Feodor Chaliapin, Alexander Blok, Vladimir Nabokov, Anna Akhmatova, Mikhail Zoshchenko, Joseph Brodsky, as well as some palace and park ensembles of the southern suburbs and notable architectural monuments such as St. Isaac's Cathedral, have also been turned into public museums.
The Kunstkamera, with its collection established in 1714 by Peter the Great to collect curiosities from all over the world, is sometimes considered the first museum in Russia, which has evolved into the present-day Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography. The Russian Ethnography Museum, which has been split from the Russian Museum, is devoted to the cultures of the people of Russia, the former Soviet Union and Russian Empire.
Other notable museums include the Central Naval Museum hosted in the building of the former stock exchange and Zoological Museum, the Railway Museum, Museum of the Siege of Leningrad, Saint Petersburg Museum of History in the Peter and Paul Fortress and Artillery Museum, which in fact includes not only artillery items, but also a huge collection of other military equipment, uniform and decorations.
The Grand Cascade.
Saint Petersburg is home to numerous parks and gardens, some of the most famous of which are situated in the southern suburbs, including one of the largest English gardens of Europe in Pavlovsk. Sosnovka is the largest park within the limits of the city proper, occupying 240 ha. The Summer Garden is the oldest one, dating back to the early 18th century and designed in the regular style. It is situated on the southern bank of the Neva at the head of the Fontanka and is famous for its cast iron railing and marble sculptures.
Among other notable parks are the Maritime Victory Park on Krestovsky Island and the Moscow Victory Park in the south, both commemorating the victory over Nazi Germany in the Second World War, as well as the Central Park of Culture and Leisure occupying Yelagin Island and the Tauride Garden around the Tauride Palace. The most common trees grown in the parks are the English oak, Norway maple, green ash, silver birch, Siberian larch, blue spruce, crack willow, limes and poplars. Important dendrological collections dating back to the 19th century are hosted by the Saint Petersburg Botanical Garden and the Park of the Forestry Academy.
Among the city's more than fifty theaters is the world-famous Mariinsky Theater (also known as the Kirov Theater in the USSR ), home to the Mariinsky Ballet company and opera. Leading ballet dancers, such as Vaslav Nijinsky, Anna Pavlova, Rudolph Nureyev, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Galina Ulanova and Natalia Makarova, were principal stars of the Mariinsky ballet.
Dmitri Shostakovich was born and brought up in Saint Petersburg, and dedicated his Seventh Symphony to the city, calling it the "Leningrad Symphony." He wrote the symphony while in Leningrad during the German siege. The 7th symphony was premiered in 1942; its performance in the besieged Leningrad at the Bolshoy Philharmonic Hall under the baton of conductor Karl Eliasberg was heard over the radio and lifted the spirits of the survivors. In 1992 a reunion performance of the 7th Symphony by the (then) 14 survivors was played in the same hall as they done half a century ago. The Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra remained one of the best known symphony orchestras in the world under the leadership of conductors Yevgeny Mravinsky and Yuri Temirkanov.
The Imperial Choral Capella was founded and modeled after the royal courts of other European capitals.
Saint Petersburg has been home to the newest movements in popular music in the country. The first jazz band in the Soviet Union was founded here by Leonid Utyosov in the 1920s, under the patronage of Isaak Dunayevsky. The first jazz club in the Soviet Union was founded here in the 1950s, and later was named jazz club Kvadrat. In 1956 the popular ensemble Druzhba was founded by Aleksandr Bronevitsky and Edita Piekha, becoming the first popular band in the 1950s USSR. In the 1960s student rock-groups Argonavty, Kochevniki and others pioneered a series of unofficial and underground rock concerts and festivals. In 1972 Boris Grebenshchikov founded the band Aquarium, that later grew to huge popularity. Since then "Peter's rock" music style was formed.
In the 1970s many bands came out from "underground" and eventually founded the Leningrad rock club which has been providing stage to such bands as Piknik, DDT, Kino, headed by the legendary Viktor Tsoi, Igry, Mify, Zemlyane, Alisa and many other popular groups. The first Russian-style happening show Pop mekhanika, mixing over 300 people and animals on stage, was directed by the multi-talented Sergey Kuryokhin in the 1980s.
Today's Saint Petersburg boasts many notable musicians of various genres, from popular Leningrad's Sergei Shnurov and Tequilajazzz, to rock veterans Yuri Shevchuk, Vyacheslav Butusov and Mikhail Boyarsky.
The White Nights Festival in Saint Petersburg is famous for spectacular fireworks and massive show celebrating the end of school year.
Over 250 international and Russian movies were filmed in Saint Petersburg. International Movie Database Well over a thousand feature films about tsars, revolution, people and stories set in Saint Petersburg were produced worldwide, but were not filmed in the city. First film studios were founded in Saint Petersburg in the 1900s, and since the 1920s Lenfilm has been the largest film studio based in Saint Petersburg. The first foreign feature movie filmed entirely in Saint Petersburg was the 1997 production of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, starring Sophie Marceau and Sean Bean, and made by international team of British, American, French and Russian filmmakers.
The cult comedy Irony of Fate (also ÐÑÐ¾Ð½Ð¸Ñ ÑÑдÑбÑ, или С лÑгким паÑом!) is set in Saint Petersburg and pokes fun at Soviet city planning. The 1985 film White Nights received considerable Western attention for having captured genuine Leningrad street scenes at a time when filming in the Soviet Union by Western production companies was generally unheard of. Other movies include GoldenEye (1995), Midnight in Saint Petersburg (1996), and Brother (1997). Onegin (1999) is based on the Pushkin poem and showcases many tourist attractions. In addition, the Russian romantic comedy, ÐиÑÐµÑ FM, showcases the cityscape significantly, almost as if it was a main character in the film.
Several international film festivals are held annually, such as the Festival of Festivals, St. Petersburg, as well as the Message to Man International Documentary Film Festival, since its inauguration in 1988 during the White Nights.
Saint Petersburg has a longstanding and world famous tradition in literature. Dostoyevsky called it âThe most abstract and intentional city in the world," emphasizing its artificiality, but it was also a symbol of modern disorder in a changing Russia. It frequently appeared to Russian writers as a menacing and inhuman mechanism. The grotesque and often nightmarish image of the city is featured in Pushkin's last poems, the Petersburg stories of Gogol, the novels of Dostoyevsky, the verse of Alexander Blok and Osip Mandelshtam, and in the symbolist novel Petersburg by Andrey Bely. According to Lotman in his chapter, 'The Symbolism of Saint Petersburg' in Universe and the Mind, these writers were inspired from symbolism from within the city itself. The effect of life in Saint Petersburg on the plight of the poor clerk in a society obsessed with hierarchy and status also became an important theme for authors such as Pushkin, Gogol, and Dostoyevsky. Another important feature of early Saint Petersburg literature is its mythical element, which incorporates urban legends and popular ghost stories, as the stories of Pushkin and Gogol included ghosts returning to Saint Petersburg to haunt other characters as well as other fantastical elements, creating a surreal and abstract image of Saint Petersburg.
Twentieth century writers from Saint Petersburg, such as Vladimir Nabokov, Ayn Rand, Andrey Bely and Yevgeny Zamyatin, along with his apprentices, The Serapion Brothers, created entire new styles in literature and contributed new insights to the understanding of society through their experience in this city. Anna Akhmatova became an important leader for Russian poetry. Her poem Requiem focuses on the tragedies of living during the time of the Stalinist terror. Another notable 20th century writer from Saint Petersburg is Joseph Brodsky, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1987). While living in the United States, his writings in English reflected on life in Saint Petersburg from the unique perspective of being both an insider and an outsider to the city in essays such as, "A Guide to a Renamed City" and the nostalgic "In a Room and a Half". Joseph Brodsky. Less Than One: Selected Essays, 1986
FC Zenit's home Petrovsky stadium
Leningrad hosted part of the football tournament during the 1980 Summer Olympics. The 1994 Goodwill Games were held here.
The first competition here was the 1703 rowing event initiated by Peter the Great, after the victory over the Swedish fleet. Yachting events were held by the Russian Navy since the foundation of the city. Yacht clubs: St. Petersburg River Yacht Club, Neva Yacht Club, the latter is the oldest yacht club in the world. In the winter, when the sea and lake surfaces are frozen and yachts and dinghies cannot be used, local people sail on ice boats.
Equestrianism has been a long tradition, popular among the Tsars and aristocracy, as well as part of the military training. Several historic sports arenas were built for Equestrianism since the 18th century, to maintain training all year round, such as the Zimny Stadion and Konnogvardeisky Manezh among others.
Chess tradition was highlighted by the 1914 international tournament, in which the title "Grandmaster" was first formally conferred by Russian Tsar Nicholas II to five players: Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine, Tarrasch and Marshall, and which the Tsar had partially funded.
Kirov Stadium (now demolished) was one of the largest stadiums anywhere in the world, and the home to FC Zenit St. Petersburg in 1950-1993 and 1995. In 1951 the attendance of 110,000 set the record for the Soviet football. In 2007 Zenit became champions of the Russian Premier League, won the UEFA Cup 2007â08 season and the 2008 UEFA Supercup. Zenit now plays their home games at Petrovsky Stadium.
As of 2006/2007 there were 1024 kindergartens, 716 public schools and 80 vocational schools in Saint Petersburg. SPB.ru The largest of the higher education institutions are Saint Petersburg State University, enrolling approximately 32,000 undergraduate students, Saint Petersburg Polytechnical University and Herzen University. However, the universities are all federal property and don't belong to the city.
*List of consulates in Saint Petersburg
*List of museums in Saint Petersburg
*List of notable people from Saint Petersburg
*List of Saint Petersburg sister cities
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*Glantz, David M. The Battle for Leningrad, 1941-1944. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002. ISBN 0700612084.
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*Eyewitness Guide: St. Petersburg.
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*Orttung, Robert W. From Leningrad to St. Petersburg: Democratization in a Russian City. New York: St. Martinâs, 1995. ISBN 0312175612.
*Ruble, Blair A. Leningrad: Shaping a Soviet City. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. ISBN 0877723478.
*Shvidkovsky, Dmitry O. & Alexander Orloff. St. Petersburg: Architecture of the Tsars. New York: Abbeville Press, 1996. ISBN 0789202174.
*Volkov, Solomon. St. Petersburg: A Cultural History. New York: Free Press, 1995. ISBN 0028740521.
*St. Petersburg:Architecture of the Tsars. 360 pages. Abbeville Press, 1996. ISBN 0789202174
*Saint Petersburg: Museums, Palaces, and Historic Collections: A Guide to the Lesser Known Treasures of St. Petersburg. 2003. ISBN 1593730004.
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овÑкий Ð . Ð. Река Ðева и ÐевÑÐºÐ°Ñ Ð³Ñба, Leningrad, ÐидÑомеÑеоиздаÑ, 1981.
* Official presentation of Saint Petersburg
* Official Portal of the City Government: Saint Petersburg
* Encyclopaedia of Saint Petersburg
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* Saint Petersburg in 1900
* Saint Petersburg, entry in the World Monuments Fund's 2008 watchlist
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Saint_Petersburg | What was made in Russia's largest foundry? | thousands of sculptures and statues | data/set3/a10 | Saint_Petersburg
Saint Petersburg ( , ) is a city and a federal subject (a federal city) of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The city's other names were Petrograd ( , 1914â1924) and Leningrad ( , 1924â1991). It is often called just Petersburg ( ) and is informally known as Piter ( ).
Founded by Tsar Peter I of Russia on 27 May 1703, it was the capital of the Russian Empire for more than two hundred years (1713â1728, 1732â1918). Saint Petersburg ceased being the capital in 1918 after the Russian Revolution of 1917. Nicholas and Alexandra: An Intimate Account of the Last of the Romanovs and the Fall of Imperial Russia (Athenum, 1967) by Robert K. Massie, ASIN B000CGP8M2 (also, Ballantine Books, 2000, ISBN 0-345-43831-0 and Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, 2005, ISBN 1-57912-433-X) It is Russia's second largest city after Moscow with 4.6 million inhabitants, and over 6 million people live in its vicinity. Saint Petersburg is a major European cultural centre, and an important Russian port on the Baltic Sea.
Saint Petersburg is often described as the most Western city of Russia. V. Morozov. The Discourses of Saint Petersburg and the Shaping of a Wider Europe. Copenhagen Peace Research Institute. 2002. Ciaonet.org Among cities of the world with over one million people, Saint Petersburg is the northernmost. The Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments constitute a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Saint Petersburg is also home to The Hermitage, the largest art museum in the world. /ref> Russia's political and cultural centre for 200 years, the city is sometimes referred to in Russia as the northern capital. A large number of foreign consulates, international corporations, banks and other businesses are located in Saint Petersburg.
On 1 May 1703 (Julian calendar), during the Great Northern War, Peter the Great captured the Swedish fortress of Nyenskans on the Neva river in Ingria. A few weeks later, on 27 May 1703 (May 16, Old Style), lower on the river, on Zayachy (Hare) Island, three miles (5 km) inland from the gulf, he laid down the Peter and Paul Fortress, which became the first brick and stone building of the new city. He named the city after his patron saint, Saint Peter, the apostle. The original name was meant to sound like Dutch due to Peter's obsession with the Dutch culture. Peter the Great: His Life and World (Knopf, 1980) by Robert K. Massie, ISBN 0-394-50032-6
The city was built by conscripted serfs from all over Russia and also by Swedish prisoners of war under the supervision of Alexander Menshikov and later became the centre of Saint Petersburg Governorate. Peter moved the capital from Moscow to Saint Petersburg in 1712, before the Treaty of Nystad of 1721 ended the war.
The Bronze Horseman, monument to Peter the Great.
Palace Square, as the main square of the Russian Empire it was the setting of many events of great historical significance
Lenin statue outside the Finland station. Between 1924 and 1991 the city was known as Leningrad.
Map of Saint Petersburg, 1903.
Church of the Savior on Blood.
During the first few years of its existence the city grew spontaneously around Trinity Square on the right bank of the Neva, near the Peter and Paul Fortress. However, Saint Petersburg soon started to develop according to a plan. By 1716 Domenico Trezzini had elaborated a project whereby the city centre would be located on Vasilievsky Island and shaped by a rectangular grid of canals. The project was not completed, but is still evident in the layout of the streets. In 1716 Jean-Baptiste Alexandre Le Blond was appointed chief architect of Saint Petersburg by Peter the Great.
The style of Petrine Baroque, developed by Trezzini and other architects and exemplified by such buildings as the Menshikov Palace, Kunstkamera, Peter and Paul Cathedral, Twelve Collegia, became prominent in the city architecture of the early 18th century. In 1724 the Academy of Sciences, University and Academic Gymnasium were established in Saint Petersburg by Peter the Great.
However, in 1725 Peter died. His near-lifelong autocratic push for modernisation of Russia had met with considerable opposition from the old-fashioned Russian nobility â resulting in several attempts on his life and a treason case involving his own son. Matthew S. Anderson, Peter the Great (London: Thames and Hudson, 1978) Thus, in 1728, Peter II of Russia moved his seat back to Moscow. But four years later, in 1732, under Empress Anna of Russia, Saint Petersburg again became the capital of the Russian Empire and remained the seat of the government for 186 years.
In 1736-1737 the city suffered from catastrophic fires. In order to rebuild the damaged boroughs, in 1737 a new plan was commissioned by a committee under Burkhard Christoph von Munnich. The city was divided into five boroughs, and the city centre was moved to the Admiralty borough, situated on the east bank between the Neva and Fontanka.
It developed along three radial streets, which meet at the Admiralty and are now known as Nevsky Prospekt (which is now perceived as the main street of the city), Gorokhovaya Street and Voznesensky Prospekt. The style of Baroque dominated the city architecture during the first sixty years, culminating in the Elizabethan Baroque, represented most notably by Bartolomeo Rastrelli with such buildings as the Winter Palace. In the 1760s the Baroque architecture was succeeded by the neoclassical architecture.
The Commission of Stone Buildings of Moscow and Saint Petersburg established in 1762 ruled that no structure in the city be higher than the Winter Palace and prohibited spacing between buildings. During the reign of Catherine the Great in the 1760s-1780s the banks of the Neva were lined with granite embankments.
However, it wasn't until 1850 that it was allowed to open the first permanent bridge across the Neva, Blagoveshchensky Bridge. Before that, only pontoon bridges were allowed. Obvodny Canal (dug in 1769-1833) became the southern limit of the city.
Some of the most important neoclassical architects in Saint Petersburg (including those working within the Empire style) were Jean-Baptiste Vallin de la Mothe (Imperial Academy of Arts, Small Hermitage, Gostiny Dvor, New Holland Arch, Catholic Church of St. Catherine), Antonio Rinaldi (Marble Palace), Yury Felten (Old Hermitage, Chesme Church), Giacomo Quarenghi (Academy of Sciences, Hermitage Theatre, Yusupov Palace), Andrey Voronikhin (Mining Institute, Kazan Cathedral), Andreyan Zakharov (Admiralty building), Jean-François Thomas de Thomon (Spit of Vasilievsky Island), Carlo Rossi (Yelagin Palace, Mikhailovsky Palace, Alexandrine Theatre, Senate and Synod Buildings, General Staff Building, design of many streets and squares), Vasily Stasov (Moscow Triumphal Gate, Trinity Cathedral), Auguste de Montferrand (Saint Isaac's Cathedral, Alexander Column). The victory over Napoleonic France in the Patriotic War of 1812 was commemorated with many monuments, including Alexander Column by Montferrand, erected in 1834, and Narva Triumphal Gate.
In 1825 the suppressed Decembrist revolt against Nicholas I of Russia took place on the Senate Square in the city, a day after he assumed the throne.
By the 1840s the neoclassical architecture had given place to various romanticist styles, which were dominant until the 1890s, represented by such architects as Andrei Stackenschneider (Mariinsky Palace, Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace, Nicholas Palace, New Michael Palace) and Konstantin Thon (Moskovsky Rail Terminal). The Church of the Savior on Blood designed in the Russian revival style commemorated the place where Alexander II of Russia was assassinated in 1881.
With the emancipation of the serfs undertaken by Alexander II in 1861 and the industrial revolution the influx of former peasants into the capital increased greatly. Poor boroughs spontaneously emerged on the outskirts of the city. Saint Petersburg surpassed Moscow in population and industrial growth and grew into one of the largest industrial hubs and cities in Europe.
The Revolution of 1905 began in Saint Petersburg and spread rapidly into the provinces. With the start of World War I, the name Saint Petersburg was perceived to be too German, so in 1914 the city was renamed Petrograd. The Romanovs: The Final Chapter (Random House, 1995) by Robert K. Massie, ISBN 0-394-58048-6 and ISBN 0-679-43572-7 In 1917 the February Revolution, which put an end to the Russian monarchy, and the October Revolution, which ultimately brought Vladimir Lenin to power, broke out in Petrograd. Rex A. Wade The Russian Revolution, 1917 2005 Cambridge University Press ISBN 0521841550 The city's proximity to the border and anti-Soviet armies forced the Bolsheviks under Lenin to transfer the capital to Moscow on March 12, 1918.
In 1919 during the ensuing Russian Civil War Nikolay Yudenich advancing from Estonia was about to capture the city from the Bolsheviks, but Leon Trotsky ultimately managed to mobilise the population and make him retreat. Many people fled the city in 1917-1920 or were repressed in the Red Terror, Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe. By Robert Gellately, 2007, Random House, 720 pages. ISBN 1400040051 so its population decreased dramatically. On January 26, 1924, three days after Lenin's death, Petrograd was renamed Leningrad. For decades Leningrad was glorified by the Soviet propaganda as "the cradle of the revolution" and "the city of three revolutions", many spots related to Lenin and the revolutions, such as the cruiser Aurora, were carefully preserved. Many streets and other toponyms were renamed accordingly.
In the 1920s-1930s the poor outskirts were reconstructed into regularly planned boroughs. The constructivist architecture flourished around that time. The Soviets nationalised housing and forced many residents to share communal apartments (kommunalkas). With 68% living in shared apartments in the 1930s, Leningrad was the city with the largest number of kommunalkas. In 1935 a new general plan was outlined, whereby the city should expand to the south and its centre should move there. The constructivism was rejected in favor of the pompous Stalinist architecture. Stalin ordered the construction of the new city hall on Moskovsky Prospect thus making it the new main street of Leningrad during the Soviet rule.
Since December 1931 Leningrad has been administratively separate from Leningrad Oblast. At that time it included Leningrad Suburban District, some parts of which were transferred back to Leningrad Oblast in 1936 and turned into Vsevolozhsky District, Krasnoselsky District, Pargolovsky District and Slutsky District (renamed Pavlovsky District in 1944).
On December 1, 1934, Sergey Kirov, popular communist leader of Leningrad, was assassinated, which was used to start the Great Purge. Stalin's Terror: High Politics and Mass Repression in the Soviet Union by Barry McLoughlin and Kevin McDermott (eds). Palgrave Macmillan, 2002, p. 6 The sizeable minorities of Germans, Poles, Finns, Estonians and Latvians were almost completely expelled from Leningrad by the Soviet government during the 1930s. Martin, Terry (1998). The Origins of Soviet Ethnic Cleansing. The Journal of Modern History 70.4, 813-861.
During World War II, Leningrad was besieged by Nazi Germany and co-belligerent Finland. Siege of Leningrad. Encyclopædia Britannica The siege lasted 872 days from September 1941 to January 1944. Baldack, Richard H. "Leningrad, Siege of" World Book Encyclopedia, Chicago, 2002, vol.12, page 195 The Siege of Leningrad was one of the longest, most destructive, and most lethal sieges of major cities in modern history. It isolated the city from most supplies except those provided through the Road of Life across Lake Ladoga, and more than a million civilians died, mainly from starvation. Many others were eventually evacuated or escaped by themselves, so the city became largely depopulated. For the heroic resistance of the city and tenacity of the survivors of the Siege, in 1945 Leningrad became the first city in the Soviet Union awarded the title Hero City. In October 1946 some former Finnish territories along the northern coast of the Gulf of Finland captured in the Winter War and Continuation War were transferred from Leningrad Oblast to Leningrad and divided into Sestroretsky District and Kurortny District, including the town of Terijoki (renamed Zelenogorsk in 1948).
Leningrad and many of its suburbs were rebuilt over the post-war decades, partially according to the pre-war plans. The 1948 general plan of Leningrad featured radial urban development in the north as well as in the south. The Leningrad Metro, underground rapid transit system which was designed before the war in the 1930s, was opened in 1955 with its first seven stations decorated with marble and bronze. Meanwhile, in 1949-1951 a large number of prominent Leningrad members of the Communist Party and their families were charged with treason and intention to create an anti-Soviet organization out of their local party cell. Many were imprisoned or executed in the Leningrad Affair fabricated by the central Soviet leadership. Dmitri Volkogonov. Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy, 1996, ISBN 0761507183 Russian publication: ÐенингÑадÑкое дело â надо ли ÑÑавиÑÑ ÐºÐ°Ð²ÑÑки?: Contr-tv.ru
In 1953 Pavlovsky District of Leningrad Oblast was abolished, and parts of its territory including Pavlovsk merged with Leningrad. In 1954 the settlements Levashovo, Pargolovo and Pesochny merged with Leningrad.
After the death of Stalin the perceived ornamental excesses of the Stalinist architecture were abandoned. In the 1960s-1980s, as many new residential boroughs were built on the outskirts with few series of functionalist apartment blocks identical to each other, many families moved there from kommunalkas in the city centre in order to live in separate apartments. Uritsk was re-named Ligovo and merged with Leningrad in 1963, Lomonosov merged in 1978.
On June 12, 1991, in a referendum held on the same day as the first Russian presidential election, 54% of voters chose to restore the name "Saint Petersburg" (the change officially took effect on September 6, 1991). Many other Soviet-era toponyms in the city were also renamed soon afterwards. In the same election Anatoly Sobchak became the first democratically elected mayor of the city. Jack F. Matlock, Jr., Autopsy on an Empire: The American Ambassador's Account of the Collapse of the Soviet Union, Random House, 1995, ISBN 0679413766
By the end of 1991 the deteriorating planned economy of the collapsing Soviet Union had put the city on the verge of starvation. For the first time since World War II food rationing was introduced, and the city received humanitarian food aid from abroad. The city somewhat recovered with the market reforms in Russia. In 1995-2004 a northern section of the Metro's Kirovsko-Vyborgskaya Line was cut off by underground flooding, which was a major obstacle to the city development.
In 1996, Vladimir Yakovlev was elected as head of the Saint Petersburg City Administration. The title of the city head was changed in advance from "mayor" to "governor". In 2003, Yakovlev resigned a year before his second term expired. Valentina Matviyenko was elected governor. In 2006 she was reapproved as governor by the city legislature. The residential building had intensified again, real estate prices inflated greatly, and this situation causes many new problems for the historical part of the city.
In spite of the fact that the central part of the city is watched by UNESCO, the safety of its historical and architectural environment is in danger. Sergey Zagraevsky. Will Saint Petersburg share the same fate as Moscow? Zagraevsky.com There are still about 8000 architectural monuments in Saint Petersburg, but since 2005 the destruction of older buildings in the historical centre has continued. A number of new building projects are underway, including the Gazprom skyscraper in Okhta.
Territory of the federal subject of Saint Petersburg.
The area of Saint Petersburg city proper is . The area of the federal subject is , which contains the Saint Petersburg proper (consisting of 81 okrugs), nine suburban towns (Kolpino, Krasnoye Selo, Kronstadt, Lomonosov, Pavlovsk, Peterhof, Pushkin, Sestroretsk and Zelenogorsk) and 21 municipal settlements.
Saint Petersburg is situated on the middle taiga lowlands along the shores of the Neva Bay of the Gulf of Finland, and islands of the river delta. The largest are Vasilyevsky island (besides the artificial island between Obvodny canal and Fontanka, and Kotlin in the Neva Bay), Petrogradsky, Dekabristov and Krestovsky. The latter together with Yelagin and Kamenny island are covered mostly by parks. The Karelian Isthmus, North of the city, is a popular resort area. In the south Saint Petersburg crosses the Baltic-Ladoga Klint and meets the Izhora Plateau.
The elevation of Saint Petersburg ranges from the sea level to its highest point of at the Orekhovaya Hill in the Duderhof Heights in the south. Part of the city's territory west of Liteyny Prospekt is no higher than above sea level, and has suffered from numerous floods. Floods in Saint Petersburg are triggered by a long wave in the Baltic Sea, caused by meteorological conditions, winds and shallowness of the Neva Bay. The four most disastrous floods occurred in 1824 ( above sea-level, during which over 300 buildings were destroyed The level of flooding is measured near Saint Petersburg Mining Institute, which is normally a.s.l. ), 1924 , 1777 , 1955 and 1975 . To prevent floods, the Saint Petersburg Dam has been under construction since 1979. ÐежиÑ
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Since the 18th century the terrain in the city has been raised artificially, at some places by more than , making mergers of several islands, and changing the hydrology of the city. Besides the Neva and its distributaries, other important rivers of the federal subject of Saint Petersburg are Sestra, Okhta and Izhora. The largest lake is Sestroretsky Razliv in the north, followed by Lakhtinsky Razliv, Suzdal Lakes and other smaller lakes.
Saint Petersburg's position on the latitude of ca. 60° N causes variation in day length across seasons, ranging from 5:53 to 18:50. Twilight may last all night in early summer, from mid-May to mid-July, the celebrated phenomenon known as the white nights.
Snow falling on the morning of May 14, 2008 at Srednyaya Rogatka (district in the south of St. Petersburg)
Saint Petersburg experiences a humid continental climate of the cool summer subtype (Köppen: Dfb), due to the distinct moderating influence of the Baltic Sea cyclones, with warm, humid and short summers and long, cold winters.
The average daily temperature in July is ; summer maximum is about , winter minimum is about . The record low temperature is , recorded in 1883. The average annual temperature is . The River Neva within the city limits usually freezes up in November-December, break-up occurs in April. From December to March there are 123 days average with snow cover, which reaches the average of by February. The frost-free period in the city lasts on average for about 135 days. The city has a climate slightly warmer than its suburbs. Weather conditions are quite variable all year round. See Historical weather records for Saint Petersburg (since 1932) and Historical weather in Saint Petersburg for further information.
Average annual precipitation varies across the city, averaging per year and reaching maximum in late summer. Soil moisture is almost always high because of lower evapotranspiration due to the cool climate. Air humidity is 78% on average, while overcast is 165 days a year on average.
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Saint Petersburg is the second largest city in Russia. The 2002 census recorded a population of the federal subject of 4,661,219, or 3.21% of the total population of Russia. The 2002 census recorded twenty-two ethnic groups of more than two thousand persons each. The ethnic composition was: Russian 84.72%, Ukrainian 1.87%, Belarusians 1.17%, Jewish 0.78%, Tatar 0.76%, Armenian 0.41%, Azeri 0.36%, Georgian 0.22%, Chuvash 0.13%, Polish 0.10%, and many other smaller ethnic groups, while 7.89% of the inhabitants declined to state their ethnicity.
The 20th century saw hectic ups and downs in population. From 2.4 million in 1916 it had dropped to less than 740,000 by 1920 during the Russian Revolution of 1917 and Russian Civil War. The sizeable minorities of Germans, Poles, Finns, Estonians and Latvians were almost completely expelled from Leningrad by the Soviet government during the 1930s. From 1941 to the end of 1943, population dropped from 3 million to less than 700,000, as people died in battles, starved to death during the Siege of Leningrad, or were evacuated. After the siege, some of the evacuees returned, but most influx was due to migration from other parts of the Soviet Union. The city absorbed about 3 million people in the 1950s and grew to over 5 million in the 1980s. From 1991 to 2006 the city's population decreased to the current 4.6 million, while the suburban population increased due to privatization of land and massive move to suburbs. ЧиÑÑÑкова Ð. ТÑеÑÑе ÑокÑаÑение ÑиÑленноÑÑи наÑелениÑ... и поÑледнее? ÐемоÑкоп Weekly 163 â 164, August 1â15, 2004. Russian source: "Encyclopedia of Saint Petersburg" ЧиÑÑÑков Ð. Ю. ÐаÑеление (обзоÑÐ½Ð°Ñ ÑÑаÑÑÑ). ÐнÑÐ¸ÐºÐ»Ð¾Ð¿ÐµÐ´Ð¸Ñ Ð¡Ð°Ð½ÐºÑ-ÐеÑеÑбÑÑга The birth rate remains lower than the death rate; people over 65 constitute more than twenty percent of the population; and the median age is about 40 years. Russian statistics ÐÑновнÑе показаÑели ÑоÑиалÑно-демогÑаÑиÑеÑкой ÑиÑÑаÑии в СанкÑ-ÐеÑеÑбÑÑге
People in urban Saint Petersburg live mostly in apartments. Between 1918 and the 1990s, the Soviets nationalised housing and forced residents to share communal apartments (kommunalkas). With 68% living in shared flats in the 1930s, Leningrad was the city in the USSR with the largest number of kommunalkas. Resettling residents of kommunalkas is now on the way out, albeit shared apartments are still not uncommon. As new boroughs were built on the outskirts in the 1950s-1980s, over half a million low income families eventually received free apartments, and about an additional hundred thousand condos were purchased. While economic and social activity is concentrated in the historic city centre, the richest part of Saint Petersburg, most people live in commuter areas. For the first half of 2007, the birth rate was 9.1 per 1000.
Smolny Institute, the seat of the governor.
Saint Petersburg is a federal subject of Russia. The political life of Saint Petersburg is regulated by the city charter adopted by the city legislature in 1998. The superior executive body is the Saint Petersburg City Administration, led by the governor (mayor before 1996). Saint Petersburg has a single-chamber legislature, the Saint Petersburg Legislative Assembly.
According to the federal law passed in 2004, heads of federal subjects, including the governor of Saint Petersburg, are nominated by the President of Russia and approved by local legislatures. If the legislature disapproves the nominee, it is dissolved. The current governor, Valentina Matviyenko, was approved according to the new system in December 2006. She is currently the only woman governor in the whole of Russia.
Saint Petersburg city is currently divided into eighteen districts. Saint Petersburg is also the administrative centre of Leningrad Oblast, and of the Northwestern Federal District. The Constitutional Court of Russia moved to Saint Petersburg from Moscow in May 2008.
Saint Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast, being two different federal subjects, share a number of local departments of federal executive agencies and courts, such as court of arbitration, police, FSB, postal service, drug enforcement administration, penitentiary service, federal registration service, and other federal services.
The Old Saint Petersburg Stock Exchange, or Bourse, houses the Central Naval Museum
Saint Petersburg is a major trade gateway, financial and industrial centre of Russia specialising in oil and gas trade, shipbuilding yards, aerospace industry, radio and electronics, software and computers; machine building, heavy machinery and transport, including tanks and other military equipment, mining, instrument manufacture, ferrous and nonferrous metallurgy (production of aluminium alloys), chemicals, pharmaceuticals, medical equipment, publishing and printing, food and catering, wholesale and retail, textile and apparel industries, and many other businesses. It was also home to Lessner, one of Russia's two pioneering automobile manufacturers (along with Russo-Baltic), Lessner; founded by machine tool and boiler maker G. A. Lessner in 1904, with designs by Boris Loutsky, it survived until 1910. Georgano, G. N. Cars: Early and Vintage, 1886-1930. (London: Grange-Universal, 1985)
10% of the world's power turbines are made there at the LMZ, which built over two thousand turbines for power plants across the world. Major local industries are Admiralty Shipyard, Baltic Shipyard, LOMO, Kirov Plant, Elektrosila, Izhorsky Zavod; also registered in Saint Petersburg are Sovkomflot, Petersburg Fuel Company and SIBUR among other major Russian and international companies.
The Saint Petersburg docks at dawn.
Saint Petersburg has three large cargo seaports: Bolshoi Port Saint Petersburg, Kronstadt, and Lomonosov. International cruise liners have been served at the passenger port at Morskoy Vokzal on the south-west of Vasilevsky Island. In 2008 the first two berths were opened at the New Passenger Port on the west of the island. Discoverthebaltic.com Discover the Baltic online guide to Baltic cruise ports The new port is part of the city's "Marine Facade" development project Mfspb.ru St Petersburg "Marine Facade" development project and is due to have seven berths in operation by 2010.
A complex system of riverports on both banks of the Neva river are interconnected with the system of seaports, thus making Saint Petersburg the main link between the Baltic sea and the rest of Russia through the Volga-Baltic Waterway.
The Saint Petersburg Mint (Monetny Dvor), founded in 1724, is one of the largest mints in the world, it mints Russian coins, medals and badges. Saint Petersburg is also home to the oldest and largest Russian foundry, Monumentskulptura, which made thousands of sculptures and statues that are now gracing public parks of Saint Petersburg, as well as many other cities. Monuments and bronze statues of the Czars, as well as other important historic figures and dignitaries, and other world famous monuments, such as the sculptures by Peter Clodt von Jürgensburg, Paolo Troubetzkoy, Pavel Antokolsky, and others, were made there.
In 2007 Toyota opened a Camry plant after investing 5 billion dollars in Shushary, one of the southern suburbs of Saint Petersburg. General Motors, Hyundai and Nissan have signed deals with the Russian government to build their automotive plants in Saint Petersburg too. Automotive and auto-parts industry is on the rise there during the last decade. Saint Petersburg is also known as the "beer capital" of Russia, due to the supply and quality of local water, contributing over 30% of the domestic production of beer with its five large-scale breweries including Europe's second largest brewery Baltika, Vena (both operated by BBH), Heineken Brewery, Stepan Razin (both by Heineken) and Tinkoff brewery (SUN-InBev). Saint Petersburg has the second largest construction industry in Russia, including commercial, housing and road construction.
In 2006 Saint Petersburg's city budget was 179,9 billion rubles, and is planned to double by 2012. The federal subject's gross regional product as of 2005 was 667,905.4 million Russian rubles, ranked 4th in Russia, after Moscow, Tyumen Oblast, and Moscow Oblast, or 145,503.3 rubles per capita, ranked 12th among Russia's federal subjects, contributed mostly by wholesale and retail trade and repair services (24.7%) as well as processing industry (20.9%) and transportation and telecommunications (15.1%).
The Kresty prison.
Russia historically had a high level of crime that increased significantly after the October revolution. Edward Hallett Carr The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1923, 1985 ISBN 0393301990 Google preview Perestroika-time turmoils saw additional increase of the crime level.
Saint Petersburg experiences significant levels of street crime and bribery. In addition, in recent years there has been a notable increase in racially motivated violence, especially towards tourists and foreign students. One of the well known white supremacist groups Belaya Energia (White Energy, originally comes from White Power), has reportedly been one of the main gangs involved in murdering foreign university students. Russia: Racist Attacks Plague St. Petersburg Radio Free Europe September 30, 2005
At the end of the 1980s â beginning of the 1990s, Leningrad became home to a number of organised criminal groups as Tambov Gang, Malyshev Gang, Kazan Gang and ethnic criminal groups, engaged in a racket, extortion, paying off local government, and violent clashes with each other. Russian Mafia Shakes Down the Country by Steven R. Van Hook, Santa Barbara News-Press, November 20, 1994
In 2008, a car bomb killed three people (including a four-year old child), and injured one.
After the assassinations of City Property Committee Chairman and vice-Governor Mikhail Manevich(1997), State Duma deputy Galina Starovoytova (1998), acting City Legislature Speaker Viktor Novosyolov (1999) and a number of prominent businesspeople, Saint Petersburg was dubbed Capital of Crime in the Russian press. Trumbull, Nathaniel S. (2003) The impacts of globalization on Saint Petersburg: A secondary world city in from the cold? The Annals of Regional Science 37:533â546 Powell, Bill & Brian Whitmore. The Capital Of Crime.(Saint Petersburg, Russia). Newsweek International, May 15, 2000. There were a number of movies filmed in Saint Petersburg about the life of crime; , Brother (1997) reinforcing its image as the Crime Capital of Russia.
One of the oldest and most infamous remand facilities in Saint Petersburg, Kresty prison is located near downtown.
However, crime rates in St. Petersburg have declined since the end of the 1990s; the aforementioned criminal gangs have mostly dispersed. Even the Kresty prison is no longer in use, as more modern penal institutions are being built farther from the city centre.
The decoration of Saint Petersburg Metro (Kirovsky Zavod Station).
Saint Petersburg is a major transport hub. The first Russian railway was built here, in 1837. Today, the city is the final destination of a web of intercity and suburban railways, served by five different railway terminals (Baltiysky, Finlyandsky, Ladozhsky, Moskovsky, and Vitebsky), Until 2001, the Varshavsky Rail Terminal served as a major station; it now is a railway museum. Reconstruction of the Warsaw Railway Station as well as dozens of non-terminal railway stations within the federal subject. Saint Petersburg has international railway connections to Helsinki, Finland, Berlin, Germany, and all former republics of the USSR. The Helsinki railway was built in 1870, , commutes three times a day, in a journey lasting about five and a half hours. The Moscow-Saint Petersburg Railway opened in 1851, ; the commute to Moscow now requires about four and a half to nine hours. Saint Petersburg is also served by Pulkovo International Airport, Rossiya (Pulkovo): Pulkovo Aviation Enterprise and by three smaller commercial and cargo airports in the suburbs. There is a regular, 24/7, rapid-bus transit connection between Pulkovo airport and the city centre.
The city is also served by the passenger and cargo seaports in the Neva Bay of the Gulf of Finland, Baltic Sea, the river port higher up the Neva, and tens of smaller passenger stations on both banks of the Neva river. It is a terminus of the Volga-Baltic and White Sea-Baltic waterways. In 2004 the first high bridge that doesn't need to be drawn, a long Big Obukhovsky Bridge, was opened. Meteor hydrofoils link the city centre to the coastal towns of Kronstadt, Lomonosov, Peterhof, Sestroretsk and Zelenogorsk from May through October.
Pulkovo International Airport.
Saint Petersburg has an extensive city-funded network of public transport (buses, trams, trolleybuses) and several hundred routes served by marshrutkas. Trams in Saint Petersburg used to be the main transport; in the 1980s, Leningrad had the largest tramway network in the world, but many tramway rail tracks were dismantled in the 2000s. Buses carry up to 3 million passengers daily, serving over 250 urban and a number of suburban bus routes. Saint Petersburg Metro underground rapid transit system was opened in 1955; it now has five lines with 63 stations, connecting all five railway terminals, and carrying 3.4 million passengers daily. Metro stations are decorated in marble and bronze.
Traffic jams are common in the city, because of high daily traffic volumes between the commuter boroughs and the city centre, intercity traffic, and at times excessive snow in winter. Five segments of the Saint Petersburg Ring Road were opened between 2002 and 2006, and full ring is planned to open in 2010.
Saint Petersburg is part of the important transport corridor linking Scandinavia to Russia and Eastern Europe. The city is a node of the international European routes E18 towards Helsinki, E20 towards Tallinn, E95 towards Pskov, Kiev and Odessa and E105 towards Petrozavodsk, Murmansk and Kirkenes (north) and towards Moscow and Kharkiv (south).
Kazan Cathedral
Griboyedov Canal
A bridge over the river Neva
As of now, Saint Petersburg has no skyscrapers and a relatively low skyline. Current regulations forbid construction of high buildings in the city centre. The 310 metre tall Saint Petersburg TV Tower is the tallest structure in the city, while the 122.5 m Peter and Paul Cathedral is by far the highest building. However, there is a controversial project endorsed by the city authorities and known as the Ohkta Centre to build a 396 m supertall skyscraper. In 2008 the World Monuments Fund included the Saint Petersburg historic skyline within the watch list of 100 most endangered sites due to the expected construction, which threatens to alter it drastically.
Unlike in Moscow, in Saint Petersburg the historic architecture of the city centre, mostly consisting of Baroque and neoclassical buildings of the 18th and 19th centuries, has been largely preserved, although a number of buildings were demolished after the Bolsheviks' seizure of power, during the Siege of Leningrad and in recent years. The oldest of the remaining building is a wooden house built for Peter I in 1703 on the shore of the Neva near Trinity Square. Since 1991 the Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments in Saint Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast have been listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.
The ensemble of Peter and Paul Fortress with the Peter and Paul Cathedral takes dominant position on Zayachy Island along the right bank of the River Neva. Each noon a cannon fires a blank shot from the fortress. The Saint Petersburg Mosque, the largest mosque in Europe when opened in 1913, is situated on the right bank nearby. The spit of Vasilievsky Island, which splits the river into two largest armlets, the Bolshaya Neva and Malaya Neva, is connected to the northern bank (Petrogradsky Island) via the Exchange Bridge and occupied by the Old Saint Petersburg Stock Exchange and Rostral Columns. The southern coast of Vasilievsky Island along the Bolshaya Neva features some of the city's oldest buildings, dating from the 18th century, including the Kunstkamera, Twelve Collegia, Menshikov Palace and Imperial Academy of Arts. It hosts one of two campuses of Saint Petersburg State University.
On the southern, left bank of the Neva, connected to the spit of Vasilievsky Island via the Palace Bridge, lie the Admiralty Building, the vast Hermitage Museum complex stretching along the Palace Embankment, which includes the baroque Winter Palace, former official residence of Russian emperors, as well as the neoclassical Marble Palace. The Winter Palace faces Palace Square, the city's main square with the Alexander Column.
Nevsky Prospekt, also situated on the left bank of the Neva, is the main avenue in the city. It starts at the Admiralty and runs eastwards next to Palace Square. Nevsky Prospekt crosses the Moika (Green Bridge), Griboyedov Canal (Kazansky Bridge), Garden Street, the Fontanka (Anichkov Bridge), meets Liteyny Prospekt and proceeds to Uprising Square near the Moskovsky railway station, where it meets Ligovsky Prospekt and turns to the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. The Passage, Catholic Church of St. Catherine, Book House (former Singer Manufacturing Company Building in the Art Nouveau style), Grand Hotel Europe, Lutheran Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, Gostiny Dvor, Russian National Library, Alexandrine Theatre behind Mikeshin's statue of Catherine the Great, Kazan Cathedral, Stroganov Palace, Anichkov Palace and Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace are all situated along that avenue.
The Alexander Nevsky Lavra, intended to house the relics of St. Alexander Nevsky, is an important centre of Christian education in Russia. It also contains the Tikhvin Cemetery with graves of many notable Petersburgers.
On the territory between the Neva and Nevsky Prospekt the Church of the Savior on Blood, Mikhailovsky Palace housing the Russian Museum, Field of Mars, St. Michael's Castle, Summer Garden, Tauride Palace, Smolny Institute and Smolny Convent are located.
Many notable landmarks are situated to the west and south of the Admiralty Building, including the Trinity Cathedral, Mariinsky Palace, Hotel Astoria, famous Mariinsky Theatre, New Holland Island, Saint Isaac's Cathedral, the largest in the city, and Decembrists Square with the Bronze Horseman, 18th century equestrian monument to Peter the Great, which is considered among the city's most recognisable symbols.
Other symbols of Saint Petersburg include the weather vane in the shape of a small ship on top of the Admiralty's golden spire and the golden angel on top of the Peter and Paul Cathedral. The Palace Bridge drawn at night is yet another symbol of the city. Every night during the navigation period from April to November, 22 bridges across the Neva and main canals are drawn to let ships pass in and out of the Baltic Sea according to a schedule. Schedule for main drawbridges across the Neva river (Official Russian schedule): Mr-spb.ru It wasn't until 2004 that the first high bridge across the Neva, which doesn't need to be drawn, Big Obukhovsky Bridge, was opened. There are hundreds of smaller bridges in Saint Petersburg spanning across numerous canals and distributaries of the Neva, some of the most important of which are the Moika, Fontanka, Griboyedov Canal, Obvodny Canal, Karpovka and Smolenka. Due to the intricate web of canals, Saint Petersburg is often called Venice of the North. The rivers and canals in the city centre are lined with granite embankments. The embankments and bridges are separated from rivers and canals by granite or cast iron parapets.
Southern suburbs of the city feature former imperial residences, including Peterhof, with majestic fountain cascades and parks, Tsarskoe Selo, with the baroque Catherine Palace and the neoclassical Alexander Palace, and Pavlovsk, which contains a domed palace of Emperor Paul and one of the largest English-style parks in Europe. Some other residences situated nearby and making part of the world heritage site, including a castle and park in Gatchina, actually belong to Leningrad Oblast rather than Saint Petersburg. Another notable suburb is Kronstadt with its 19th century fortifications and naval monuments, occupying the Kotlin Island in the Gulf of Finland.
From XX century end in a city active building and reorganisation of old historical city districts is conducted.
The authorities are compelled to transfer control of private residences in city centre to private lessors.
Also sealing building and a superstructure of buildings is spent by penthouses.
Some of these structures, such as the Saint Petersburg Commodity and Stock Exchange" have been recognised as town-planning errors.
Interior of the Hermitage Museum.
Saint Petersburg is home to more than two hundred museums, many of them hosted in historic buildings. The largest of the museums is the Hermitage Museum, featuring interiors of the former imperial residence and a vast collection of art. The Russian Museum is a large museum devoted to the Russian fine art specifically. The apartments of some famous Petersburgers, including Alexander Pushkin, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Feodor Chaliapin, Alexander Blok, Vladimir Nabokov, Anna Akhmatova, Mikhail Zoshchenko, Joseph Brodsky, as well as some palace and park ensembles of the southern suburbs and notable architectural monuments such as St. Isaac's Cathedral, have also been turned into public museums.
The Kunstkamera, with its collection established in 1714 by Peter the Great to collect curiosities from all over the world, is sometimes considered the first museum in Russia, which has evolved into the present-day Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography. The Russian Ethnography Museum, which has been split from the Russian Museum, is devoted to the cultures of the people of Russia, the former Soviet Union and Russian Empire.
Other notable museums include the Central Naval Museum hosted in the building of the former stock exchange and Zoological Museum, the Railway Museum, Museum of the Siege of Leningrad, Saint Petersburg Museum of History in the Peter and Paul Fortress and Artillery Museum, which in fact includes not only artillery items, but also a huge collection of other military equipment, uniform and decorations.
The Grand Cascade.
Saint Petersburg is home to numerous parks and gardens, some of the most famous of which are situated in the southern suburbs, including one of the largest English gardens of Europe in Pavlovsk. Sosnovka is the largest park within the limits of the city proper, occupying 240 ha. The Summer Garden is the oldest one, dating back to the early 18th century and designed in the regular style. It is situated on the southern bank of the Neva at the head of the Fontanka and is famous for its cast iron railing and marble sculptures.
Among other notable parks are the Maritime Victory Park on Krestovsky Island and the Moscow Victory Park in the south, both commemorating the victory over Nazi Germany in the Second World War, as well as the Central Park of Culture and Leisure occupying Yelagin Island and the Tauride Garden around the Tauride Palace. The most common trees grown in the parks are the English oak, Norway maple, green ash, silver birch, Siberian larch, blue spruce, crack willow, limes and poplars. Important dendrological collections dating back to the 19th century are hosted by the Saint Petersburg Botanical Garden and the Park of the Forestry Academy.
Among the city's more than fifty theaters is the world-famous Mariinsky Theater (also known as the Kirov Theater in the USSR ), home to the Mariinsky Ballet company and opera. Leading ballet dancers, such as Vaslav Nijinsky, Anna Pavlova, Rudolph Nureyev, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Galina Ulanova and Natalia Makarova, were principal stars of the Mariinsky ballet.
Dmitri Shostakovich was born and brought up in Saint Petersburg, and dedicated his Seventh Symphony to the city, calling it the "Leningrad Symphony." He wrote the symphony while in Leningrad during the German siege. The 7th symphony was premiered in 1942; its performance in the besieged Leningrad at the Bolshoy Philharmonic Hall under the baton of conductor Karl Eliasberg was heard over the radio and lifted the spirits of the survivors. In 1992 a reunion performance of the 7th Symphony by the (then) 14 survivors was played in the same hall as they done half a century ago. The Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra remained one of the best known symphony orchestras in the world under the leadership of conductors Yevgeny Mravinsky and Yuri Temirkanov.
The Imperial Choral Capella was founded and modeled after the royal courts of other European capitals.
Saint Petersburg has been home to the newest movements in popular music in the country. The first jazz band in the Soviet Union was founded here by Leonid Utyosov in the 1920s, under the patronage of Isaak Dunayevsky. The first jazz club in the Soviet Union was founded here in the 1950s, and later was named jazz club Kvadrat. In 1956 the popular ensemble Druzhba was founded by Aleksandr Bronevitsky and Edita Piekha, becoming the first popular band in the 1950s USSR. In the 1960s student rock-groups Argonavty, Kochevniki and others pioneered a series of unofficial and underground rock concerts and festivals. In 1972 Boris Grebenshchikov founded the band Aquarium, that later grew to huge popularity. Since then "Peter's rock" music style was formed.
In the 1970s many bands came out from "underground" and eventually founded the Leningrad rock club which has been providing stage to such bands as Piknik, DDT, Kino, headed by the legendary Viktor Tsoi, Igry, Mify, Zemlyane, Alisa and many other popular groups. The first Russian-style happening show Pop mekhanika, mixing over 300 people and animals on stage, was directed by the multi-talented Sergey Kuryokhin in the 1980s.
Today's Saint Petersburg boasts many notable musicians of various genres, from popular Leningrad's Sergei Shnurov and Tequilajazzz, to rock veterans Yuri Shevchuk, Vyacheslav Butusov and Mikhail Boyarsky.
The White Nights Festival in Saint Petersburg is famous for spectacular fireworks and massive show celebrating the end of school year.
Over 250 international and Russian movies were filmed in Saint Petersburg. International Movie Database Well over a thousand feature films about tsars, revolution, people and stories set in Saint Petersburg were produced worldwide, but were not filmed in the city. First film studios were founded in Saint Petersburg in the 1900s, and since the 1920s Lenfilm has been the largest film studio based in Saint Petersburg. The first foreign feature movie filmed entirely in Saint Petersburg was the 1997 production of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, starring Sophie Marceau and Sean Bean, and made by international team of British, American, French and Russian filmmakers.
The cult comedy Irony of Fate (also ÐÑÐ¾Ð½Ð¸Ñ ÑÑдÑбÑ, или С лÑгким паÑом!) is set in Saint Petersburg and pokes fun at Soviet city planning. The 1985 film White Nights received considerable Western attention for having captured genuine Leningrad street scenes at a time when filming in the Soviet Union by Western production companies was generally unheard of. Other movies include GoldenEye (1995), Midnight in Saint Petersburg (1996), and Brother (1997). Onegin (1999) is based on the Pushkin poem and showcases many tourist attractions. In addition, the Russian romantic comedy, ÐиÑÐµÑ FM, showcases the cityscape significantly, almost as if it was a main character in the film.
Several international film festivals are held annually, such as the Festival of Festivals, St. Petersburg, as well as the Message to Man International Documentary Film Festival, since its inauguration in 1988 during the White Nights.
Saint Petersburg has a longstanding and world famous tradition in literature. Dostoyevsky called it âThe most abstract and intentional city in the world," emphasizing its artificiality, but it was also a symbol of modern disorder in a changing Russia. It frequently appeared to Russian writers as a menacing and inhuman mechanism. The grotesque and often nightmarish image of the city is featured in Pushkin's last poems, the Petersburg stories of Gogol, the novels of Dostoyevsky, the verse of Alexander Blok and Osip Mandelshtam, and in the symbolist novel Petersburg by Andrey Bely. According to Lotman in his chapter, 'The Symbolism of Saint Petersburg' in Universe and the Mind, these writers were inspired from symbolism from within the city itself. The effect of life in Saint Petersburg on the plight of the poor clerk in a society obsessed with hierarchy and status also became an important theme for authors such as Pushkin, Gogol, and Dostoyevsky. Another important feature of early Saint Petersburg literature is its mythical element, which incorporates urban legends and popular ghost stories, as the stories of Pushkin and Gogol included ghosts returning to Saint Petersburg to haunt other characters as well as other fantastical elements, creating a surreal and abstract image of Saint Petersburg.
Twentieth century writers from Saint Petersburg, such as Vladimir Nabokov, Ayn Rand, Andrey Bely and Yevgeny Zamyatin, along with his apprentices, The Serapion Brothers, created entire new styles in literature and contributed new insights to the understanding of society through their experience in this city. Anna Akhmatova became an important leader for Russian poetry. Her poem Requiem focuses on the tragedies of living during the time of the Stalinist terror. Another notable 20th century writer from Saint Petersburg is Joseph Brodsky, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1987). While living in the United States, his writings in English reflected on life in Saint Petersburg from the unique perspective of being both an insider and an outsider to the city in essays such as, "A Guide to a Renamed City" and the nostalgic "In a Room and a Half". Joseph Brodsky. Less Than One: Selected Essays, 1986
FC Zenit's home Petrovsky stadium
Leningrad hosted part of the football tournament during the 1980 Summer Olympics. The 1994 Goodwill Games were held here.
The first competition here was the 1703 rowing event initiated by Peter the Great, after the victory over the Swedish fleet. Yachting events were held by the Russian Navy since the foundation of the city. Yacht clubs: St. Petersburg River Yacht Club, Neva Yacht Club, the latter is the oldest yacht club in the world. In the winter, when the sea and lake surfaces are frozen and yachts and dinghies cannot be used, local people sail on ice boats.
Equestrianism has been a long tradition, popular among the Tsars and aristocracy, as well as part of the military training. Several historic sports arenas were built for Equestrianism since the 18th century, to maintain training all year round, such as the Zimny Stadion and Konnogvardeisky Manezh among others.
Chess tradition was highlighted by the 1914 international tournament, in which the title "Grandmaster" was first formally conferred by Russian Tsar Nicholas II to five players: Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine, Tarrasch and Marshall, and which the Tsar had partially funded.
Kirov Stadium (now demolished) was one of the largest stadiums anywhere in the world, and the home to FC Zenit St. Petersburg in 1950-1993 and 1995. In 1951 the attendance of 110,000 set the record for the Soviet football. In 2007 Zenit became champions of the Russian Premier League, won the UEFA Cup 2007â08 season and the 2008 UEFA Supercup. Zenit now plays their home games at Petrovsky Stadium.
As of 2006/2007 there were 1024 kindergartens, 716 public schools and 80 vocational schools in Saint Petersburg. SPB.ru The largest of the higher education institutions are Saint Petersburg State University, enrolling approximately 32,000 undergraduate students, Saint Petersburg Polytechnical University and Herzen University. However, the universities are all federal property and don't belong to the city.
*List of consulates in Saint Petersburg
*List of museums in Saint Petersburg
*List of notable people from Saint Petersburg
*List of Saint Petersburg sister cities
*Amery, Colin, Brian Curran & Yuri Molodkovets. St. Petersburg. London: Frances Lincoln, 2006. ISBN 0711224927.
*Bater, James H. St. Petersburg: Industrialization and Change. Montreal: McGuill-Queenâs University Press, 1976. ISBN 0773502661.
*Berelowitch, Wladimir & Olga Medvedkova. Histoire de Saint-Pétersbourg. Paris: Fayard, 1996. ISBN 2213596018.
*Buckler, Julie. Mapping St. Petersburg: Imperial Text and Cityshape. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005 ISBN0691113491.
*Clark, Katerina, Petersburg, Crucible of Revolution. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995.
*Cross, Anthony (ed.). St. Petersburg, 1703-1825. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. ISBN 1403915709.
*George, Arthur L. & Elena George. St. Petersburg: Russia's Window to the Future, The First Three Centuries. Lanham: Taylor Trade Publishing, 2003. ISBN 1589790170.
*Glantz, David M. The Battle for Leningrad, 1941-1944. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002. ISBN 0700612084.
*Hellberg-Hirn, Elena. Imperial Imprints: Post-Soviet St. Petersburg. Helsinki: SKS Finnish Literature Society, 2003. ISBN 9517464916.
*Knopf Guide: Sat. Petersburg. New York: Knopf, 1995. ISBN 0679762027.
*Eyewitness Guide: St. Petersburg.
*Lincoln, W. Bruce. Sunlight at Midnight: St. Petersburg and the Rise of Modern Russia. New York: Basic Books, 2000. ISBN 0465083234.
*Orttung, Robert W. From Leningrad to St. Petersburg: Democratization in a Russian City. New York: St. Martinâs, 1995. ISBN 0312175612.
*Ruble, Blair A. Leningrad: Shaping a Soviet City. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. ISBN 0877723478.
*Shvidkovsky, Dmitry O. & Alexander Orloff. St. Petersburg: Architecture of the Tsars. New York: Abbeville Press, 1996. ISBN 0789202174.
*Volkov, Solomon. St. Petersburg: A Cultural History. New York: Free Press, 1995. ISBN 0028740521.
*St. Petersburg:Architecture of the Tsars. 360 pages. Abbeville Press, 1996. ISBN 0789202174
*Saint Petersburg: Museums, Palaces, and Historic Collections: A Guide to the Lesser Known Treasures of St. Petersburg. 2003. ISBN 1593730004.
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* Official presentation of Saint Petersburg
* Official Portal of the City Government: Saint Petersburg
* Encyclopaedia of Saint Petersburg
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* Saint Petersburg in 1900
* Saint Petersburg, entry in the World Monuments Fund's 2008 watchlist
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Saint_Petersburg | What was made in Russia's largest foundry? | Thousands of sculptures and statues. | data/set3/a10 | Saint_Petersburg
Saint Petersburg ( , ) is a city and a federal subject (a federal city) of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The city's other names were Petrograd ( , 1914â1924) and Leningrad ( , 1924â1991). It is often called just Petersburg ( ) and is informally known as Piter ( ).
Founded by Tsar Peter I of Russia on 27 May 1703, it was the capital of the Russian Empire for more than two hundred years (1713â1728, 1732â1918). Saint Petersburg ceased being the capital in 1918 after the Russian Revolution of 1917. Nicholas and Alexandra: An Intimate Account of the Last of the Romanovs and the Fall of Imperial Russia (Athenum, 1967) by Robert K. Massie, ASIN B000CGP8M2 (also, Ballantine Books, 2000, ISBN 0-345-43831-0 and Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, 2005, ISBN 1-57912-433-X) It is Russia's second largest city after Moscow with 4.6 million inhabitants, and over 6 million people live in its vicinity. Saint Petersburg is a major European cultural centre, and an important Russian port on the Baltic Sea.
Saint Petersburg is often described as the most Western city of Russia. V. Morozov. The Discourses of Saint Petersburg and the Shaping of a Wider Europe. Copenhagen Peace Research Institute. 2002. Ciaonet.org Among cities of the world with over one million people, Saint Petersburg is the northernmost. The Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments constitute a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Saint Petersburg is also home to The Hermitage, the largest art museum in the world. /ref> Russia's political and cultural centre for 200 years, the city is sometimes referred to in Russia as the northern capital. A large number of foreign consulates, international corporations, banks and other businesses are located in Saint Petersburg.
On 1 May 1703 (Julian calendar), during the Great Northern War, Peter the Great captured the Swedish fortress of Nyenskans on the Neva river in Ingria. A few weeks later, on 27 May 1703 (May 16, Old Style), lower on the river, on Zayachy (Hare) Island, three miles (5 km) inland from the gulf, he laid down the Peter and Paul Fortress, which became the first brick and stone building of the new city. He named the city after his patron saint, Saint Peter, the apostle. The original name was meant to sound like Dutch due to Peter's obsession with the Dutch culture. Peter the Great: His Life and World (Knopf, 1980) by Robert K. Massie, ISBN 0-394-50032-6
The city was built by conscripted serfs from all over Russia and also by Swedish prisoners of war under the supervision of Alexander Menshikov and later became the centre of Saint Petersburg Governorate. Peter moved the capital from Moscow to Saint Petersburg in 1712, before the Treaty of Nystad of 1721 ended the war.
The Bronze Horseman, monument to Peter the Great.
Palace Square, as the main square of the Russian Empire it was the setting of many events of great historical significance
Lenin statue outside the Finland station. Between 1924 and 1991 the city was known as Leningrad.
Map of Saint Petersburg, 1903.
Church of the Savior on Blood.
During the first few years of its existence the city grew spontaneously around Trinity Square on the right bank of the Neva, near the Peter and Paul Fortress. However, Saint Petersburg soon started to develop according to a plan. By 1716 Domenico Trezzini had elaborated a project whereby the city centre would be located on Vasilievsky Island and shaped by a rectangular grid of canals. The project was not completed, but is still evident in the layout of the streets. In 1716 Jean-Baptiste Alexandre Le Blond was appointed chief architect of Saint Petersburg by Peter the Great.
The style of Petrine Baroque, developed by Trezzini and other architects and exemplified by such buildings as the Menshikov Palace, Kunstkamera, Peter and Paul Cathedral, Twelve Collegia, became prominent in the city architecture of the early 18th century. In 1724 the Academy of Sciences, University and Academic Gymnasium were established in Saint Petersburg by Peter the Great.
However, in 1725 Peter died. His near-lifelong autocratic push for modernisation of Russia had met with considerable opposition from the old-fashioned Russian nobility â resulting in several attempts on his life and a treason case involving his own son. Matthew S. Anderson, Peter the Great (London: Thames and Hudson, 1978) Thus, in 1728, Peter II of Russia moved his seat back to Moscow. But four years later, in 1732, under Empress Anna of Russia, Saint Petersburg again became the capital of the Russian Empire and remained the seat of the government for 186 years.
In 1736-1737 the city suffered from catastrophic fires. In order to rebuild the damaged boroughs, in 1737 a new plan was commissioned by a committee under Burkhard Christoph von Munnich. The city was divided into five boroughs, and the city centre was moved to the Admiralty borough, situated on the east bank between the Neva and Fontanka.
It developed along three radial streets, which meet at the Admiralty and are now known as Nevsky Prospekt (which is now perceived as the main street of the city), Gorokhovaya Street and Voznesensky Prospekt. The style of Baroque dominated the city architecture during the first sixty years, culminating in the Elizabethan Baroque, represented most notably by Bartolomeo Rastrelli with such buildings as the Winter Palace. In the 1760s the Baroque architecture was succeeded by the neoclassical architecture.
The Commission of Stone Buildings of Moscow and Saint Petersburg established in 1762 ruled that no structure in the city be higher than the Winter Palace and prohibited spacing between buildings. During the reign of Catherine the Great in the 1760s-1780s the banks of the Neva were lined with granite embankments.
However, it wasn't until 1850 that it was allowed to open the first permanent bridge across the Neva, Blagoveshchensky Bridge. Before that, only pontoon bridges were allowed. Obvodny Canal (dug in 1769-1833) became the southern limit of the city.
Some of the most important neoclassical architects in Saint Petersburg (including those working within the Empire style) were Jean-Baptiste Vallin de la Mothe (Imperial Academy of Arts, Small Hermitage, Gostiny Dvor, New Holland Arch, Catholic Church of St. Catherine), Antonio Rinaldi (Marble Palace), Yury Felten (Old Hermitage, Chesme Church), Giacomo Quarenghi (Academy of Sciences, Hermitage Theatre, Yusupov Palace), Andrey Voronikhin (Mining Institute, Kazan Cathedral), Andreyan Zakharov (Admiralty building), Jean-François Thomas de Thomon (Spit of Vasilievsky Island), Carlo Rossi (Yelagin Palace, Mikhailovsky Palace, Alexandrine Theatre, Senate and Synod Buildings, General Staff Building, design of many streets and squares), Vasily Stasov (Moscow Triumphal Gate, Trinity Cathedral), Auguste de Montferrand (Saint Isaac's Cathedral, Alexander Column). The victory over Napoleonic France in the Patriotic War of 1812 was commemorated with many monuments, including Alexander Column by Montferrand, erected in 1834, and Narva Triumphal Gate.
In 1825 the suppressed Decembrist revolt against Nicholas I of Russia took place on the Senate Square in the city, a day after he assumed the throne.
By the 1840s the neoclassical architecture had given place to various romanticist styles, which were dominant until the 1890s, represented by such architects as Andrei Stackenschneider (Mariinsky Palace, Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace, Nicholas Palace, New Michael Palace) and Konstantin Thon (Moskovsky Rail Terminal). The Church of the Savior on Blood designed in the Russian revival style commemorated the place where Alexander II of Russia was assassinated in 1881.
With the emancipation of the serfs undertaken by Alexander II in 1861 and the industrial revolution the influx of former peasants into the capital increased greatly. Poor boroughs spontaneously emerged on the outskirts of the city. Saint Petersburg surpassed Moscow in population and industrial growth and grew into one of the largest industrial hubs and cities in Europe.
The Revolution of 1905 began in Saint Petersburg and spread rapidly into the provinces. With the start of World War I, the name Saint Petersburg was perceived to be too German, so in 1914 the city was renamed Petrograd. The Romanovs: The Final Chapter (Random House, 1995) by Robert K. Massie, ISBN 0-394-58048-6 and ISBN 0-679-43572-7 In 1917 the February Revolution, which put an end to the Russian monarchy, and the October Revolution, which ultimately brought Vladimir Lenin to power, broke out in Petrograd. Rex A. Wade The Russian Revolution, 1917 2005 Cambridge University Press ISBN 0521841550 The city's proximity to the border and anti-Soviet armies forced the Bolsheviks under Lenin to transfer the capital to Moscow on March 12, 1918.
In 1919 during the ensuing Russian Civil War Nikolay Yudenich advancing from Estonia was about to capture the city from the Bolsheviks, but Leon Trotsky ultimately managed to mobilise the population and make him retreat. Many people fled the city in 1917-1920 or were repressed in the Red Terror, Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe. By Robert Gellately, 2007, Random House, 720 pages. ISBN 1400040051 so its population decreased dramatically. On January 26, 1924, three days after Lenin's death, Petrograd was renamed Leningrad. For decades Leningrad was glorified by the Soviet propaganda as "the cradle of the revolution" and "the city of three revolutions", many spots related to Lenin and the revolutions, such as the cruiser Aurora, were carefully preserved. Many streets and other toponyms were renamed accordingly.
In the 1920s-1930s the poor outskirts were reconstructed into regularly planned boroughs. The constructivist architecture flourished around that time. The Soviets nationalised housing and forced many residents to share communal apartments (kommunalkas). With 68% living in shared apartments in the 1930s, Leningrad was the city with the largest number of kommunalkas. In 1935 a new general plan was outlined, whereby the city should expand to the south and its centre should move there. The constructivism was rejected in favor of the pompous Stalinist architecture. Stalin ordered the construction of the new city hall on Moskovsky Prospect thus making it the new main street of Leningrad during the Soviet rule.
Since December 1931 Leningrad has been administratively separate from Leningrad Oblast. At that time it included Leningrad Suburban District, some parts of which were transferred back to Leningrad Oblast in 1936 and turned into Vsevolozhsky District, Krasnoselsky District, Pargolovsky District and Slutsky District (renamed Pavlovsky District in 1944).
On December 1, 1934, Sergey Kirov, popular communist leader of Leningrad, was assassinated, which was used to start the Great Purge. Stalin's Terror: High Politics and Mass Repression in the Soviet Union by Barry McLoughlin and Kevin McDermott (eds). Palgrave Macmillan, 2002, p. 6 The sizeable minorities of Germans, Poles, Finns, Estonians and Latvians were almost completely expelled from Leningrad by the Soviet government during the 1930s. Martin, Terry (1998). The Origins of Soviet Ethnic Cleansing. The Journal of Modern History 70.4, 813-861.
During World War II, Leningrad was besieged by Nazi Germany and co-belligerent Finland. Siege of Leningrad. Encyclopædia Britannica The siege lasted 872 days from September 1941 to January 1944. Baldack, Richard H. "Leningrad, Siege of" World Book Encyclopedia, Chicago, 2002, vol.12, page 195 The Siege of Leningrad was one of the longest, most destructive, and most lethal sieges of major cities in modern history. It isolated the city from most supplies except those provided through the Road of Life across Lake Ladoga, and more than a million civilians died, mainly from starvation. Many others were eventually evacuated or escaped by themselves, so the city became largely depopulated. For the heroic resistance of the city and tenacity of the survivors of the Siege, in 1945 Leningrad became the first city in the Soviet Union awarded the title Hero City. In October 1946 some former Finnish territories along the northern coast of the Gulf of Finland captured in the Winter War and Continuation War were transferred from Leningrad Oblast to Leningrad and divided into Sestroretsky District and Kurortny District, including the town of Terijoki (renamed Zelenogorsk in 1948).
Leningrad and many of its suburbs were rebuilt over the post-war decades, partially according to the pre-war plans. The 1948 general plan of Leningrad featured radial urban development in the north as well as in the south. The Leningrad Metro, underground rapid transit system which was designed before the war in the 1930s, was opened in 1955 with its first seven stations decorated with marble and bronze. Meanwhile, in 1949-1951 a large number of prominent Leningrad members of the Communist Party and their families were charged with treason and intention to create an anti-Soviet organization out of their local party cell. Many were imprisoned or executed in the Leningrad Affair fabricated by the central Soviet leadership. Dmitri Volkogonov. Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy, 1996, ISBN 0761507183 Russian publication: ÐенингÑадÑкое дело â надо ли ÑÑавиÑÑ ÐºÐ°Ð²ÑÑки?: Contr-tv.ru
In 1953 Pavlovsky District of Leningrad Oblast was abolished, and parts of its territory including Pavlovsk merged with Leningrad. In 1954 the settlements Levashovo, Pargolovo and Pesochny merged with Leningrad.
After the death of Stalin the perceived ornamental excesses of the Stalinist architecture were abandoned. In the 1960s-1980s, as many new residential boroughs were built on the outskirts with few series of functionalist apartment blocks identical to each other, many families moved there from kommunalkas in the city centre in order to live in separate apartments. Uritsk was re-named Ligovo and merged with Leningrad in 1963, Lomonosov merged in 1978.
On June 12, 1991, in a referendum held on the same day as the first Russian presidential election, 54% of voters chose to restore the name "Saint Petersburg" (the change officially took effect on September 6, 1991). Many other Soviet-era toponyms in the city were also renamed soon afterwards. In the same election Anatoly Sobchak became the first democratically elected mayor of the city. Jack F. Matlock, Jr., Autopsy on an Empire: The American Ambassador's Account of the Collapse of the Soviet Union, Random House, 1995, ISBN 0679413766
By the end of 1991 the deteriorating planned economy of the collapsing Soviet Union had put the city on the verge of starvation. For the first time since World War II food rationing was introduced, and the city received humanitarian food aid from abroad. The city somewhat recovered with the market reforms in Russia. In 1995-2004 a northern section of the Metro's Kirovsko-Vyborgskaya Line was cut off by underground flooding, which was a major obstacle to the city development.
In 1996, Vladimir Yakovlev was elected as head of the Saint Petersburg City Administration. The title of the city head was changed in advance from "mayor" to "governor". In 2003, Yakovlev resigned a year before his second term expired. Valentina Matviyenko was elected governor. In 2006 she was reapproved as governor by the city legislature. The residential building had intensified again, real estate prices inflated greatly, and this situation causes many new problems for the historical part of the city.
In spite of the fact that the central part of the city is watched by UNESCO, the safety of its historical and architectural environment is in danger. Sergey Zagraevsky. Will Saint Petersburg share the same fate as Moscow? Zagraevsky.com There are still about 8000 architectural monuments in Saint Petersburg, but since 2005 the destruction of older buildings in the historical centre has continued. A number of new building projects are underway, including the Gazprom skyscraper in Okhta.
Territory of the federal subject of Saint Petersburg.
The area of Saint Petersburg city proper is . The area of the federal subject is , which contains the Saint Petersburg proper (consisting of 81 okrugs), nine suburban towns (Kolpino, Krasnoye Selo, Kronstadt, Lomonosov, Pavlovsk, Peterhof, Pushkin, Sestroretsk and Zelenogorsk) and 21 municipal settlements.
Saint Petersburg is situated on the middle taiga lowlands along the shores of the Neva Bay of the Gulf of Finland, and islands of the river delta. The largest are Vasilyevsky island (besides the artificial island between Obvodny canal and Fontanka, and Kotlin in the Neva Bay), Petrogradsky, Dekabristov and Krestovsky. The latter together with Yelagin and Kamenny island are covered mostly by parks. The Karelian Isthmus, North of the city, is a popular resort area. In the south Saint Petersburg crosses the Baltic-Ladoga Klint and meets the Izhora Plateau.
The elevation of Saint Petersburg ranges from the sea level to its highest point of at the Orekhovaya Hill in the Duderhof Heights in the south. Part of the city's territory west of Liteyny Prospekt is no higher than above sea level, and has suffered from numerous floods. Floods in Saint Petersburg are triggered by a long wave in the Baltic Sea, caused by meteorological conditions, winds and shallowness of the Neva Bay. The four most disastrous floods occurred in 1824 ( above sea-level, during which over 300 buildings were destroyed The level of flooding is measured near Saint Petersburg Mining Institute, which is normally a.s.l. ), 1924 , 1777 , 1955 and 1975 . To prevent floods, the Saint Petersburg Dam has been under construction since 1979. ÐежиÑ
овÑкий Ð . Ð. Река Ðева и ÐевÑÐºÐ°Ñ Ð³Ñба, Leningrad: ÐидÑомеÑеоиздаÑ, 1981.
Since the 18th century the terrain in the city has been raised artificially, at some places by more than , making mergers of several islands, and changing the hydrology of the city. Besides the Neva and its distributaries, other important rivers of the federal subject of Saint Petersburg are Sestra, Okhta and Izhora. The largest lake is Sestroretsky Razliv in the north, followed by Lakhtinsky Razliv, Suzdal Lakes and other smaller lakes.
Saint Petersburg's position on the latitude of ca. 60° N causes variation in day length across seasons, ranging from 5:53 to 18:50. Twilight may last all night in early summer, from mid-May to mid-July, the celebrated phenomenon known as the white nights.
Snow falling on the morning of May 14, 2008 at Srednyaya Rogatka (district in the south of St. Petersburg)
Saint Petersburg experiences a humid continental climate of the cool summer subtype (Köppen: Dfb), due to the distinct moderating influence of the Baltic Sea cyclones, with warm, humid and short summers and long, cold winters.
The average daily temperature in July is ; summer maximum is about , winter minimum is about . The record low temperature is , recorded in 1883. The average annual temperature is . The River Neva within the city limits usually freezes up in November-December, break-up occurs in April. From December to March there are 123 days average with snow cover, which reaches the average of by February. The frost-free period in the city lasts on average for about 135 days. The city has a climate slightly warmer than its suburbs. Weather conditions are quite variable all year round. See Historical weather records for Saint Petersburg (since 1932) and Historical weather in Saint Petersburg for further information.
Average annual precipitation varies across the city, averaging per year and reaching maximum in late summer. Soil moisture is almost always high because of lower evapotranspiration due to the cool climate. Air humidity is 78% on average, while overcast is 165 days a year on average.
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Saint Petersburg is the second largest city in Russia. The 2002 census recorded a population of the federal subject of 4,661,219, or 3.21% of the total population of Russia. The 2002 census recorded twenty-two ethnic groups of more than two thousand persons each. The ethnic composition was: Russian 84.72%, Ukrainian 1.87%, Belarusians 1.17%, Jewish 0.78%, Tatar 0.76%, Armenian 0.41%, Azeri 0.36%, Georgian 0.22%, Chuvash 0.13%, Polish 0.10%, and many other smaller ethnic groups, while 7.89% of the inhabitants declined to state their ethnicity.
The 20th century saw hectic ups and downs in population. From 2.4 million in 1916 it had dropped to less than 740,000 by 1920 during the Russian Revolution of 1917 and Russian Civil War. The sizeable minorities of Germans, Poles, Finns, Estonians and Latvians were almost completely expelled from Leningrad by the Soviet government during the 1930s. From 1941 to the end of 1943, population dropped from 3 million to less than 700,000, as people died in battles, starved to death during the Siege of Leningrad, or were evacuated. After the siege, some of the evacuees returned, but most influx was due to migration from other parts of the Soviet Union. The city absorbed about 3 million people in the 1950s and grew to over 5 million in the 1980s. From 1991 to 2006 the city's population decreased to the current 4.6 million, while the suburban population increased due to privatization of land and massive move to suburbs. ЧиÑÑÑкова Ð. ТÑеÑÑе ÑокÑаÑение ÑиÑленноÑÑи наÑелениÑ... и поÑледнее? ÐемоÑкоп Weekly 163 â 164, August 1â15, 2004. Russian source: "Encyclopedia of Saint Petersburg" ЧиÑÑÑков Ð. Ю. ÐаÑеление (обзоÑÐ½Ð°Ñ ÑÑаÑÑÑ). ÐнÑÐ¸ÐºÐ»Ð¾Ð¿ÐµÐ´Ð¸Ñ Ð¡Ð°Ð½ÐºÑ-ÐеÑеÑбÑÑга The birth rate remains lower than the death rate; people over 65 constitute more than twenty percent of the population; and the median age is about 40 years. Russian statistics ÐÑновнÑе показаÑели ÑоÑиалÑно-демогÑаÑиÑеÑкой ÑиÑÑаÑии в СанкÑ-ÐеÑеÑбÑÑге
People in urban Saint Petersburg live mostly in apartments. Between 1918 and the 1990s, the Soviets nationalised housing and forced residents to share communal apartments (kommunalkas). With 68% living in shared flats in the 1930s, Leningrad was the city in the USSR with the largest number of kommunalkas. Resettling residents of kommunalkas is now on the way out, albeit shared apartments are still not uncommon. As new boroughs were built on the outskirts in the 1950s-1980s, over half a million low income families eventually received free apartments, and about an additional hundred thousand condos were purchased. While economic and social activity is concentrated in the historic city centre, the richest part of Saint Petersburg, most people live in commuter areas. For the first half of 2007, the birth rate was 9.1 per 1000.
Smolny Institute, the seat of the governor.
Saint Petersburg is a federal subject of Russia. The political life of Saint Petersburg is regulated by the city charter adopted by the city legislature in 1998. The superior executive body is the Saint Petersburg City Administration, led by the governor (mayor before 1996). Saint Petersburg has a single-chamber legislature, the Saint Petersburg Legislative Assembly.
According to the federal law passed in 2004, heads of federal subjects, including the governor of Saint Petersburg, are nominated by the President of Russia and approved by local legislatures. If the legislature disapproves the nominee, it is dissolved. The current governor, Valentina Matviyenko, was approved according to the new system in December 2006. She is currently the only woman governor in the whole of Russia.
Saint Petersburg city is currently divided into eighteen districts. Saint Petersburg is also the administrative centre of Leningrad Oblast, and of the Northwestern Federal District. The Constitutional Court of Russia moved to Saint Petersburg from Moscow in May 2008.
Saint Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast, being two different federal subjects, share a number of local departments of federal executive agencies and courts, such as court of arbitration, police, FSB, postal service, drug enforcement administration, penitentiary service, federal registration service, and other federal services.
The Old Saint Petersburg Stock Exchange, or Bourse, houses the Central Naval Museum
Saint Petersburg is a major trade gateway, financial and industrial centre of Russia specialising in oil and gas trade, shipbuilding yards, aerospace industry, radio and electronics, software and computers; machine building, heavy machinery and transport, including tanks and other military equipment, mining, instrument manufacture, ferrous and nonferrous metallurgy (production of aluminium alloys), chemicals, pharmaceuticals, medical equipment, publishing and printing, food and catering, wholesale and retail, textile and apparel industries, and many other businesses. It was also home to Lessner, one of Russia's two pioneering automobile manufacturers (along with Russo-Baltic), Lessner; founded by machine tool and boiler maker G. A. Lessner in 1904, with designs by Boris Loutsky, it survived until 1910. Georgano, G. N. Cars: Early and Vintage, 1886-1930. (London: Grange-Universal, 1985)
10% of the world's power turbines are made there at the LMZ, which built over two thousand turbines for power plants across the world. Major local industries are Admiralty Shipyard, Baltic Shipyard, LOMO, Kirov Plant, Elektrosila, Izhorsky Zavod; also registered in Saint Petersburg are Sovkomflot, Petersburg Fuel Company and SIBUR among other major Russian and international companies.
The Saint Petersburg docks at dawn.
Saint Petersburg has three large cargo seaports: Bolshoi Port Saint Petersburg, Kronstadt, and Lomonosov. International cruise liners have been served at the passenger port at Morskoy Vokzal on the south-west of Vasilevsky Island. In 2008 the first two berths were opened at the New Passenger Port on the west of the island. Discoverthebaltic.com Discover the Baltic online guide to Baltic cruise ports The new port is part of the city's "Marine Facade" development project Mfspb.ru St Petersburg "Marine Facade" development project and is due to have seven berths in operation by 2010.
A complex system of riverports on both banks of the Neva river are interconnected with the system of seaports, thus making Saint Petersburg the main link between the Baltic sea and the rest of Russia through the Volga-Baltic Waterway.
The Saint Petersburg Mint (Monetny Dvor), founded in 1724, is one of the largest mints in the world, it mints Russian coins, medals and badges. Saint Petersburg is also home to the oldest and largest Russian foundry, Monumentskulptura, which made thousands of sculptures and statues that are now gracing public parks of Saint Petersburg, as well as many other cities. Monuments and bronze statues of the Czars, as well as other important historic figures and dignitaries, and other world famous monuments, such as the sculptures by Peter Clodt von Jürgensburg, Paolo Troubetzkoy, Pavel Antokolsky, and others, were made there.
In 2007 Toyota opened a Camry plant after investing 5 billion dollars in Shushary, one of the southern suburbs of Saint Petersburg. General Motors, Hyundai and Nissan have signed deals with the Russian government to build their automotive plants in Saint Petersburg too. Automotive and auto-parts industry is on the rise there during the last decade. Saint Petersburg is also known as the "beer capital" of Russia, due to the supply and quality of local water, contributing over 30% of the domestic production of beer with its five large-scale breweries including Europe's second largest brewery Baltika, Vena (both operated by BBH), Heineken Brewery, Stepan Razin (both by Heineken) and Tinkoff brewery (SUN-InBev). Saint Petersburg has the second largest construction industry in Russia, including commercial, housing and road construction.
In 2006 Saint Petersburg's city budget was 179,9 billion rubles, and is planned to double by 2012. The federal subject's gross regional product as of 2005 was 667,905.4 million Russian rubles, ranked 4th in Russia, after Moscow, Tyumen Oblast, and Moscow Oblast, or 145,503.3 rubles per capita, ranked 12th among Russia's federal subjects, contributed mostly by wholesale and retail trade and repair services (24.7%) as well as processing industry (20.9%) and transportation and telecommunications (15.1%).
The Kresty prison.
Russia historically had a high level of crime that increased significantly after the October revolution. Edward Hallett Carr The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1923, 1985 ISBN 0393301990 Google preview Perestroika-time turmoils saw additional increase of the crime level.
Saint Petersburg experiences significant levels of street crime and bribery. In addition, in recent years there has been a notable increase in racially motivated violence, especially towards tourists and foreign students. One of the well known white supremacist groups Belaya Energia (White Energy, originally comes from White Power), has reportedly been one of the main gangs involved in murdering foreign university students. Russia: Racist Attacks Plague St. Petersburg Radio Free Europe September 30, 2005
At the end of the 1980s â beginning of the 1990s, Leningrad became home to a number of organised criminal groups as Tambov Gang, Malyshev Gang, Kazan Gang and ethnic criminal groups, engaged in a racket, extortion, paying off local government, and violent clashes with each other. Russian Mafia Shakes Down the Country by Steven R. Van Hook, Santa Barbara News-Press, November 20, 1994
In 2008, a car bomb killed three people (including a four-year old child), and injured one.
After the assassinations of City Property Committee Chairman and vice-Governor Mikhail Manevich(1997), State Duma deputy Galina Starovoytova (1998), acting City Legislature Speaker Viktor Novosyolov (1999) and a number of prominent businesspeople, Saint Petersburg was dubbed Capital of Crime in the Russian press. Trumbull, Nathaniel S. (2003) The impacts of globalization on Saint Petersburg: A secondary world city in from the cold? The Annals of Regional Science 37:533â546 Powell, Bill & Brian Whitmore. The Capital Of Crime.(Saint Petersburg, Russia). Newsweek International, May 15, 2000. There were a number of movies filmed in Saint Petersburg about the life of crime; , Brother (1997) reinforcing its image as the Crime Capital of Russia.
One of the oldest and most infamous remand facilities in Saint Petersburg, Kresty prison is located near downtown.
However, crime rates in St. Petersburg have declined since the end of the 1990s; the aforementioned criminal gangs have mostly dispersed. Even the Kresty prison is no longer in use, as more modern penal institutions are being built farther from the city centre.
The decoration of Saint Petersburg Metro (Kirovsky Zavod Station).
Saint Petersburg is a major transport hub. The first Russian railway was built here, in 1837. Today, the city is the final destination of a web of intercity and suburban railways, served by five different railway terminals (Baltiysky, Finlyandsky, Ladozhsky, Moskovsky, and Vitebsky), Until 2001, the Varshavsky Rail Terminal served as a major station; it now is a railway museum. Reconstruction of the Warsaw Railway Station as well as dozens of non-terminal railway stations within the federal subject. Saint Petersburg has international railway connections to Helsinki, Finland, Berlin, Germany, and all former republics of the USSR. The Helsinki railway was built in 1870, , commutes three times a day, in a journey lasting about five and a half hours. The Moscow-Saint Petersburg Railway opened in 1851, ; the commute to Moscow now requires about four and a half to nine hours. Saint Petersburg is also served by Pulkovo International Airport, Rossiya (Pulkovo): Pulkovo Aviation Enterprise and by three smaller commercial and cargo airports in the suburbs. There is a regular, 24/7, rapid-bus transit connection between Pulkovo airport and the city centre.
The city is also served by the passenger and cargo seaports in the Neva Bay of the Gulf of Finland, Baltic Sea, the river port higher up the Neva, and tens of smaller passenger stations on both banks of the Neva river. It is a terminus of the Volga-Baltic and White Sea-Baltic waterways. In 2004 the first high bridge that doesn't need to be drawn, a long Big Obukhovsky Bridge, was opened. Meteor hydrofoils link the city centre to the coastal towns of Kronstadt, Lomonosov, Peterhof, Sestroretsk and Zelenogorsk from May through October.
Pulkovo International Airport.
Saint Petersburg has an extensive city-funded network of public transport (buses, trams, trolleybuses) and several hundred routes served by marshrutkas. Trams in Saint Petersburg used to be the main transport; in the 1980s, Leningrad had the largest tramway network in the world, but many tramway rail tracks were dismantled in the 2000s. Buses carry up to 3 million passengers daily, serving over 250 urban and a number of suburban bus routes. Saint Petersburg Metro underground rapid transit system was opened in 1955; it now has five lines with 63 stations, connecting all five railway terminals, and carrying 3.4 million passengers daily. Metro stations are decorated in marble and bronze.
Traffic jams are common in the city, because of high daily traffic volumes between the commuter boroughs and the city centre, intercity traffic, and at times excessive snow in winter. Five segments of the Saint Petersburg Ring Road were opened between 2002 and 2006, and full ring is planned to open in 2010.
Saint Petersburg is part of the important transport corridor linking Scandinavia to Russia and Eastern Europe. The city is a node of the international European routes E18 towards Helsinki, E20 towards Tallinn, E95 towards Pskov, Kiev and Odessa and E105 towards Petrozavodsk, Murmansk and Kirkenes (north) and towards Moscow and Kharkiv (south).
Kazan Cathedral
Griboyedov Canal
A bridge over the river Neva
As of now, Saint Petersburg has no skyscrapers and a relatively low skyline. Current regulations forbid construction of high buildings in the city centre. The 310 metre tall Saint Petersburg TV Tower is the tallest structure in the city, while the 122.5 m Peter and Paul Cathedral is by far the highest building. However, there is a controversial project endorsed by the city authorities and known as the Ohkta Centre to build a 396 m supertall skyscraper. In 2008 the World Monuments Fund included the Saint Petersburg historic skyline within the watch list of 100 most endangered sites due to the expected construction, which threatens to alter it drastically.
Unlike in Moscow, in Saint Petersburg the historic architecture of the city centre, mostly consisting of Baroque and neoclassical buildings of the 18th and 19th centuries, has been largely preserved, although a number of buildings were demolished after the Bolsheviks' seizure of power, during the Siege of Leningrad and in recent years. The oldest of the remaining building is a wooden house built for Peter I in 1703 on the shore of the Neva near Trinity Square. Since 1991 the Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments in Saint Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast have been listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.
The ensemble of Peter and Paul Fortress with the Peter and Paul Cathedral takes dominant position on Zayachy Island along the right bank of the River Neva. Each noon a cannon fires a blank shot from the fortress. The Saint Petersburg Mosque, the largest mosque in Europe when opened in 1913, is situated on the right bank nearby. The spit of Vasilievsky Island, which splits the river into two largest armlets, the Bolshaya Neva and Malaya Neva, is connected to the northern bank (Petrogradsky Island) via the Exchange Bridge and occupied by the Old Saint Petersburg Stock Exchange and Rostral Columns. The southern coast of Vasilievsky Island along the Bolshaya Neva features some of the city's oldest buildings, dating from the 18th century, including the Kunstkamera, Twelve Collegia, Menshikov Palace and Imperial Academy of Arts. It hosts one of two campuses of Saint Petersburg State University.
On the southern, left bank of the Neva, connected to the spit of Vasilievsky Island via the Palace Bridge, lie the Admiralty Building, the vast Hermitage Museum complex stretching along the Palace Embankment, which includes the baroque Winter Palace, former official residence of Russian emperors, as well as the neoclassical Marble Palace. The Winter Palace faces Palace Square, the city's main square with the Alexander Column.
Nevsky Prospekt, also situated on the left bank of the Neva, is the main avenue in the city. It starts at the Admiralty and runs eastwards next to Palace Square. Nevsky Prospekt crosses the Moika (Green Bridge), Griboyedov Canal (Kazansky Bridge), Garden Street, the Fontanka (Anichkov Bridge), meets Liteyny Prospekt and proceeds to Uprising Square near the Moskovsky railway station, where it meets Ligovsky Prospekt and turns to the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. The Passage, Catholic Church of St. Catherine, Book House (former Singer Manufacturing Company Building in the Art Nouveau style), Grand Hotel Europe, Lutheran Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, Gostiny Dvor, Russian National Library, Alexandrine Theatre behind Mikeshin's statue of Catherine the Great, Kazan Cathedral, Stroganov Palace, Anichkov Palace and Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace are all situated along that avenue.
The Alexander Nevsky Lavra, intended to house the relics of St. Alexander Nevsky, is an important centre of Christian education in Russia. It also contains the Tikhvin Cemetery with graves of many notable Petersburgers.
On the territory between the Neva and Nevsky Prospekt the Church of the Savior on Blood, Mikhailovsky Palace housing the Russian Museum, Field of Mars, St. Michael's Castle, Summer Garden, Tauride Palace, Smolny Institute and Smolny Convent are located.
Many notable landmarks are situated to the west and south of the Admiralty Building, including the Trinity Cathedral, Mariinsky Palace, Hotel Astoria, famous Mariinsky Theatre, New Holland Island, Saint Isaac's Cathedral, the largest in the city, and Decembrists Square with the Bronze Horseman, 18th century equestrian monument to Peter the Great, which is considered among the city's most recognisable symbols.
Other symbols of Saint Petersburg include the weather vane in the shape of a small ship on top of the Admiralty's golden spire and the golden angel on top of the Peter and Paul Cathedral. The Palace Bridge drawn at night is yet another symbol of the city. Every night during the navigation period from April to November, 22 bridges across the Neva and main canals are drawn to let ships pass in and out of the Baltic Sea according to a schedule. Schedule for main drawbridges across the Neva river (Official Russian schedule): Mr-spb.ru It wasn't until 2004 that the first high bridge across the Neva, which doesn't need to be drawn, Big Obukhovsky Bridge, was opened. There are hundreds of smaller bridges in Saint Petersburg spanning across numerous canals and distributaries of the Neva, some of the most important of which are the Moika, Fontanka, Griboyedov Canal, Obvodny Canal, Karpovka and Smolenka. Due to the intricate web of canals, Saint Petersburg is often called Venice of the North. The rivers and canals in the city centre are lined with granite embankments. The embankments and bridges are separated from rivers and canals by granite or cast iron parapets.
Southern suburbs of the city feature former imperial residences, including Peterhof, with majestic fountain cascades and parks, Tsarskoe Selo, with the baroque Catherine Palace and the neoclassical Alexander Palace, and Pavlovsk, which contains a domed palace of Emperor Paul and one of the largest English-style parks in Europe. Some other residences situated nearby and making part of the world heritage site, including a castle and park in Gatchina, actually belong to Leningrad Oblast rather than Saint Petersburg. Another notable suburb is Kronstadt with its 19th century fortifications and naval monuments, occupying the Kotlin Island in the Gulf of Finland.
From XX century end in a city active building and reorganisation of old historical city districts is conducted.
The authorities are compelled to transfer control of private residences in city centre to private lessors.
Also sealing building and a superstructure of buildings is spent by penthouses.
Some of these structures, such as the Saint Petersburg Commodity and Stock Exchange" have been recognised as town-planning errors.
Interior of the Hermitage Museum.
Saint Petersburg is home to more than two hundred museums, many of them hosted in historic buildings. The largest of the museums is the Hermitage Museum, featuring interiors of the former imperial residence and a vast collection of art. The Russian Museum is a large museum devoted to the Russian fine art specifically. The apartments of some famous Petersburgers, including Alexander Pushkin, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Feodor Chaliapin, Alexander Blok, Vladimir Nabokov, Anna Akhmatova, Mikhail Zoshchenko, Joseph Brodsky, as well as some palace and park ensembles of the southern suburbs and notable architectural monuments such as St. Isaac's Cathedral, have also been turned into public museums.
The Kunstkamera, with its collection established in 1714 by Peter the Great to collect curiosities from all over the world, is sometimes considered the first museum in Russia, which has evolved into the present-day Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography. The Russian Ethnography Museum, which has been split from the Russian Museum, is devoted to the cultures of the people of Russia, the former Soviet Union and Russian Empire.
Other notable museums include the Central Naval Museum hosted in the building of the former stock exchange and Zoological Museum, the Railway Museum, Museum of the Siege of Leningrad, Saint Petersburg Museum of History in the Peter and Paul Fortress and Artillery Museum, which in fact includes not only artillery items, but also a huge collection of other military equipment, uniform and decorations.
The Grand Cascade.
Saint Petersburg is home to numerous parks and gardens, some of the most famous of which are situated in the southern suburbs, including one of the largest English gardens of Europe in Pavlovsk. Sosnovka is the largest park within the limits of the city proper, occupying 240 ha. The Summer Garden is the oldest one, dating back to the early 18th century and designed in the regular style. It is situated on the southern bank of the Neva at the head of the Fontanka and is famous for its cast iron railing and marble sculptures.
Among other notable parks are the Maritime Victory Park on Krestovsky Island and the Moscow Victory Park in the south, both commemorating the victory over Nazi Germany in the Second World War, as well as the Central Park of Culture and Leisure occupying Yelagin Island and the Tauride Garden around the Tauride Palace. The most common trees grown in the parks are the English oak, Norway maple, green ash, silver birch, Siberian larch, blue spruce, crack willow, limes and poplars. Important dendrological collections dating back to the 19th century are hosted by the Saint Petersburg Botanical Garden and the Park of the Forestry Academy.
Among the city's more than fifty theaters is the world-famous Mariinsky Theater (also known as the Kirov Theater in the USSR ), home to the Mariinsky Ballet company and opera. Leading ballet dancers, such as Vaslav Nijinsky, Anna Pavlova, Rudolph Nureyev, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Galina Ulanova and Natalia Makarova, were principal stars of the Mariinsky ballet.
Dmitri Shostakovich was born and brought up in Saint Petersburg, and dedicated his Seventh Symphony to the city, calling it the "Leningrad Symphony." He wrote the symphony while in Leningrad during the German siege. The 7th symphony was premiered in 1942; its performance in the besieged Leningrad at the Bolshoy Philharmonic Hall under the baton of conductor Karl Eliasberg was heard over the radio and lifted the spirits of the survivors. In 1992 a reunion performance of the 7th Symphony by the (then) 14 survivors was played in the same hall as they done half a century ago. The Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra remained one of the best known symphony orchestras in the world under the leadership of conductors Yevgeny Mravinsky and Yuri Temirkanov.
The Imperial Choral Capella was founded and modeled after the royal courts of other European capitals.
Saint Petersburg has been home to the newest movements in popular music in the country. The first jazz band in the Soviet Union was founded here by Leonid Utyosov in the 1920s, under the patronage of Isaak Dunayevsky. The first jazz club in the Soviet Union was founded here in the 1950s, and later was named jazz club Kvadrat. In 1956 the popular ensemble Druzhba was founded by Aleksandr Bronevitsky and Edita Piekha, becoming the first popular band in the 1950s USSR. In the 1960s student rock-groups Argonavty, Kochevniki and others pioneered a series of unofficial and underground rock concerts and festivals. In 1972 Boris Grebenshchikov founded the band Aquarium, that later grew to huge popularity. Since then "Peter's rock" music style was formed.
In the 1970s many bands came out from "underground" and eventually founded the Leningrad rock club which has been providing stage to such bands as Piknik, DDT, Kino, headed by the legendary Viktor Tsoi, Igry, Mify, Zemlyane, Alisa and many other popular groups. The first Russian-style happening show Pop mekhanika, mixing over 300 people and animals on stage, was directed by the multi-talented Sergey Kuryokhin in the 1980s.
Today's Saint Petersburg boasts many notable musicians of various genres, from popular Leningrad's Sergei Shnurov and Tequilajazzz, to rock veterans Yuri Shevchuk, Vyacheslav Butusov and Mikhail Boyarsky.
The White Nights Festival in Saint Petersburg is famous for spectacular fireworks and massive show celebrating the end of school year.
Over 250 international and Russian movies were filmed in Saint Petersburg. International Movie Database Well over a thousand feature films about tsars, revolution, people and stories set in Saint Petersburg were produced worldwide, but were not filmed in the city. First film studios were founded in Saint Petersburg in the 1900s, and since the 1920s Lenfilm has been the largest film studio based in Saint Petersburg. The first foreign feature movie filmed entirely in Saint Petersburg was the 1997 production of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, starring Sophie Marceau and Sean Bean, and made by international team of British, American, French and Russian filmmakers.
The cult comedy Irony of Fate (also ÐÑÐ¾Ð½Ð¸Ñ ÑÑдÑбÑ, или С лÑгким паÑом!) is set in Saint Petersburg and pokes fun at Soviet city planning. The 1985 film White Nights received considerable Western attention for having captured genuine Leningrad street scenes at a time when filming in the Soviet Union by Western production companies was generally unheard of. Other movies include GoldenEye (1995), Midnight in Saint Petersburg (1996), and Brother (1997). Onegin (1999) is based on the Pushkin poem and showcases many tourist attractions. In addition, the Russian romantic comedy, ÐиÑÐµÑ FM, showcases the cityscape significantly, almost as if it was a main character in the film.
Several international film festivals are held annually, such as the Festival of Festivals, St. Petersburg, as well as the Message to Man International Documentary Film Festival, since its inauguration in 1988 during the White Nights.
Saint Petersburg has a longstanding and world famous tradition in literature. Dostoyevsky called it âThe most abstract and intentional city in the world," emphasizing its artificiality, but it was also a symbol of modern disorder in a changing Russia. It frequently appeared to Russian writers as a menacing and inhuman mechanism. The grotesque and often nightmarish image of the city is featured in Pushkin's last poems, the Petersburg stories of Gogol, the novels of Dostoyevsky, the verse of Alexander Blok and Osip Mandelshtam, and in the symbolist novel Petersburg by Andrey Bely. According to Lotman in his chapter, 'The Symbolism of Saint Petersburg' in Universe and the Mind, these writers were inspired from symbolism from within the city itself. The effect of life in Saint Petersburg on the plight of the poor clerk in a society obsessed with hierarchy and status also became an important theme for authors such as Pushkin, Gogol, and Dostoyevsky. Another important feature of early Saint Petersburg literature is its mythical element, which incorporates urban legends and popular ghost stories, as the stories of Pushkin and Gogol included ghosts returning to Saint Petersburg to haunt other characters as well as other fantastical elements, creating a surreal and abstract image of Saint Petersburg.
Twentieth century writers from Saint Petersburg, such as Vladimir Nabokov, Ayn Rand, Andrey Bely and Yevgeny Zamyatin, along with his apprentices, The Serapion Brothers, created entire new styles in literature and contributed new insights to the understanding of society through their experience in this city. Anna Akhmatova became an important leader for Russian poetry. Her poem Requiem focuses on the tragedies of living during the time of the Stalinist terror. Another notable 20th century writer from Saint Petersburg is Joseph Brodsky, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1987). While living in the United States, his writings in English reflected on life in Saint Petersburg from the unique perspective of being both an insider and an outsider to the city in essays such as, "A Guide to a Renamed City" and the nostalgic "In a Room and a Half". Joseph Brodsky. Less Than One: Selected Essays, 1986
FC Zenit's home Petrovsky stadium
Leningrad hosted part of the football tournament during the 1980 Summer Olympics. The 1994 Goodwill Games were held here.
The first competition here was the 1703 rowing event initiated by Peter the Great, after the victory over the Swedish fleet. Yachting events were held by the Russian Navy since the foundation of the city. Yacht clubs: St. Petersburg River Yacht Club, Neva Yacht Club, the latter is the oldest yacht club in the world. In the winter, when the sea and lake surfaces are frozen and yachts and dinghies cannot be used, local people sail on ice boats.
Equestrianism has been a long tradition, popular among the Tsars and aristocracy, as well as part of the military training. Several historic sports arenas were built for Equestrianism since the 18th century, to maintain training all year round, such as the Zimny Stadion and Konnogvardeisky Manezh among others.
Chess tradition was highlighted by the 1914 international tournament, in which the title "Grandmaster" was first formally conferred by Russian Tsar Nicholas II to five players: Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine, Tarrasch and Marshall, and which the Tsar had partially funded.
Kirov Stadium (now demolished) was one of the largest stadiums anywhere in the world, and the home to FC Zenit St. Petersburg in 1950-1993 and 1995. In 1951 the attendance of 110,000 set the record for the Soviet football. In 2007 Zenit became champions of the Russian Premier League, won the UEFA Cup 2007â08 season and the 2008 UEFA Supercup. Zenit now plays their home games at Petrovsky Stadium.
As of 2006/2007 there were 1024 kindergartens, 716 public schools and 80 vocational schools in Saint Petersburg. SPB.ru The largest of the higher education institutions are Saint Petersburg State University, enrolling approximately 32,000 undergraduate students, Saint Petersburg Polytechnical University and Herzen University. However, the universities are all federal property and don't belong to the city.
*List of consulates in Saint Petersburg
*List of museums in Saint Petersburg
*List of notable people from Saint Petersburg
*List of Saint Petersburg sister cities
*Amery, Colin, Brian Curran & Yuri Molodkovets. St. Petersburg. London: Frances Lincoln, 2006. ISBN 0711224927.
*Bater, James H. St. Petersburg: Industrialization and Change. Montreal: McGuill-Queenâs University Press, 1976. ISBN 0773502661.
*Berelowitch, Wladimir & Olga Medvedkova. Histoire de Saint-Pétersbourg. Paris: Fayard, 1996. ISBN 2213596018.
*Buckler, Julie. Mapping St. Petersburg: Imperial Text and Cityshape. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005 ISBN0691113491.
*Clark, Katerina, Petersburg, Crucible of Revolution. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995.
*Cross, Anthony (ed.). St. Petersburg, 1703-1825. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. ISBN 1403915709.
*George, Arthur L. & Elena George. St. Petersburg: Russia's Window to the Future, The First Three Centuries. Lanham: Taylor Trade Publishing, 2003. ISBN 1589790170.
*Glantz, David M. The Battle for Leningrad, 1941-1944. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002. ISBN 0700612084.
*Hellberg-Hirn, Elena. Imperial Imprints: Post-Soviet St. Petersburg. Helsinki: SKS Finnish Literature Society, 2003. ISBN 9517464916.
*Knopf Guide: Sat. Petersburg. New York: Knopf, 1995. ISBN 0679762027.
*Eyewitness Guide: St. Petersburg.
*Lincoln, W. Bruce. Sunlight at Midnight: St. Petersburg and the Rise of Modern Russia. New York: Basic Books, 2000. ISBN 0465083234.
*Orttung, Robert W. From Leningrad to St. Petersburg: Democratization in a Russian City. New York: St. Martinâs, 1995. ISBN 0312175612.
*Ruble, Blair A. Leningrad: Shaping a Soviet City. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. ISBN 0877723478.
*Shvidkovsky, Dmitry O. & Alexander Orloff. St. Petersburg: Architecture of the Tsars. New York: Abbeville Press, 1996. ISBN 0789202174.
*Volkov, Solomon. St. Petersburg: A Cultural History. New York: Free Press, 1995. ISBN 0028740521.
*St. Petersburg:Architecture of the Tsars. 360 pages. Abbeville Press, 1996. ISBN 0789202174
*Saint Petersburg: Museums, Palaces, and Historic Collections: A Guide to the Lesser Known Treasures of St. Petersburg. 2003. ISBN 1593730004.
*ÐежиÑ
овÑкий Ð . Ð. Река Ðева и ÐевÑÐºÐ°Ñ Ð³Ñба, Leningrad, ÐидÑомеÑеоиздаÑ, 1981.
* Official presentation of Saint Petersburg
* Official Portal of the City Government: Saint Petersburg
* Encyclopaedia of Saint Petersburg
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* Saint Petersburg in 1900
* Saint Petersburg, entry in the World Monuments Fund's 2008 watchlist
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Saint_Petersburg | When did the crime level become higher? | After the October revolution. | data/set3/a10 | Saint_Petersburg
Saint Petersburg ( , ) is a city and a federal subject (a federal city) of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The city's other names were Petrograd ( , 1914â1924) and Leningrad ( , 1924â1991). It is often called just Petersburg ( ) and is informally known as Piter ( ).
Founded by Tsar Peter I of Russia on 27 May 1703, it was the capital of the Russian Empire for more than two hundred years (1713â1728, 1732â1918). Saint Petersburg ceased being the capital in 1918 after the Russian Revolution of 1917. Nicholas and Alexandra: An Intimate Account of the Last of the Romanovs and the Fall of Imperial Russia (Athenum, 1967) by Robert K. Massie, ASIN B000CGP8M2 (also, Ballantine Books, 2000, ISBN 0-345-43831-0 and Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, 2005, ISBN 1-57912-433-X) It is Russia's second largest city after Moscow with 4.6 million inhabitants, and over 6 million people live in its vicinity. Saint Petersburg is a major European cultural centre, and an important Russian port on the Baltic Sea.
Saint Petersburg is often described as the most Western city of Russia. V. Morozov. The Discourses of Saint Petersburg and the Shaping of a Wider Europe. Copenhagen Peace Research Institute. 2002. Ciaonet.org Among cities of the world with over one million people, Saint Petersburg is the northernmost. The Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments constitute a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Saint Petersburg is also home to The Hermitage, the largest art museum in the world. /ref> Russia's political and cultural centre for 200 years, the city is sometimes referred to in Russia as the northern capital. A large number of foreign consulates, international corporations, banks and other businesses are located in Saint Petersburg.
On 1 May 1703 (Julian calendar), during the Great Northern War, Peter the Great captured the Swedish fortress of Nyenskans on the Neva river in Ingria. A few weeks later, on 27 May 1703 (May 16, Old Style), lower on the river, on Zayachy (Hare) Island, three miles (5 km) inland from the gulf, he laid down the Peter and Paul Fortress, which became the first brick and stone building of the new city. He named the city after his patron saint, Saint Peter, the apostle. The original name was meant to sound like Dutch due to Peter's obsession with the Dutch culture. Peter the Great: His Life and World (Knopf, 1980) by Robert K. Massie, ISBN 0-394-50032-6
The city was built by conscripted serfs from all over Russia and also by Swedish prisoners of war under the supervision of Alexander Menshikov and later became the centre of Saint Petersburg Governorate. Peter moved the capital from Moscow to Saint Petersburg in 1712, before the Treaty of Nystad of 1721 ended the war.
The Bronze Horseman, monument to Peter the Great.
Palace Square, as the main square of the Russian Empire it was the setting of many events of great historical significance
Lenin statue outside the Finland station. Between 1924 and 1991 the city was known as Leningrad.
Map of Saint Petersburg, 1903.
Church of the Savior on Blood.
During the first few years of its existence the city grew spontaneously around Trinity Square on the right bank of the Neva, near the Peter and Paul Fortress. However, Saint Petersburg soon started to develop according to a plan. By 1716 Domenico Trezzini had elaborated a project whereby the city centre would be located on Vasilievsky Island and shaped by a rectangular grid of canals. The project was not completed, but is still evident in the layout of the streets. In 1716 Jean-Baptiste Alexandre Le Blond was appointed chief architect of Saint Petersburg by Peter the Great.
The style of Petrine Baroque, developed by Trezzini and other architects and exemplified by such buildings as the Menshikov Palace, Kunstkamera, Peter and Paul Cathedral, Twelve Collegia, became prominent in the city architecture of the early 18th century. In 1724 the Academy of Sciences, University and Academic Gymnasium were established in Saint Petersburg by Peter the Great.
However, in 1725 Peter died. His near-lifelong autocratic push for modernisation of Russia had met with considerable opposition from the old-fashioned Russian nobility â resulting in several attempts on his life and a treason case involving his own son. Matthew S. Anderson, Peter the Great (London: Thames and Hudson, 1978) Thus, in 1728, Peter II of Russia moved his seat back to Moscow. But four years later, in 1732, under Empress Anna of Russia, Saint Petersburg again became the capital of the Russian Empire and remained the seat of the government for 186 years.
In 1736-1737 the city suffered from catastrophic fires. In order to rebuild the damaged boroughs, in 1737 a new plan was commissioned by a committee under Burkhard Christoph von Munnich. The city was divided into five boroughs, and the city centre was moved to the Admiralty borough, situated on the east bank between the Neva and Fontanka.
It developed along three radial streets, which meet at the Admiralty and are now known as Nevsky Prospekt (which is now perceived as the main street of the city), Gorokhovaya Street and Voznesensky Prospekt. The style of Baroque dominated the city architecture during the first sixty years, culminating in the Elizabethan Baroque, represented most notably by Bartolomeo Rastrelli with such buildings as the Winter Palace. In the 1760s the Baroque architecture was succeeded by the neoclassical architecture.
The Commission of Stone Buildings of Moscow and Saint Petersburg established in 1762 ruled that no structure in the city be higher than the Winter Palace and prohibited spacing between buildings. During the reign of Catherine the Great in the 1760s-1780s the banks of the Neva were lined with granite embankments.
However, it wasn't until 1850 that it was allowed to open the first permanent bridge across the Neva, Blagoveshchensky Bridge. Before that, only pontoon bridges were allowed. Obvodny Canal (dug in 1769-1833) became the southern limit of the city.
Some of the most important neoclassical architects in Saint Petersburg (including those working within the Empire style) were Jean-Baptiste Vallin de la Mothe (Imperial Academy of Arts, Small Hermitage, Gostiny Dvor, New Holland Arch, Catholic Church of St. Catherine), Antonio Rinaldi (Marble Palace), Yury Felten (Old Hermitage, Chesme Church), Giacomo Quarenghi (Academy of Sciences, Hermitage Theatre, Yusupov Palace), Andrey Voronikhin (Mining Institute, Kazan Cathedral), Andreyan Zakharov (Admiralty building), Jean-François Thomas de Thomon (Spit of Vasilievsky Island), Carlo Rossi (Yelagin Palace, Mikhailovsky Palace, Alexandrine Theatre, Senate and Synod Buildings, General Staff Building, design of many streets and squares), Vasily Stasov (Moscow Triumphal Gate, Trinity Cathedral), Auguste de Montferrand (Saint Isaac's Cathedral, Alexander Column). The victory over Napoleonic France in the Patriotic War of 1812 was commemorated with many monuments, including Alexander Column by Montferrand, erected in 1834, and Narva Triumphal Gate.
In 1825 the suppressed Decembrist revolt against Nicholas I of Russia took place on the Senate Square in the city, a day after he assumed the throne.
By the 1840s the neoclassical architecture had given place to various romanticist styles, which were dominant until the 1890s, represented by such architects as Andrei Stackenschneider (Mariinsky Palace, Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace, Nicholas Palace, New Michael Palace) and Konstantin Thon (Moskovsky Rail Terminal). The Church of the Savior on Blood designed in the Russian revival style commemorated the place where Alexander II of Russia was assassinated in 1881.
With the emancipation of the serfs undertaken by Alexander II in 1861 and the industrial revolution the influx of former peasants into the capital increased greatly. Poor boroughs spontaneously emerged on the outskirts of the city. Saint Petersburg surpassed Moscow in population and industrial growth and grew into one of the largest industrial hubs and cities in Europe.
The Revolution of 1905 began in Saint Petersburg and spread rapidly into the provinces. With the start of World War I, the name Saint Petersburg was perceived to be too German, so in 1914 the city was renamed Petrograd. The Romanovs: The Final Chapter (Random House, 1995) by Robert K. Massie, ISBN 0-394-58048-6 and ISBN 0-679-43572-7 In 1917 the February Revolution, which put an end to the Russian monarchy, and the October Revolution, which ultimately brought Vladimir Lenin to power, broke out in Petrograd. Rex A. Wade The Russian Revolution, 1917 2005 Cambridge University Press ISBN 0521841550 The city's proximity to the border and anti-Soviet armies forced the Bolsheviks under Lenin to transfer the capital to Moscow on March 12, 1918.
In 1919 during the ensuing Russian Civil War Nikolay Yudenich advancing from Estonia was about to capture the city from the Bolsheviks, but Leon Trotsky ultimately managed to mobilise the population and make him retreat. Many people fled the city in 1917-1920 or were repressed in the Red Terror, Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe. By Robert Gellately, 2007, Random House, 720 pages. ISBN 1400040051 so its population decreased dramatically. On January 26, 1924, three days after Lenin's death, Petrograd was renamed Leningrad. For decades Leningrad was glorified by the Soviet propaganda as "the cradle of the revolution" and "the city of three revolutions", many spots related to Lenin and the revolutions, such as the cruiser Aurora, were carefully preserved. Many streets and other toponyms were renamed accordingly.
In the 1920s-1930s the poor outskirts were reconstructed into regularly planned boroughs. The constructivist architecture flourished around that time. The Soviets nationalised housing and forced many residents to share communal apartments (kommunalkas). With 68% living in shared apartments in the 1930s, Leningrad was the city with the largest number of kommunalkas. In 1935 a new general plan was outlined, whereby the city should expand to the south and its centre should move there. The constructivism was rejected in favor of the pompous Stalinist architecture. Stalin ordered the construction of the new city hall on Moskovsky Prospect thus making it the new main street of Leningrad during the Soviet rule.
Since December 1931 Leningrad has been administratively separate from Leningrad Oblast. At that time it included Leningrad Suburban District, some parts of which were transferred back to Leningrad Oblast in 1936 and turned into Vsevolozhsky District, Krasnoselsky District, Pargolovsky District and Slutsky District (renamed Pavlovsky District in 1944).
On December 1, 1934, Sergey Kirov, popular communist leader of Leningrad, was assassinated, which was used to start the Great Purge. Stalin's Terror: High Politics and Mass Repression in the Soviet Union by Barry McLoughlin and Kevin McDermott (eds). Palgrave Macmillan, 2002, p. 6 The sizeable minorities of Germans, Poles, Finns, Estonians and Latvians were almost completely expelled from Leningrad by the Soviet government during the 1930s. Martin, Terry (1998). The Origins of Soviet Ethnic Cleansing. The Journal of Modern History 70.4, 813-861.
During World War II, Leningrad was besieged by Nazi Germany and co-belligerent Finland. Siege of Leningrad. Encyclopædia Britannica The siege lasted 872 days from September 1941 to January 1944. Baldack, Richard H. "Leningrad, Siege of" World Book Encyclopedia, Chicago, 2002, vol.12, page 195 The Siege of Leningrad was one of the longest, most destructive, and most lethal sieges of major cities in modern history. It isolated the city from most supplies except those provided through the Road of Life across Lake Ladoga, and more than a million civilians died, mainly from starvation. Many others were eventually evacuated or escaped by themselves, so the city became largely depopulated. For the heroic resistance of the city and tenacity of the survivors of the Siege, in 1945 Leningrad became the first city in the Soviet Union awarded the title Hero City. In October 1946 some former Finnish territories along the northern coast of the Gulf of Finland captured in the Winter War and Continuation War were transferred from Leningrad Oblast to Leningrad and divided into Sestroretsky District and Kurortny District, including the town of Terijoki (renamed Zelenogorsk in 1948).
Leningrad and many of its suburbs were rebuilt over the post-war decades, partially according to the pre-war plans. The 1948 general plan of Leningrad featured radial urban development in the north as well as in the south. The Leningrad Metro, underground rapid transit system which was designed before the war in the 1930s, was opened in 1955 with its first seven stations decorated with marble and bronze. Meanwhile, in 1949-1951 a large number of prominent Leningrad members of the Communist Party and their families were charged with treason and intention to create an anti-Soviet organization out of their local party cell. Many were imprisoned or executed in the Leningrad Affair fabricated by the central Soviet leadership. Dmitri Volkogonov. Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy, 1996, ISBN 0761507183 Russian publication: ÐенингÑадÑкое дело â надо ли ÑÑавиÑÑ ÐºÐ°Ð²ÑÑки?: Contr-tv.ru
In 1953 Pavlovsky District of Leningrad Oblast was abolished, and parts of its territory including Pavlovsk merged with Leningrad. In 1954 the settlements Levashovo, Pargolovo and Pesochny merged with Leningrad.
After the death of Stalin the perceived ornamental excesses of the Stalinist architecture were abandoned. In the 1960s-1980s, as many new residential boroughs were built on the outskirts with few series of functionalist apartment blocks identical to each other, many families moved there from kommunalkas in the city centre in order to live in separate apartments. Uritsk was re-named Ligovo and merged with Leningrad in 1963, Lomonosov merged in 1978.
On June 12, 1991, in a referendum held on the same day as the first Russian presidential election, 54% of voters chose to restore the name "Saint Petersburg" (the change officially took effect on September 6, 1991). Many other Soviet-era toponyms in the city were also renamed soon afterwards. In the same election Anatoly Sobchak became the first democratically elected mayor of the city. Jack F. Matlock, Jr., Autopsy on an Empire: The American Ambassador's Account of the Collapse of the Soviet Union, Random House, 1995, ISBN 0679413766
By the end of 1991 the deteriorating planned economy of the collapsing Soviet Union had put the city on the verge of starvation. For the first time since World War II food rationing was introduced, and the city received humanitarian food aid from abroad. The city somewhat recovered with the market reforms in Russia. In 1995-2004 a northern section of the Metro's Kirovsko-Vyborgskaya Line was cut off by underground flooding, which was a major obstacle to the city development.
In 1996, Vladimir Yakovlev was elected as head of the Saint Petersburg City Administration. The title of the city head was changed in advance from "mayor" to "governor". In 2003, Yakovlev resigned a year before his second term expired. Valentina Matviyenko was elected governor. In 2006 she was reapproved as governor by the city legislature. The residential building had intensified again, real estate prices inflated greatly, and this situation causes many new problems for the historical part of the city.
In spite of the fact that the central part of the city is watched by UNESCO, the safety of its historical and architectural environment is in danger. Sergey Zagraevsky. Will Saint Petersburg share the same fate as Moscow? Zagraevsky.com There are still about 8000 architectural monuments in Saint Petersburg, but since 2005 the destruction of older buildings in the historical centre has continued. A number of new building projects are underway, including the Gazprom skyscraper in Okhta.
Territory of the federal subject of Saint Petersburg.
The area of Saint Petersburg city proper is . The area of the federal subject is , which contains the Saint Petersburg proper (consisting of 81 okrugs), nine suburban towns (Kolpino, Krasnoye Selo, Kronstadt, Lomonosov, Pavlovsk, Peterhof, Pushkin, Sestroretsk and Zelenogorsk) and 21 municipal settlements.
Saint Petersburg is situated on the middle taiga lowlands along the shores of the Neva Bay of the Gulf of Finland, and islands of the river delta. The largest are Vasilyevsky island (besides the artificial island between Obvodny canal and Fontanka, and Kotlin in the Neva Bay), Petrogradsky, Dekabristov and Krestovsky. The latter together with Yelagin and Kamenny island are covered mostly by parks. The Karelian Isthmus, North of the city, is a popular resort area. In the south Saint Petersburg crosses the Baltic-Ladoga Klint and meets the Izhora Plateau.
The elevation of Saint Petersburg ranges from the sea level to its highest point of at the Orekhovaya Hill in the Duderhof Heights in the south. Part of the city's territory west of Liteyny Prospekt is no higher than above sea level, and has suffered from numerous floods. Floods in Saint Petersburg are triggered by a long wave in the Baltic Sea, caused by meteorological conditions, winds and shallowness of the Neva Bay. The four most disastrous floods occurred in 1824 ( above sea-level, during which over 300 buildings were destroyed The level of flooding is measured near Saint Petersburg Mining Institute, which is normally a.s.l. ), 1924 , 1777 , 1955 and 1975 . To prevent floods, the Saint Petersburg Dam has been under construction since 1979. ÐежиÑ
овÑкий Ð . Ð. Река Ðева и ÐевÑÐºÐ°Ñ Ð³Ñба, Leningrad: ÐидÑомеÑеоиздаÑ, 1981.
Since the 18th century the terrain in the city has been raised artificially, at some places by more than , making mergers of several islands, and changing the hydrology of the city. Besides the Neva and its distributaries, other important rivers of the federal subject of Saint Petersburg are Sestra, Okhta and Izhora. The largest lake is Sestroretsky Razliv in the north, followed by Lakhtinsky Razliv, Suzdal Lakes and other smaller lakes.
Saint Petersburg's position on the latitude of ca. 60° N causes variation in day length across seasons, ranging from 5:53 to 18:50. Twilight may last all night in early summer, from mid-May to mid-July, the celebrated phenomenon known as the white nights.
Snow falling on the morning of May 14, 2008 at Srednyaya Rogatka (district in the south of St. Petersburg)
Saint Petersburg experiences a humid continental climate of the cool summer subtype (Köppen: Dfb), due to the distinct moderating influence of the Baltic Sea cyclones, with warm, humid and short summers and long, cold winters.
The average daily temperature in July is ; summer maximum is about , winter minimum is about . The record low temperature is , recorded in 1883. The average annual temperature is . The River Neva within the city limits usually freezes up in November-December, break-up occurs in April. From December to March there are 123 days average with snow cover, which reaches the average of by February. The frost-free period in the city lasts on average for about 135 days. The city has a climate slightly warmer than its suburbs. Weather conditions are quite variable all year round. See Historical weather records for Saint Petersburg (since 1932) and Historical weather in Saint Petersburg for further information.
Average annual precipitation varies across the city, averaging per year and reaching maximum in late summer. Soil moisture is almost always high because of lower evapotranspiration due to the cool climate. Air humidity is 78% on average, while overcast is 165 days a year on average.
[[File:Saint Petersburg population history.svg|thumb|Population history of Saint Petersburg ЧиÑÑÑкова Ð. ТÑеÑÑе ÑокÑаÑение ÑиÑленноÑÑи наÑелениÑ... и поÑледнее? ÐемоÑкоп Weekly 163 â 164, August 1â15, 2004. ЮбилейнÑй ÑÑаÑиÑÑиÑеÑкий ÑбоÑник./Ðод Ñед. Ð.Ð. ÐлиÑеевой и Ð.Ð. ÐÑибовой. - ÐÑп.2. - СÐб: СÑдоÑÑÑоение, 2003. Ñ.16-17 ]]
Saint Petersburg is the second largest city in Russia. The 2002 census recorded a population of the federal subject of 4,661,219, or 3.21% of the total population of Russia. The 2002 census recorded twenty-two ethnic groups of more than two thousand persons each. The ethnic composition was: Russian 84.72%, Ukrainian 1.87%, Belarusians 1.17%, Jewish 0.78%, Tatar 0.76%, Armenian 0.41%, Azeri 0.36%, Georgian 0.22%, Chuvash 0.13%, Polish 0.10%, and many other smaller ethnic groups, while 7.89% of the inhabitants declined to state their ethnicity.
The 20th century saw hectic ups and downs in population. From 2.4 million in 1916 it had dropped to less than 740,000 by 1920 during the Russian Revolution of 1917 and Russian Civil War. The sizeable minorities of Germans, Poles, Finns, Estonians and Latvians were almost completely expelled from Leningrad by the Soviet government during the 1930s. From 1941 to the end of 1943, population dropped from 3 million to less than 700,000, as people died in battles, starved to death during the Siege of Leningrad, or were evacuated. After the siege, some of the evacuees returned, but most influx was due to migration from other parts of the Soviet Union. The city absorbed about 3 million people in the 1950s and grew to over 5 million in the 1980s. From 1991 to 2006 the city's population decreased to the current 4.6 million, while the suburban population increased due to privatization of land and massive move to suburbs. ЧиÑÑÑкова Ð. ТÑеÑÑе ÑокÑаÑение ÑиÑленноÑÑи наÑелениÑ... и поÑледнее? ÐемоÑкоп Weekly 163 â 164, August 1â15, 2004. Russian source: "Encyclopedia of Saint Petersburg" ЧиÑÑÑков Ð. Ю. ÐаÑеление (обзоÑÐ½Ð°Ñ ÑÑаÑÑÑ). ÐнÑÐ¸ÐºÐ»Ð¾Ð¿ÐµÐ´Ð¸Ñ Ð¡Ð°Ð½ÐºÑ-ÐеÑеÑбÑÑга The birth rate remains lower than the death rate; people over 65 constitute more than twenty percent of the population; and the median age is about 40 years. Russian statistics ÐÑновнÑе показаÑели ÑоÑиалÑно-демогÑаÑиÑеÑкой ÑиÑÑаÑии в СанкÑ-ÐеÑеÑбÑÑге
People in urban Saint Petersburg live mostly in apartments. Between 1918 and the 1990s, the Soviets nationalised housing and forced residents to share communal apartments (kommunalkas). With 68% living in shared flats in the 1930s, Leningrad was the city in the USSR with the largest number of kommunalkas. Resettling residents of kommunalkas is now on the way out, albeit shared apartments are still not uncommon. As new boroughs were built on the outskirts in the 1950s-1980s, over half a million low income families eventually received free apartments, and about an additional hundred thousand condos were purchased. While economic and social activity is concentrated in the historic city centre, the richest part of Saint Petersburg, most people live in commuter areas. For the first half of 2007, the birth rate was 9.1 per 1000.
Smolny Institute, the seat of the governor.
Saint Petersburg is a federal subject of Russia. The political life of Saint Petersburg is regulated by the city charter adopted by the city legislature in 1998. The superior executive body is the Saint Petersburg City Administration, led by the governor (mayor before 1996). Saint Petersburg has a single-chamber legislature, the Saint Petersburg Legislative Assembly.
According to the federal law passed in 2004, heads of federal subjects, including the governor of Saint Petersburg, are nominated by the President of Russia and approved by local legislatures. If the legislature disapproves the nominee, it is dissolved. The current governor, Valentina Matviyenko, was approved according to the new system in December 2006. She is currently the only woman governor in the whole of Russia.
Saint Petersburg city is currently divided into eighteen districts. Saint Petersburg is also the administrative centre of Leningrad Oblast, and of the Northwestern Federal District. The Constitutional Court of Russia moved to Saint Petersburg from Moscow in May 2008.
Saint Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast, being two different federal subjects, share a number of local departments of federal executive agencies and courts, such as court of arbitration, police, FSB, postal service, drug enforcement administration, penitentiary service, federal registration service, and other federal services.
The Old Saint Petersburg Stock Exchange, or Bourse, houses the Central Naval Museum
Saint Petersburg is a major trade gateway, financial and industrial centre of Russia specialising in oil and gas trade, shipbuilding yards, aerospace industry, radio and electronics, software and computers; machine building, heavy machinery and transport, including tanks and other military equipment, mining, instrument manufacture, ferrous and nonferrous metallurgy (production of aluminium alloys), chemicals, pharmaceuticals, medical equipment, publishing and printing, food and catering, wholesale and retail, textile and apparel industries, and many other businesses. It was also home to Lessner, one of Russia's two pioneering automobile manufacturers (along with Russo-Baltic), Lessner; founded by machine tool and boiler maker G. A. Lessner in 1904, with designs by Boris Loutsky, it survived until 1910. Georgano, G. N. Cars: Early and Vintage, 1886-1930. (London: Grange-Universal, 1985)
10% of the world's power turbines are made there at the LMZ, which built over two thousand turbines for power plants across the world. Major local industries are Admiralty Shipyard, Baltic Shipyard, LOMO, Kirov Plant, Elektrosila, Izhorsky Zavod; also registered in Saint Petersburg are Sovkomflot, Petersburg Fuel Company and SIBUR among other major Russian and international companies.
The Saint Petersburg docks at dawn.
Saint Petersburg has three large cargo seaports: Bolshoi Port Saint Petersburg, Kronstadt, and Lomonosov. International cruise liners have been served at the passenger port at Morskoy Vokzal on the south-west of Vasilevsky Island. In 2008 the first two berths were opened at the New Passenger Port on the west of the island. Discoverthebaltic.com Discover the Baltic online guide to Baltic cruise ports The new port is part of the city's "Marine Facade" development project Mfspb.ru St Petersburg "Marine Facade" development project and is due to have seven berths in operation by 2010.
A complex system of riverports on both banks of the Neva river are interconnected with the system of seaports, thus making Saint Petersburg the main link between the Baltic sea and the rest of Russia through the Volga-Baltic Waterway.
The Saint Petersburg Mint (Monetny Dvor), founded in 1724, is one of the largest mints in the world, it mints Russian coins, medals and badges. Saint Petersburg is also home to the oldest and largest Russian foundry, Monumentskulptura, which made thousands of sculptures and statues that are now gracing public parks of Saint Petersburg, as well as many other cities. Monuments and bronze statues of the Czars, as well as other important historic figures and dignitaries, and other world famous monuments, such as the sculptures by Peter Clodt von Jürgensburg, Paolo Troubetzkoy, Pavel Antokolsky, and others, were made there.
In 2007 Toyota opened a Camry plant after investing 5 billion dollars in Shushary, one of the southern suburbs of Saint Petersburg. General Motors, Hyundai and Nissan have signed deals with the Russian government to build their automotive plants in Saint Petersburg too. Automotive and auto-parts industry is on the rise there during the last decade. Saint Petersburg is also known as the "beer capital" of Russia, due to the supply and quality of local water, contributing over 30% of the domestic production of beer with its five large-scale breweries including Europe's second largest brewery Baltika, Vena (both operated by BBH), Heineken Brewery, Stepan Razin (both by Heineken) and Tinkoff brewery (SUN-InBev). Saint Petersburg has the second largest construction industry in Russia, including commercial, housing and road construction.
In 2006 Saint Petersburg's city budget was 179,9 billion rubles, and is planned to double by 2012. The federal subject's gross regional product as of 2005 was 667,905.4 million Russian rubles, ranked 4th in Russia, after Moscow, Tyumen Oblast, and Moscow Oblast, or 145,503.3 rubles per capita, ranked 12th among Russia's federal subjects, contributed mostly by wholesale and retail trade and repair services (24.7%) as well as processing industry (20.9%) and transportation and telecommunications (15.1%).
The Kresty prison.
Russia historically had a high level of crime that increased significantly after the October revolution. Edward Hallett Carr The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1923, 1985 ISBN 0393301990 Google preview Perestroika-time turmoils saw additional increase of the crime level.
Saint Petersburg experiences significant levels of street crime and bribery. In addition, in recent years there has been a notable increase in racially motivated violence, especially towards tourists and foreign students. One of the well known white supremacist groups Belaya Energia (White Energy, originally comes from White Power), has reportedly been one of the main gangs involved in murdering foreign university students. Russia: Racist Attacks Plague St. Petersburg Radio Free Europe September 30, 2005
At the end of the 1980s â beginning of the 1990s, Leningrad became home to a number of organised criminal groups as Tambov Gang, Malyshev Gang, Kazan Gang and ethnic criminal groups, engaged in a racket, extortion, paying off local government, and violent clashes with each other. Russian Mafia Shakes Down the Country by Steven R. Van Hook, Santa Barbara News-Press, November 20, 1994
In 2008, a car bomb killed three people (including a four-year old child), and injured one.
After the assassinations of City Property Committee Chairman and vice-Governor Mikhail Manevich(1997), State Duma deputy Galina Starovoytova (1998), acting City Legislature Speaker Viktor Novosyolov (1999) and a number of prominent businesspeople, Saint Petersburg was dubbed Capital of Crime in the Russian press. Trumbull, Nathaniel S. (2003) The impacts of globalization on Saint Petersburg: A secondary world city in from the cold? The Annals of Regional Science 37:533â546 Powell, Bill & Brian Whitmore. The Capital Of Crime.(Saint Petersburg, Russia). Newsweek International, May 15, 2000. There were a number of movies filmed in Saint Petersburg about the life of crime; , Brother (1997) reinforcing its image as the Crime Capital of Russia.
One of the oldest and most infamous remand facilities in Saint Petersburg, Kresty prison is located near downtown.
However, crime rates in St. Petersburg have declined since the end of the 1990s; the aforementioned criminal gangs have mostly dispersed. Even the Kresty prison is no longer in use, as more modern penal institutions are being built farther from the city centre.
The decoration of Saint Petersburg Metro (Kirovsky Zavod Station).
Saint Petersburg is a major transport hub. The first Russian railway was built here, in 1837. Today, the city is the final destination of a web of intercity and suburban railways, served by five different railway terminals (Baltiysky, Finlyandsky, Ladozhsky, Moskovsky, and Vitebsky), Until 2001, the Varshavsky Rail Terminal served as a major station; it now is a railway museum. Reconstruction of the Warsaw Railway Station as well as dozens of non-terminal railway stations within the federal subject. Saint Petersburg has international railway connections to Helsinki, Finland, Berlin, Germany, and all former republics of the USSR. The Helsinki railway was built in 1870, , commutes three times a day, in a journey lasting about five and a half hours. The Moscow-Saint Petersburg Railway opened in 1851, ; the commute to Moscow now requires about four and a half to nine hours. Saint Petersburg is also served by Pulkovo International Airport, Rossiya (Pulkovo): Pulkovo Aviation Enterprise and by three smaller commercial and cargo airports in the suburbs. There is a regular, 24/7, rapid-bus transit connection between Pulkovo airport and the city centre.
The city is also served by the passenger and cargo seaports in the Neva Bay of the Gulf of Finland, Baltic Sea, the river port higher up the Neva, and tens of smaller passenger stations on both banks of the Neva river. It is a terminus of the Volga-Baltic and White Sea-Baltic waterways. In 2004 the first high bridge that doesn't need to be drawn, a long Big Obukhovsky Bridge, was opened. Meteor hydrofoils link the city centre to the coastal towns of Kronstadt, Lomonosov, Peterhof, Sestroretsk and Zelenogorsk from May through October.
Pulkovo International Airport.
Saint Petersburg has an extensive city-funded network of public transport (buses, trams, trolleybuses) and several hundred routes served by marshrutkas. Trams in Saint Petersburg used to be the main transport; in the 1980s, Leningrad had the largest tramway network in the world, but many tramway rail tracks were dismantled in the 2000s. Buses carry up to 3 million passengers daily, serving over 250 urban and a number of suburban bus routes. Saint Petersburg Metro underground rapid transit system was opened in 1955; it now has five lines with 63 stations, connecting all five railway terminals, and carrying 3.4 million passengers daily. Metro stations are decorated in marble and bronze.
Traffic jams are common in the city, because of high daily traffic volumes between the commuter boroughs and the city centre, intercity traffic, and at times excessive snow in winter. Five segments of the Saint Petersburg Ring Road were opened between 2002 and 2006, and full ring is planned to open in 2010.
Saint Petersburg is part of the important transport corridor linking Scandinavia to Russia and Eastern Europe. The city is a node of the international European routes E18 towards Helsinki, E20 towards Tallinn, E95 towards Pskov, Kiev and Odessa and E105 towards Petrozavodsk, Murmansk and Kirkenes (north) and towards Moscow and Kharkiv (south).
Kazan Cathedral
Griboyedov Canal
A bridge over the river Neva
As of now, Saint Petersburg has no skyscrapers and a relatively low skyline. Current regulations forbid construction of high buildings in the city centre. The 310 metre tall Saint Petersburg TV Tower is the tallest structure in the city, while the 122.5 m Peter and Paul Cathedral is by far the highest building. However, there is a controversial project endorsed by the city authorities and known as the Ohkta Centre to build a 396 m supertall skyscraper. In 2008 the World Monuments Fund included the Saint Petersburg historic skyline within the watch list of 100 most endangered sites due to the expected construction, which threatens to alter it drastically.
Unlike in Moscow, in Saint Petersburg the historic architecture of the city centre, mostly consisting of Baroque and neoclassical buildings of the 18th and 19th centuries, has been largely preserved, although a number of buildings were demolished after the Bolsheviks' seizure of power, during the Siege of Leningrad and in recent years. The oldest of the remaining building is a wooden house built for Peter I in 1703 on the shore of the Neva near Trinity Square. Since 1991 the Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments in Saint Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast have been listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.
The ensemble of Peter and Paul Fortress with the Peter and Paul Cathedral takes dominant position on Zayachy Island along the right bank of the River Neva. Each noon a cannon fires a blank shot from the fortress. The Saint Petersburg Mosque, the largest mosque in Europe when opened in 1913, is situated on the right bank nearby. The spit of Vasilievsky Island, which splits the river into two largest armlets, the Bolshaya Neva and Malaya Neva, is connected to the northern bank (Petrogradsky Island) via the Exchange Bridge and occupied by the Old Saint Petersburg Stock Exchange and Rostral Columns. The southern coast of Vasilievsky Island along the Bolshaya Neva features some of the city's oldest buildings, dating from the 18th century, including the Kunstkamera, Twelve Collegia, Menshikov Palace and Imperial Academy of Arts. It hosts one of two campuses of Saint Petersburg State University.
On the southern, left bank of the Neva, connected to the spit of Vasilievsky Island via the Palace Bridge, lie the Admiralty Building, the vast Hermitage Museum complex stretching along the Palace Embankment, which includes the baroque Winter Palace, former official residence of Russian emperors, as well as the neoclassical Marble Palace. The Winter Palace faces Palace Square, the city's main square with the Alexander Column.
Nevsky Prospekt, also situated on the left bank of the Neva, is the main avenue in the city. It starts at the Admiralty and runs eastwards next to Palace Square. Nevsky Prospekt crosses the Moika (Green Bridge), Griboyedov Canal (Kazansky Bridge), Garden Street, the Fontanka (Anichkov Bridge), meets Liteyny Prospekt and proceeds to Uprising Square near the Moskovsky railway station, where it meets Ligovsky Prospekt and turns to the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. The Passage, Catholic Church of St. Catherine, Book House (former Singer Manufacturing Company Building in the Art Nouveau style), Grand Hotel Europe, Lutheran Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, Gostiny Dvor, Russian National Library, Alexandrine Theatre behind Mikeshin's statue of Catherine the Great, Kazan Cathedral, Stroganov Palace, Anichkov Palace and Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace are all situated along that avenue.
The Alexander Nevsky Lavra, intended to house the relics of St. Alexander Nevsky, is an important centre of Christian education in Russia. It also contains the Tikhvin Cemetery with graves of many notable Petersburgers.
On the territory between the Neva and Nevsky Prospekt the Church of the Savior on Blood, Mikhailovsky Palace housing the Russian Museum, Field of Mars, St. Michael's Castle, Summer Garden, Tauride Palace, Smolny Institute and Smolny Convent are located.
Many notable landmarks are situated to the west and south of the Admiralty Building, including the Trinity Cathedral, Mariinsky Palace, Hotel Astoria, famous Mariinsky Theatre, New Holland Island, Saint Isaac's Cathedral, the largest in the city, and Decembrists Square with the Bronze Horseman, 18th century equestrian monument to Peter the Great, which is considered among the city's most recognisable symbols.
Other symbols of Saint Petersburg include the weather vane in the shape of a small ship on top of the Admiralty's golden spire and the golden angel on top of the Peter and Paul Cathedral. The Palace Bridge drawn at night is yet another symbol of the city. Every night during the navigation period from April to November, 22 bridges across the Neva and main canals are drawn to let ships pass in and out of the Baltic Sea according to a schedule. Schedule for main drawbridges across the Neva river (Official Russian schedule): Mr-spb.ru It wasn't until 2004 that the first high bridge across the Neva, which doesn't need to be drawn, Big Obukhovsky Bridge, was opened. There are hundreds of smaller bridges in Saint Petersburg spanning across numerous canals and distributaries of the Neva, some of the most important of which are the Moika, Fontanka, Griboyedov Canal, Obvodny Canal, Karpovka and Smolenka. Due to the intricate web of canals, Saint Petersburg is often called Venice of the North. The rivers and canals in the city centre are lined with granite embankments. The embankments and bridges are separated from rivers and canals by granite or cast iron parapets.
Southern suburbs of the city feature former imperial residences, including Peterhof, with majestic fountain cascades and parks, Tsarskoe Selo, with the baroque Catherine Palace and the neoclassical Alexander Palace, and Pavlovsk, which contains a domed palace of Emperor Paul and one of the largest English-style parks in Europe. Some other residences situated nearby and making part of the world heritage site, including a castle and park in Gatchina, actually belong to Leningrad Oblast rather than Saint Petersburg. Another notable suburb is Kronstadt with its 19th century fortifications and naval monuments, occupying the Kotlin Island in the Gulf of Finland.
From XX century end in a city active building and reorganisation of old historical city districts is conducted.
The authorities are compelled to transfer control of private residences in city centre to private lessors.
Also sealing building and a superstructure of buildings is spent by penthouses.
Some of these structures, such as the Saint Petersburg Commodity and Stock Exchange" have been recognised as town-planning errors.
Interior of the Hermitage Museum.
Saint Petersburg is home to more than two hundred museums, many of them hosted in historic buildings. The largest of the museums is the Hermitage Museum, featuring interiors of the former imperial residence and a vast collection of art. The Russian Museum is a large museum devoted to the Russian fine art specifically. The apartments of some famous Petersburgers, including Alexander Pushkin, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Feodor Chaliapin, Alexander Blok, Vladimir Nabokov, Anna Akhmatova, Mikhail Zoshchenko, Joseph Brodsky, as well as some palace and park ensembles of the southern suburbs and notable architectural monuments such as St. Isaac's Cathedral, have also been turned into public museums.
The Kunstkamera, with its collection established in 1714 by Peter the Great to collect curiosities from all over the world, is sometimes considered the first museum in Russia, which has evolved into the present-day Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography. The Russian Ethnography Museum, which has been split from the Russian Museum, is devoted to the cultures of the people of Russia, the former Soviet Union and Russian Empire.
Other notable museums include the Central Naval Museum hosted in the building of the former stock exchange and Zoological Museum, the Railway Museum, Museum of the Siege of Leningrad, Saint Petersburg Museum of History in the Peter and Paul Fortress and Artillery Museum, which in fact includes not only artillery items, but also a huge collection of other military equipment, uniform and decorations.
The Grand Cascade.
Saint Petersburg is home to numerous parks and gardens, some of the most famous of which are situated in the southern suburbs, including one of the largest English gardens of Europe in Pavlovsk. Sosnovka is the largest park within the limits of the city proper, occupying 240 ha. The Summer Garden is the oldest one, dating back to the early 18th century and designed in the regular style. It is situated on the southern bank of the Neva at the head of the Fontanka and is famous for its cast iron railing and marble sculptures.
Among other notable parks are the Maritime Victory Park on Krestovsky Island and the Moscow Victory Park in the south, both commemorating the victory over Nazi Germany in the Second World War, as well as the Central Park of Culture and Leisure occupying Yelagin Island and the Tauride Garden around the Tauride Palace. The most common trees grown in the parks are the English oak, Norway maple, green ash, silver birch, Siberian larch, blue spruce, crack willow, limes and poplars. Important dendrological collections dating back to the 19th century are hosted by the Saint Petersburg Botanical Garden and the Park of the Forestry Academy.
Among the city's more than fifty theaters is the world-famous Mariinsky Theater (also known as the Kirov Theater in the USSR ), home to the Mariinsky Ballet company and opera. Leading ballet dancers, such as Vaslav Nijinsky, Anna Pavlova, Rudolph Nureyev, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Galina Ulanova and Natalia Makarova, were principal stars of the Mariinsky ballet.
Dmitri Shostakovich was born and brought up in Saint Petersburg, and dedicated his Seventh Symphony to the city, calling it the "Leningrad Symphony." He wrote the symphony while in Leningrad during the German siege. The 7th symphony was premiered in 1942; its performance in the besieged Leningrad at the Bolshoy Philharmonic Hall under the baton of conductor Karl Eliasberg was heard over the radio and lifted the spirits of the survivors. In 1992 a reunion performance of the 7th Symphony by the (then) 14 survivors was played in the same hall as they done half a century ago. The Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra remained one of the best known symphony orchestras in the world under the leadership of conductors Yevgeny Mravinsky and Yuri Temirkanov.
The Imperial Choral Capella was founded and modeled after the royal courts of other European capitals.
Saint Petersburg has been home to the newest movements in popular music in the country. The first jazz band in the Soviet Union was founded here by Leonid Utyosov in the 1920s, under the patronage of Isaak Dunayevsky. The first jazz club in the Soviet Union was founded here in the 1950s, and later was named jazz club Kvadrat. In 1956 the popular ensemble Druzhba was founded by Aleksandr Bronevitsky and Edita Piekha, becoming the first popular band in the 1950s USSR. In the 1960s student rock-groups Argonavty, Kochevniki and others pioneered a series of unofficial and underground rock concerts and festivals. In 1972 Boris Grebenshchikov founded the band Aquarium, that later grew to huge popularity. Since then "Peter's rock" music style was formed.
In the 1970s many bands came out from "underground" and eventually founded the Leningrad rock club which has been providing stage to such bands as Piknik, DDT, Kino, headed by the legendary Viktor Tsoi, Igry, Mify, Zemlyane, Alisa and many other popular groups. The first Russian-style happening show Pop mekhanika, mixing over 300 people and animals on stage, was directed by the multi-talented Sergey Kuryokhin in the 1980s.
Today's Saint Petersburg boasts many notable musicians of various genres, from popular Leningrad's Sergei Shnurov and Tequilajazzz, to rock veterans Yuri Shevchuk, Vyacheslav Butusov and Mikhail Boyarsky.
The White Nights Festival in Saint Petersburg is famous for spectacular fireworks and massive show celebrating the end of school year.
Over 250 international and Russian movies were filmed in Saint Petersburg. International Movie Database Well over a thousand feature films about tsars, revolution, people and stories set in Saint Petersburg were produced worldwide, but were not filmed in the city. First film studios were founded in Saint Petersburg in the 1900s, and since the 1920s Lenfilm has been the largest film studio based in Saint Petersburg. The first foreign feature movie filmed entirely in Saint Petersburg was the 1997 production of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, starring Sophie Marceau and Sean Bean, and made by international team of British, American, French and Russian filmmakers.
The cult comedy Irony of Fate (also ÐÑÐ¾Ð½Ð¸Ñ ÑÑдÑбÑ, или С лÑгким паÑом!) is set in Saint Petersburg and pokes fun at Soviet city planning. The 1985 film White Nights received considerable Western attention for having captured genuine Leningrad street scenes at a time when filming in the Soviet Union by Western production companies was generally unheard of. Other movies include GoldenEye (1995), Midnight in Saint Petersburg (1996), and Brother (1997). Onegin (1999) is based on the Pushkin poem and showcases many tourist attractions. In addition, the Russian romantic comedy, ÐиÑÐµÑ FM, showcases the cityscape significantly, almost as if it was a main character in the film.
Several international film festivals are held annually, such as the Festival of Festivals, St. Petersburg, as well as the Message to Man International Documentary Film Festival, since its inauguration in 1988 during the White Nights.
Saint Petersburg has a longstanding and world famous tradition in literature. Dostoyevsky called it âThe most abstract and intentional city in the world," emphasizing its artificiality, but it was also a symbol of modern disorder in a changing Russia. It frequently appeared to Russian writers as a menacing and inhuman mechanism. The grotesque and often nightmarish image of the city is featured in Pushkin's last poems, the Petersburg stories of Gogol, the novels of Dostoyevsky, the verse of Alexander Blok and Osip Mandelshtam, and in the symbolist novel Petersburg by Andrey Bely. According to Lotman in his chapter, 'The Symbolism of Saint Petersburg' in Universe and the Mind, these writers were inspired from symbolism from within the city itself. The effect of life in Saint Petersburg on the plight of the poor clerk in a society obsessed with hierarchy and status also became an important theme for authors such as Pushkin, Gogol, and Dostoyevsky. Another important feature of early Saint Petersburg literature is its mythical element, which incorporates urban legends and popular ghost stories, as the stories of Pushkin and Gogol included ghosts returning to Saint Petersburg to haunt other characters as well as other fantastical elements, creating a surreal and abstract image of Saint Petersburg.
Twentieth century writers from Saint Petersburg, such as Vladimir Nabokov, Ayn Rand, Andrey Bely and Yevgeny Zamyatin, along with his apprentices, The Serapion Brothers, created entire new styles in literature and contributed new insights to the understanding of society through their experience in this city. Anna Akhmatova became an important leader for Russian poetry. Her poem Requiem focuses on the tragedies of living during the time of the Stalinist terror. Another notable 20th century writer from Saint Petersburg is Joseph Brodsky, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1987). While living in the United States, his writings in English reflected on life in Saint Petersburg from the unique perspective of being both an insider and an outsider to the city in essays such as, "A Guide to a Renamed City" and the nostalgic "In a Room and a Half". Joseph Brodsky. Less Than One: Selected Essays, 1986
FC Zenit's home Petrovsky stadium
Leningrad hosted part of the football tournament during the 1980 Summer Olympics. The 1994 Goodwill Games were held here.
The first competition here was the 1703 rowing event initiated by Peter the Great, after the victory over the Swedish fleet. Yachting events were held by the Russian Navy since the foundation of the city. Yacht clubs: St. Petersburg River Yacht Club, Neva Yacht Club, the latter is the oldest yacht club in the world. In the winter, when the sea and lake surfaces are frozen and yachts and dinghies cannot be used, local people sail on ice boats.
Equestrianism has been a long tradition, popular among the Tsars and aristocracy, as well as part of the military training. Several historic sports arenas were built for Equestrianism since the 18th century, to maintain training all year round, such as the Zimny Stadion and Konnogvardeisky Manezh among others.
Chess tradition was highlighted by the 1914 international tournament, in which the title "Grandmaster" was first formally conferred by Russian Tsar Nicholas II to five players: Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine, Tarrasch and Marshall, and which the Tsar had partially funded.
Kirov Stadium (now demolished) was one of the largest stadiums anywhere in the world, and the home to FC Zenit St. Petersburg in 1950-1993 and 1995. In 1951 the attendance of 110,000 set the record for the Soviet football. In 2007 Zenit became champions of the Russian Premier League, won the UEFA Cup 2007â08 season and the 2008 UEFA Supercup. Zenit now plays their home games at Petrovsky Stadium.
As of 2006/2007 there were 1024 kindergartens, 716 public schools and 80 vocational schools in Saint Petersburg. SPB.ru The largest of the higher education institutions are Saint Petersburg State University, enrolling approximately 32,000 undergraduate students, Saint Petersburg Polytechnical University and Herzen University. However, the universities are all federal property and don't belong to the city.
*List of consulates in Saint Petersburg
*List of museums in Saint Petersburg
*List of notable people from Saint Petersburg
*List of Saint Petersburg sister cities
*Amery, Colin, Brian Curran & Yuri Molodkovets. St. Petersburg. London: Frances Lincoln, 2006. ISBN 0711224927.
*Bater, James H. St. Petersburg: Industrialization and Change. Montreal: McGuill-Queenâs University Press, 1976. ISBN 0773502661.
*Berelowitch, Wladimir & Olga Medvedkova. Histoire de Saint-Pétersbourg. Paris: Fayard, 1996. ISBN 2213596018.
*Buckler, Julie. Mapping St. Petersburg: Imperial Text and Cityshape. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005 ISBN0691113491.
*Clark, Katerina, Petersburg, Crucible of Revolution. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995.
*Cross, Anthony (ed.). St. Petersburg, 1703-1825. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. ISBN 1403915709.
*George, Arthur L. & Elena George. St. Petersburg: Russia's Window to the Future, The First Three Centuries. Lanham: Taylor Trade Publishing, 2003. ISBN 1589790170.
*Glantz, David M. The Battle for Leningrad, 1941-1944. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002. ISBN 0700612084.
*Hellberg-Hirn, Elena. Imperial Imprints: Post-Soviet St. Petersburg. Helsinki: SKS Finnish Literature Society, 2003. ISBN 9517464916.
*Knopf Guide: Sat. Petersburg. New York: Knopf, 1995. ISBN 0679762027.
*Eyewitness Guide: St. Petersburg.
*Lincoln, W. Bruce. Sunlight at Midnight: St. Petersburg and the Rise of Modern Russia. New York: Basic Books, 2000. ISBN 0465083234.
*Orttung, Robert W. From Leningrad to St. Petersburg: Democratization in a Russian City. New York: St. Martinâs, 1995. ISBN 0312175612.
*Ruble, Blair A. Leningrad: Shaping a Soviet City. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. ISBN 0877723478.
*Shvidkovsky, Dmitry O. & Alexander Orloff. St. Petersburg: Architecture of the Tsars. New York: Abbeville Press, 1996. ISBN 0789202174.
*Volkov, Solomon. St. Petersburg: A Cultural History. New York: Free Press, 1995. ISBN 0028740521.
*St. Petersburg:Architecture of the Tsars. 360 pages. Abbeville Press, 1996. ISBN 0789202174
*Saint Petersburg: Museums, Palaces, and Historic Collections: A Guide to the Lesser Known Treasures of St. Petersburg. 2003. ISBN 1593730004.
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* Official presentation of Saint Petersburg
* Official Portal of the City Government: Saint Petersburg
* Encyclopaedia of Saint Petersburg
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* Saint Petersburg in 1900
* Saint Petersburg, entry in the World Monuments Fund's 2008 watchlist
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Saint_Petersburg | How to travel to work from the city to Moscow? | railway | data/set3/a10 | Saint_Petersburg
Saint Petersburg ( , ) is a city and a federal subject (a federal city) of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The city's other names were Petrograd ( , 1914â1924) and Leningrad ( , 1924â1991). It is often called just Petersburg ( ) and is informally known as Piter ( ).
Founded by Tsar Peter I of Russia on 27 May 1703, it was the capital of the Russian Empire for more than two hundred years (1713â1728, 1732â1918). Saint Petersburg ceased being the capital in 1918 after the Russian Revolution of 1917. Nicholas and Alexandra: An Intimate Account of the Last of the Romanovs and the Fall of Imperial Russia (Athenum, 1967) by Robert K. Massie, ASIN B000CGP8M2 (also, Ballantine Books, 2000, ISBN 0-345-43831-0 and Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, 2005, ISBN 1-57912-433-X) It is Russia's second largest city after Moscow with 4.6 million inhabitants, and over 6 million people live in its vicinity. Saint Petersburg is a major European cultural centre, and an important Russian port on the Baltic Sea.
Saint Petersburg is often described as the most Western city of Russia. V. Morozov. The Discourses of Saint Petersburg and the Shaping of a Wider Europe. Copenhagen Peace Research Institute. 2002. Ciaonet.org Among cities of the world with over one million people, Saint Petersburg is the northernmost. The Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments constitute a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Saint Petersburg is also home to The Hermitage, the largest art museum in the world. /ref> Russia's political and cultural centre for 200 years, the city is sometimes referred to in Russia as the northern capital. A large number of foreign consulates, international corporations, banks and other businesses are located in Saint Petersburg.
On 1 May 1703 (Julian calendar), during the Great Northern War, Peter the Great captured the Swedish fortress of Nyenskans on the Neva river in Ingria. A few weeks later, on 27 May 1703 (May 16, Old Style), lower on the river, on Zayachy (Hare) Island, three miles (5 km) inland from the gulf, he laid down the Peter and Paul Fortress, which became the first brick and stone building of the new city. He named the city after his patron saint, Saint Peter, the apostle. The original name was meant to sound like Dutch due to Peter's obsession with the Dutch culture. Peter the Great: His Life and World (Knopf, 1980) by Robert K. Massie, ISBN 0-394-50032-6
The city was built by conscripted serfs from all over Russia and also by Swedish prisoners of war under the supervision of Alexander Menshikov and later became the centre of Saint Petersburg Governorate. Peter moved the capital from Moscow to Saint Petersburg in 1712, before the Treaty of Nystad of 1721 ended the war.
The Bronze Horseman, monument to Peter the Great.
Palace Square, as the main square of the Russian Empire it was the setting of many events of great historical significance
Lenin statue outside the Finland station. Between 1924 and 1991 the city was known as Leningrad.
Map of Saint Petersburg, 1903.
Church of the Savior on Blood.
During the first few years of its existence the city grew spontaneously around Trinity Square on the right bank of the Neva, near the Peter and Paul Fortress. However, Saint Petersburg soon started to develop according to a plan. By 1716 Domenico Trezzini had elaborated a project whereby the city centre would be located on Vasilievsky Island and shaped by a rectangular grid of canals. The project was not completed, but is still evident in the layout of the streets. In 1716 Jean-Baptiste Alexandre Le Blond was appointed chief architect of Saint Petersburg by Peter the Great.
The style of Petrine Baroque, developed by Trezzini and other architects and exemplified by such buildings as the Menshikov Palace, Kunstkamera, Peter and Paul Cathedral, Twelve Collegia, became prominent in the city architecture of the early 18th century. In 1724 the Academy of Sciences, University and Academic Gymnasium were established in Saint Petersburg by Peter the Great.
However, in 1725 Peter died. His near-lifelong autocratic push for modernisation of Russia had met with considerable opposition from the old-fashioned Russian nobility â resulting in several attempts on his life and a treason case involving his own son. Matthew S. Anderson, Peter the Great (London: Thames and Hudson, 1978) Thus, in 1728, Peter II of Russia moved his seat back to Moscow. But four years later, in 1732, under Empress Anna of Russia, Saint Petersburg again became the capital of the Russian Empire and remained the seat of the government for 186 years.
In 1736-1737 the city suffered from catastrophic fires. In order to rebuild the damaged boroughs, in 1737 a new plan was commissioned by a committee under Burkhard Christoph von Munnich. The city was divided into five boroughs, and the city centre was moved to the Admiralty borough, situated on the east bank between the Neva and Fontanka.
It developed along three radial streets, which meet at the Admiralty and are now known as Nevsky Prospekt (which is now perceived as the main street of the city), Gorokhovaya Street and Voznesensky Prospekt. The style of Baroque dominated the city architecture during the first sixty years, culminating in the Elizabethan Baroque, represented most notably by Bartolomeo Rastrelli with such buildings as the Winter Palace. In the 1760s the Baroque architecture was succeeded by the neoclassical architecture.
The Commission of Stone Buildings of Moscow and Saint Petersburg established in 1762 ruled that no structure in the city be higher than the Winter Palace and prohibited spacing between buildings. During the reign of Catherine the Great in the 1760s-1780s the banks of the Neva were lined with granite embankments.
However, it wasn't until 1850 that it was allowed to open the first permanent bridge across the Neva, Blagoveshchensky Bridge. Before that, only pontoon bridges were allowed. Obvodny Canal (dug in 1769-1833) became the southern limit of the city.
Some of the most important neoclassical architects in Saint Petersburg (including those working within the Empire style) were Jean-Baptiste Vallin de la Mothe (Imperial Academy of Arts, Small Hermitage, Gostiny Dvor, New Holland Arch, Catholic Church of St. Catherine), Antonio Rinaldi (Marble Palace), Yury Felten (Old Hermitage, Chesme Church), Giacomo Quarenghi (Academy of Sciences, Hermitage Theatre, Yusupov Palace), Andrey Voronikhin (Mining Institute, Kazan Cathedral), Andreyan Zakharov (Admiralty building), Jean-François Thomas de Thomon (Spit of Vasilievsky Island), Carlo Rossi (Yelagin Palace, Mikhailovsky Palace, Alexandrine Theatre, Senate and Synod Buildings, General Staff Building, design of many streets and squares), Vasily Stasov (Moscow Triumphal Gate, Trinity Cathedral), Auguste de Montferrand (Saint Isaac's Cathedral, Alexander Column). The victory over Napoleonic France in the Patriotic War of 1812 was commemorated with many monuments, including Alexander Column by Montferrand, erected in 1834, and Narva Triumphal Gate.
In 1825 the suppressed Decembrist revolt against Nicholas I of Russia took place on the Senate Square in the city, a day after he assumed the throne.
By the 1840s the neoclassical architecture had given place to various romanticist styles, which were dominant until the 1890s, represented by such architects as Andrei Stackenschneider (Mariinsky Palace, Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace, Nicholas Palace, New Michael Palace) and Konstantin Thon (Moskovsky Rail Terminal). The Church of the Savior on Blood designed in the Russian revival style commemorated the place where Alexander II of Russia was assassinated in 1881.
With the emancipation of the serfs undertaken by Alexander II in 1861 and the industrial revolution the influx of former peasants into the capital increased greatly. Poor boroughs spontaneously emerged on the outskirts of the city. Saint Petersburg surpassed Moscow in population and industrial growth and grew into one of the largest industrial hubs and cities in Europe.
The Revolution of 1905 began in Saint Petersburg and spread rapidly into the provinces. With the start of World War I, the name Saint Petersburg was perceived to be too German, so in 1914 the city was renamed Petrograd. The Romanovs: The Final Chapter (Random House, 1995) by Robert K. Massie, ISBN 0-394-58048-6 and ISBN 0-679-43572-7 In 1917 the February Revolution, which put an end to the Russian monarchy, and the October Revolution, which ultimately brought Vladimir Lenin to power, broke out in Petrograd. Rex A. Wade The Russian Revolution, 1917 2005 Cambridge University Press ISBN 0521841550 The city's proximity to the border and anti-Soviet armies forced the Bolsheviks under Lenin to transfer the capital to Moscow on March 12, 1918.
In 1919 during the ensuing Russian Civil War Nikolay Yudenich advancing from Estonia was about to capture the city from the Bolsheviks, but Leon Trotsky ultimately managed to mobilise the population and make him retreat. Many people fled the city in 1917-1920 or were repressed in the Red Terror, Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe. By Robert Gellately, 2007, Random House, 720 pages. ISBN 1400040051 so its population decreased dramatically. On January 26, 1924, three days after Lenin's death, Petrograd was renamed Leningrad. For decades Leningrad was glorified by the Soviet propaganda as "the cradle of the revolution" and "the city of three revolutions", many spots related to Lenin and the revolutions, such as the cruiser Aurora, were carefully preserved. Many streets and other toponyms were renamed accordingly.
In the 1920s-1930s the poor outskirts were reconstructed into regularly planned boroughs. The constructivist architecture flourished around that time. The Soviets nationalised housing and forced many residents to share communal apartments (kommunalkas). With 68% living in shared apartments in the 1930s, Leningrad was the city with the largest number of kommunalkas. In 1935 a new general plan was outlined, whereby the city should expand to the south and its centre should move there. The constructivism was rejected in favor of the pompous Stalinist architecture. Stalin ordered the construction of the new city hall on Moskovsky Prospect thus making it the new main street of Leningrad during the Soviet rule.
Since December 1931 Leningrad has been administratively separate from Leningrad Oblast. At that time it included Leningrad Suburban District, some parts of which were transferred back to Leningrad Oblast in 1936 and turned into Vsevolozhsky District, Krasnoselsky District, Pargolovsky District and Slutsky District (renamed Pavlovsky District in 1944).
On December 1, 1934, Sergey Kirov, popular communist leader of Leningrad, was assassinated, which was used to start the Great Purge. Stalin's Terror: High Politics and Mass Repression in the Soviet Union by Barry McLoughlin and Kevin McDermott (eds). Palgrave Macmillan, 2002, p. 6 The sizeable minorities of Germans, Poles, Finns, Estonians and Latvians were almost completely expelled from Leningrad by the Soviet government during the 1930s. Martin, Terry (1998). The Origins of Soviet Ethnic Cleansing. The Journal of Modern History 70.4, 813-861.
During World War II, Leningrad was besieged by Nazi Germany and co-belligerent Finland. Siege of Leningrad. Encyclopædia Britannica The siege lasted 872 days from September 1941 to January 1944. Baldack, Richard H. "Leningrad, Siege of" World Book Encyclopedia, Chicago, 2002, vol.12, page 195 The Siege of Leningrad was one of the longest, most destructive, and most lethal sieges of major cities in modern history. It isolated the city from most supplies except those provided through the Road of Life across Lake Ladoga, and more than a million civilians died, mainly from starvation. Many others were eventually evacuated or escaped by themselves, so the city became largely depopulated. For the heroic resistance of the city and tenacity of the survivors of the Siege, in 1945 Leningrad became the first city in the Soviet Union awarded the title Hero City. In October 1946 some former Finnish territories along the northern coast of the Gulf of Finland captured in the Winter War and Continuation War were transferred from Leningrad Oblast to Leningrad and divided into Sestroretsky District and Kurortny District, including the town of Terijoki (renamed Zelenogorsk in 1948).
Leningrad and many of its suburbs were rebuilt over the post-war decades, partially according to the pre-war plans. The 1948 general plan of Leningrad featured radial urban development in the north as well as in the south. The Leningrad Metro, underground rapid transit system which was designed before the war in the 1930s, was opened in 1955 with its first seven stations decorated with marble and bronze. Meanwhile, in 1949-1951 a large number of prominent Leningrad members of the Communist Party and their families were charged with treason and intention to create an anti-Soviet organization out of their local party cell. Many were imprisoned or executed in the Leningrad Affair fabricated by the central Soviet leadership. Dmitri Volkogonov. Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy, 1996, ISBN 0761507183 Russian publication: ÐенингÑадÑкое дело â надо ли ÑÑавиÑÑ ÐºÐ°Ð²ÑÑки?: Contr-tv.ru
In 1953 Pavlovsky District of Leningrad Oblast was abolished, and parts of its territory including Pavlovsk merged with Leningrad. In 1954 the settlements Levashovo, Pargolovo and Pesochny merged with Leningrad.
After the death of Stalin the perceived ornamental excesses of the Stalinist architecture were abandoned. In the 1960s-1980s, as many new residential boroughs were built on the outskirts with few series of functionalist apartment blocks identical to each other, many families moved there from kommunalkas in the city centre in order to live in separate apartments. Uritsk was re-named Ligovo and merged with Leningrad in 1963, Lomonosov merged in 1978.
On June 12, 1991, in a referendum held on the same day as the first Russian presidential election, 54% of voters chose to restore the name "Saint Petersburg" (the change officially took effect on September 6, 1991). Many other Soviet-era toponyms in the city were also renamed soon afterwards. In the same election Anatoly Sobchak became the first democratically elected mayor of the city. Jack F. Matlock, Jr., Autopsy on an Empire: The American Ambassador's Account of the Collapse of the Soviet Union, Random House, 1995, ISBN 0679413766
By the end of 1991 the deteriorating planned economy of the collapsing Soviet Union had put the city on the verge of starvation. For the first time since World War II food rationing was introduced, and the city received humanitarian food aid from abroad. The city somewhat recovered with the market reforms in Russia. In 1995-2004 a northern section of the Metro's Kirovsko-Vyborgskaya Line was cut off by underground flooding, which was a major obstacle to the city development.
In 1996, Vladimir Yakovlev was elected as head of the Saint Petersburg City Administration. The title of the city head was changed in advance from "mayor" to "governor". In 2003, Yakovlev resigned a year before his second term expired. Valentina Matviyenko was elected governor. In 2006 she was reapproved as governor by the city legislature. The residential building had intensified again, real estate prices inflated greatly, and this situation causes many new problems for the historical part of the city.
In spite of the fact that the central part of the city is watched by UNESCO, the safety of its historical and architectural environment is in danger. Sergey Zagraevsky. Will Saint Petersburg share the same fate as Moscow? Zagraevsky.com There are still about 8000 architectural monuments in Saint Petersburg, but since 2005 the destruction of older buildings in the historical centre has continued. A number of new building projects are underway, including the Gazprom skyscraper in Okhta.
Territory of the federal subject of Saint Petersburg.
The area of Saint Petersburg city proper is . The area of the federal subject is , which contains the Saint Petersburg proper (consisting of 81 okrugs), nine suburban towns (Kolpino, Krasnoye Selo, Kronstadt, Lomonosov, Pavlovsk, Peterhof, Pushkin, Sestroretsk and Zelenogorsk) and 21 municipal settlements.
Saint Petersburg is situated on the middle taiga lowlands along the shores of the Neva Bay of the Gulf of Finland, and islands of the river delta. The largest are Vasilyevsky island (besides the artificial island between Obvodny canal and Fontanka, and Kotlin in the Neva Bay), Petrogradsky, Dekabristov and Krestovsky. The latter together with Yelagin and Kamenny island are covered mostly by parks. The Karelian Isthmus, North of the city, is a popular resort area. In the south Saint Petersburg crosses the Baltic-Ladoga Klint and meets the Izhora Plateau.
The elevation of Saint Petersburg ranges from the sea level to its highest point of at the Orekhovaya Hill in the Duderhof Heights in the south. Part of the city's territory west of Liteyny Prospekt is no higher than above sea level, and has suffered from numerous floods. Floods in Saint Petersburg are triggered by a long wave in the Baltic Sea, caused by meteorological conditions, winds and shallowness of the Neva Bay. The four most disastrous floods occurred in 1824 ( above sea-level, during which over 300 buildings were destroyed The level of flooding is measured near Saint Petersburg Mining Institute, which is normally a.s.l. ), 1924 , 1777 , 1955 and 1975 . To prevent floods, the Saint Petersburg Dam has been under construction since 1979. ÐежиÑ
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Since the 18th century the terrain in the city has been raised artificially, at some places by more than , making mergers of several islands, and changing the hydrology of the city. Besides the Neva and its distributaries, other important rivers of the federal subject of Saint Petersburg are Sestra, Okhta and Izhora. The largest lake is Sestroretsky Razliv in the north, followed by Lakhtinsky Razliv, Suzdal Lakes and other smaller lakes.
Saint Petersburg's position on the latitude of ca. 60° N causes variation in day length across seasons, ranging from 5:53 to 18:50. Twilight may last all night in early summer, from mid-May to mid-July, the celebrated phenomenon known as the white nights.
Snow falling on the morning of May 14, 2008 at Srednyaya Rogatka (district in the south of St. Petersburg)
Saint Petersburg experiences a humid continental climate of the cool summer subtype (Köppen: Dfb), due to the distinct moderating influence of the Baltic Sea cyclones, with warm, humid and short summers and long, cold winters.
The average daily temperature in July is ; summer maximum is about , winter minimum is about . The record low temperature is , recorded in 1883. The average annual temperature is . The River Neva within the city limits usually freezes up in November-December, break-up occurs in April. From December to March there are 123 days average with snow cover, which reaches the average of by February. The frost-free period in the city lasts on average for about 135 days. The city has a climate slightly warmer than its suburbs. Weather conditions are quite variable all year round. See Historical weather records for Saint Petersburg (since 1932) and Historical weather in Saint Petersburg for further information.
Average annual precipitation varies across the city, averaging per year and reaching maximum in late summer. Soil moisture is almost always high because of lower evapotranspiration due to the cool climate. Air humidity is 78% on average, while overcast is 165 days a year on average.
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Saint Petersburg is the second largest city in Russia. The 2002 census recorded a population of the federal subject of 4,661,219, or 3.21% of the total population of Russia. The 2002 census recorded twenty-two ethnic groups of more than two thousand persons each. The ethnic composition was: Russian 84.72%, Ukrainian 1.87%, Belarusians 1.17%, Jewish 0.78%, Tatar 0.76%, Armenian 0.41%, Azeri 0.36%, Georgian 0.22%, Chuvash 0.13%, Polish 0.10%, and many other smaller ethnic groups, while 7.89% of the inhabitants declined to state their ethnicity.
The 20th century saw hectic ups and downs in population. From 2.4 million in 1916 it had dropped to less than 740,000 by 1920 during the Russian Revolution of 1917 and Russian Civil War. The sizeable minorities of Germans, Poles, Finns, Estonians and Latvians were almost completely expelled from Leningrad by the Soviet government during the 1930s. From 1941 to the end of 1943, population dropped from 3 million to less than 700,000, as people died in battles, starved to death during the Siege of Leningrad, or were evacuated. After the siege, some of the evacuees returned, but most influx was due to migration from other parts of the Soviet Union. The city absorbed about 3 million people in the 1950s and grew to over 5 million in the 1980s. From 1991 to 2006 the city's population decreased to the current 4.6 million, while the suburban population increased due to privatization of land and massive move to suburbs. ЧиÑÑÑкова Ð. ТÑеÑÑе ÑокÑаÑение ÑиÑленноÑÑи наÑелениÑ... и поÑледнее? ÐемоÑкоп Weekly 163 â 164, August 1â15, 2004. Russian source: "Encyclopedia of Saint Petersburg" ЧиÑÑÑков Ð. Ю. ÐаÑеление (обзоÑÐ½Ð°Ñ ÑÑаÑÑÑ). ÐнÑÐ¸ÐºÐ»Ð¾Ð¿ÐµÐ´Ð¸Ñ Ð¡Ð°Ð½ÐºÑ-ÐеÑеÑбÑÑга The birth rate remains lower than the death rate; people over 65 constitute more than twenty percent of the population; and the median age is about 40 years. Russian statistics ÐÑновнÑе показаÑели ÑоÑиалÑно-демогÑаÑиÑеÑкой ÑиÑÑаÑии в СанкÑ-ÐеÑеÑбÑÑге
People in urban Saint Petersburg live mostly in apartments. Between 1918 and the 1990s, the Soviets nationalised housing and forced residents to share communal apartments (kommunalkas). With 68% living in shared flats in the 1930s, Leningrad was the city in the USSR with the largest number of kommunalkas. Resettling residents of kommunalkas is now on the way out, albeit shared apartments are still not uncommon. As new boroughs were built on the outskirts in the 1950s-1980s, over half a million low income families eventually received free apartments, and about an additional hundred thousand condos were purchased. While economic and social activity is concentrated in the historic city centre, the richest part of Saint Petersburg, most people live in commuter areas. For the first half of 2007, the birth rate was 9.1 per 1000.
Smolny Institute, the seat of the governor.
Saint Petersburg is a federal subject of Russia. The political life of Saint Petersburg is regulated by the city charter adopted by the city legislature in 1998. The superior executive body is the Saint Petersburg City Administration, led by the governor (mayor before 1996). Saint Petersburg has a single-chamber legislature, the Saint Petersburg Legislative Assembly.
According to the federal law passed in 2004, heads of federal subjects, including the governor of Saint Petersburg, are nominated by the President of Russia and approved by local legislatures. If the legislature disapproves the nominee, it is dissolved. The current governor, Valentina Matviyenko, was approved according to the new system in December 2006. She is currently the only woman governor in the whole of Russia.
Saint Petersburg city is currently divided into eighteen districts. Saint Petersburg is also the administrative centre of Leningrad Oblast, and of the Northwestern Federal District. The Constitutional Court of Russia moved to Saint Petersburg from Moscow in May 2008.
Saint Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast, being two different federal subjects, share a number of local departments of federal executive agencies and courts, such as court of arbitration, police, FSB, postal service, drug enforcement administration, penitentiary service, federal registration service, and other federal services.
The Old Saint Petersburg Stock Exchange, or Bourse, houses the Central Naval Museum
Saint Petersburg is a major trade gateway, financial and industrial centre of Russia specialising in oil and gas trade, shipbuilding yards, aerospace industry, radio and electronics, software and computers; machine building, heavy machinery and transport, including tanks and other military equipment, mining, instrument manufacture, ferrous and nonferrous metallurgy (production of aluminium alloys), chemicals, pharmaceuticals, medical equipment, publishing and printing, food and catering, wholesale and retail, textile and apparel industries, and many other businesses. It was also home to Lessner, one of Russia's two pioneering automobile manufacturers (along with Russo-Baltic), Lessner; founded by machine tool and boiler maker G. A. Lessner in 1904, with designs by Boris Loutsky, it survived until 1910. Georgano, G. N. Cars: Early and Vintage, 1886-1930. (London: Grange-Universal, 1985)
10% of the world's power turbines are made there at the LMZ, which built over two thousand turbines for power plants across the world. Major local industries are Admiralty Shipyard, Baltic Shipyard, LOMO, Kirov Plant, Elektrosila, Izhorsky Zavod; also registered in Saint Petersburg are Sovkomflot, Petersburg Fuel Company and SIBUR among other major Russian and international companies.
The Saint Petersburg docks at dawn.
Saint Petersburg has three large cargo seaports: Bolshoi Port Saint Petersburg, Kronstadt, and Lomonosov. International cruise liners have been served at the passenger port at Morskoy Vokzal on the south-west of Vasilevsky Island. In 2008 the first two berths were opened at the New Passenger Port on the west of the island. Discoverthebaltic.com Discover the Baltic online guide to Baltic cruise ports The new port is part of the city's "Marine Facade" development project Mfspb.ru St Petersburg "Marine Facade" development project and is due to have seven berths in operation by 2010.
A complex system of riverports on both banks of the Neva river are interconnected with the system of seaports, thus making Saint Petersburg the main link between the Baltic sea and the rest of Russia through the Volga-Baltic Waterway.
The Saint Petersburg Mint (Monetny Dvor), founded in 1724, is one of the largest mints in the world, it mints Russian coins, medals and badges. Saint Petersburg is also home to the oldest and largest Russian foundry, Monumentskulptura, which made thousands of sculptures and statues that are now gracing public parks of Saint Petersburg, as well as many other cities. Monuments and bronze statues of the Czars, as well as other important historic figures and dignitaries, and other world famous monuments, such as the sculptures by Peter Clodt von Jürgensburg, Paolo Troubetzkoy, Pavel Antokolsky, and others, were made there.
In 2007 Toyota opened a Camry plant after investing 5 billion dollars in Shushary, one of the southern suburbs of Saint Petersburg. General Motors, Hyundai and Nissan have signed deals with the Russian government to build their automotive plants in Saint Petersburg too. Automotive and auto-parts industry is on the rise there during the last decade. Saint Petersburg is also known as the "beer capital" of Russia, due to the supply and quality of local water, contributing over 30% of the domestic production of beer with its five large-scale breweries including Europe's second largest brewery Baltika, Vena (both operated by BBH), Heineken Brewery, Stepan Razin (both by Heineken) and Tinkoff brewery (SUN-InBev). Saint Petersburg has the second largest construction industry in Russia, including commercial, housing and road construction.
In 2006 Saint Petersburg's city budget was 179,9 billion rubles, and is planned to double by 2012. The federal subject's gross regional product as of 2005 was 667,905.4 million Russian rubles, ranked 4th in Russia, after Moscow, Tyumen Oblast, and Moscow Oblast, or 145,503.3 rubles per capita, ranked 12th among Russia's federal subjects, contributed mostly by wholesale and retail trade and repair services (24.7%) as well as processing industry (20.9%) and transportation and telecommunications (15.1%).
The Kresty prison.
Russia historically had a high level of crime that increased significantly after the October revolution. Edward Hallett Carr The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1923, 1985 ISBN 0393301990 Google preview Perestroika-time turmoils saw additional increase of the crime level.
Saint Petersburg experiences significant levels of street crime and bribery. In addition, in recent years there has been a notable increase in racially motivated violence, especially towards tourists and foreign students. One of the well known white supremacist groups Belaya Energia (White Energy, originally comes from White Power), has reportedly been one of the main gangs involved in murdering foreign university students. Russia: Racist Attacks Plague St. Petersburg Radio Free Europe September 30, 2005
At the end of the 1980s â beginning of the 1990s, Leningrad became home to a number of organised criminal groups as Tambov Gang, Malyshev Gang, Kazan Gang and ethnic criminal groups, engaged in a racket, extortion, paying off local government, and violent clashes with each other. Russian Mafia Shakes Down the Country by Steven R. Van Hook, Santa Barbara News-Press, November 20, 1994
In 2008, a car bomb killed three people (including a four-year old child), and injured one.
After the assassinations of City Property Committee Chairman and vice-Governor Mikhail Manevich(1997), State Duma deputy Galina Starovoytova (1998), acting City Legislature Speaker Viktor Novosyolov (1999) and a number of prominent businesspeople, Saint Petersburg was dubbed Capital of Crime in the Russian press. Trumbull, Nathaniel S. (2003) The impacts of globalization on Saint Petersburg: A secondary world city in from the cold? The Annals of Regional Science 37:533â546 Powell, Bill & Brian Whitmore. The Capital Of Crime.(Saint Petersburg, Russia). Newsweek International, May 15, 2000. There were a number of movies filmed in Saint Petersburg about the life of crime; , Brother (1997) reinforcing its image as the Crime Capital of Russia.
One of the oldest and most infamous remand facilities in Saint Petersburg, Kresty prison is located near downtown.
However, crime rates in St. Petersburg have declined since the end of the 1990s; the aforementioned criminal gangs have mostly dispersed. Even the Kresty prison is no longer in use, as more modern penal institutions are being built farther from the city centre.
The decoration of Saint Petersburg Metro (Kirovsky Zavod Station).
Saint Petersburg is a major transport hub. The first Russian railway was built here, in 1837. Today, the city is the final destination of a web of intercity and suburban railways, served by five different railway terminals (Baltiysky, Finlyandsky, Ladozhsky, Moskovsky, and Vitebsky), Until 2001, the Varshavsky Rail Terminal served as a major station; it now is a railway museum. Reconstruction of the Warsaw Railway Station as well as dozens of non-terminal railway stations within the federal subject. Saint Petersburg has international railway connections to Helsinki, Finland, Berlin, Germany, and all former republics of the USSR. The Helsinki railway was built in 1870, , commutes three times a day, in a journey lasting about five and a half hours. The Moscow-Saint Petersburg Railway opened in 1851, ; the commute to Moscow now requires about four and a half to nine hours. Saint Petersburg is also served by Pulkovo International Airport, Rossiya (Pulkovo): Pulkovo Aviation Enterprise and by three smaller commercial and cargo airports in the suburbs. There is a regular, 24/7, rapid-bus transit connection between Pulkovo airport and the city centre.
The city is also served by the passenger and cargo seaports in the Neva Bay of the Gulf of Finland, Baltic Sea, the river port higher up the Neva, and tens of smaller passenger stations on both banks of the Neva river. It is a terminus of the Volga-Baltic and White Sea-Baltic waterways. In 2004 the first high bridge that doesn't need to be drawn, a long Big Obukhovsky Bridge, was opened. Meteor hydrofoils link the city centre to the coastal towns of Kronstadt, Lomonosov, Peterhof, Sestroretsk and Zelenogorsk from May through October.
Pulkovo International Airport.
Saint Petersburg has an extensive city-funded network of public transport (buses, trams, trolleybuses) and several hundred routes served by marshrutkas. Trams in Saint Petersburg used to be the main transport; in the 1980s, Leningrad had the largest tramway network in the world, but many tramway rail tracks were dismantled in the 2000s. Buses carry up to 3 million passengers daily, serving over 250 urban and a number of suburban bus routes. Saint Petersburg Metro underground rapid transit system was opened in 1955; it now has five lines with 63 stations, connecting all five railway terminals, and carrying 3.4 million passengers daily. Metro stations are decorated in marble and bronze.
Traffic jams are common in the city, because of high daily traffic volumes between the commuter boroughs and the city centre, intercity traffic, and at times excessive snow in winter. Five segments of the Saint Petersburg Ring Road were opened between 2002 and 2006, and full ring is planned to open in 2010.
Saint Petersburg is part of the important transport corridor linking Scandinavia to Russia and Eastern Europe. The city is a node of the international European routes E18 towards Helsinki, E20 towards Tallinn, E95 towards Pskov, Kiev and Odessa and E105 towards Petrozavodsk, Murmansk and Kirkenes (north) and towards Moscow and Kharkiv (south).
Kazan Cathedral
Griboyedov Canal
A bridge over the river Neva
As of now, Saint Petersburg has no skyscrapers and a relatively low skyline. Current regulations forbid construction of high buildings in the city centre. The 310 metre tall Saint Petersburg TV Tower is the tallest structure in the city, while the 122.5 m Peter and Paul Cathedral is by far the highest building. However, there is a controversial project endorsed by the city authorities and known as the Ohkta Centre to build a 396 m supertall skyscraper. In 2008 the World Monuments Fund included the Saint Petersburg historic skyline within the watch list of 100 most endangered sites due to the expected construction, which threatens to alter it drastically.
Unlike in Moscow, in Saint Petersburg the historic architecture of the city centre, mostly consisting of Baroque and neoclassical buildings of the 18th and 19th centuries, has been largely preserved, although a number of buildings were demolished after the Bolsheviks' seizure of power, during the Siege of Leningrad and in recent years. The oldest of the remaining building is a wooden house built for Peter I in 1703 on the shore of the Neva near Trinity Square. Since 1991 the Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments in Saint Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast have been listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.
The ensemble of Peter and Paul Fortress with the Peter and Paul Cathedral takes dominant position on Zayachy Island along the right bank of the River Neva. Each noon a cannon fires a blank shot from the fortress. The Saint Petersburg Mosque, the largest mosque in Europe when opened in 1913, is situated on the right bank nearby. The spit of Vasilievsky Island, which splits the river into two largest armlets, the Bolshaya Neva and Malaya Neva, is connected to the northern bank (Petrogradsky Island) via the Exchange Bridge and occupied by the Old Saint Petersburg Stock Exchange and Rostral Columns. The southern coast of Vasilievsky Island along the Bolshaya Neva features some of the city's oldest buildings, dating from the 18th century, including the Kunstkamera, Twelve Collegia, Menshikov Palace and Imperial Academy of Arts. It hosts one of two campuses of Saint Petersburg State University.
On the southern, left bank of the Neva, connected to the spit of Vasilievsky Island via the Palace Bridge, lie the Admiralty Building, the vast Hermitage Museum complex stretching along the Palace Embankment, which includes the baroque Winter Palace, former official residence of Russian emperors, as well as the neoclassical Marble Palace. The Winter Palace faces Palace Square, the city's main square with the Alexander Column.
Nevsky Prospekt, also situated on the left bank of the Neva, is the main avenue in the city. It starts at the Admiralty and runs eastwards next to Palace Square. Nevsky Prospekt crosses the Moika (Green Bridge), Griboyedov Canal (Kazansky Bridge), Garden Street, the Fontanka (Anichkov Bridge), meets Liteyny Prospekt and proceeds to Uprising Square near the Moskovsky railway station, where it meets Ligovsky Prospekt and turns to the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. The Passage, Catholic Church of St. Catherine, Book House (former Singer Manufacturing Company Building in the Art Nouveau style), Grand Hotel Europe, Lutheran Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, Gostiny Dvor, Russian National Library, Alexandrine Theatre behind Mikeshin's statue of Catherine the Great, Kazan Cathedral, Stroganov Palace, Anichkov Palace and Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace are all situated along that avenue.
The Alexander Nevsky Lavra, intended to house the relics of St. Alexander Nevsky, is an important centre of Christian education in Russia. It also contains the Tikhvin Cemetery with graves of many notable Petersburgers.
On the territory between the Neva and Nevsky Prospekt the Church of the Savior on Blood, Mikhailovsky Palace housing the Russian Museum, Field of Mars, St. Michael's Castle, Summer Garden, Tauride Palace, Smolny Institute and Smolny Convent are located.
Many notable landmarks are situated to the west and south of the Admiralty Building, including the Trinity Cathedral, Mariinsky Palace, Hotel Astoria, famous Mariinsky Theatre, New Holland Island, Saint Isaac's Cathedral, the largest in the city, and Decembrists Square with the Bronze Horseman, 18th century equestrian monument to Peter the Great, which is considered among the city's most recognisable symbols.
Other symbols of Saint Petersburg include the weather vane in the shape of a small ship on top of the Admiralty's golden spire and the golden angel on top of the Peter and Paul Cathedral. The Palace Bridge drawn at night is yet another symbol of the city. Every night during the navigation period from April to November, 22 bridges across the Neva and main canals are drawn to let ships pass in and out of the Baltic Sea according to a schedule. Schedule for main drawbridges across the Neva river (Official Russian schedule): Mr-spb.ru It wasn't until 2004 that the first high bridge across the Neva, which doesn't need to be drawn, Big Obukhovsky Bridge, was opened. There are hundreds of smaller bridges in Saint Petersburg spanning across numerous canals and distributaries of the Neva, some of the most important of which are the Moika, Fontanka, Griboyedov Canal, Obvodny Canal, Karpovka and Smolenka. Due to the intricate web of canals, Saint Petersburg is often called Venice of the North. The rivers and canals in the city centre are lined with granite embankments. The embankments and bridges are separated from rivers and canals by granite or cast iron parapets.
Southern suburbs of the city feature former imperial residences, including Peterhof, with majestic fountain cascades and parks, Tsarskoe Selo, with the baroque Catherine Palace and the neoclassical Alexander Palace, and Pavlovsk, which contains a domed palace of Emperor Paul and one of the largest English-style parks in Europe. Some other residences situated nearby and making part of the world heritage site, including a castle and park in Gatchina, actually belong to Leningrad Oblast rather than Saint Petersburg. Another notable suburb is Kronstadt with its 19th century fortifications and naval monuments, occupying the Kotlin Island in the Gulf of Finland.
From XX century end in a city active building and reorganisation of old historical city districts is conducted.
The authorities are compelled to transfer control of private residences in city centre to private lessors.
Also sealing building and a superstructure of buildings is spent by penthouses.
Some of these structures, such as the Saint Petersburg Commodity and Stock Exchange" have been recognised as town-planning errors.
Interior of the Hermitage Museum.
Saint Petersburg is home to more than two hundred museums, many of them hosted in historic buildings. The largest of the museums is the Hermitage Museum, featuring interiors of the former imperial residence and a vast collection of art. The Russian Museum is a large museum devoted to the Russian fine art specifically. The apartments of some famous Petersburgers, including Alexander Pushkin, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Feodor Chaliapin, Alexander Blok, Vladimir Nabokov, Anna Akhmatova, Mikhail Zoshchenko, Joseph Brodsky, as well as some palace and park ensembles of the southern suburbs and notable architectural monuments such as St. Isaac's Cathedral, have also been turned into public museums.
The Kunstkamera, with its collection established in 1714 by Peter the Great to collect curiosities from all over the world, is sometimes considered the first museum in Russia, which has evolved into the present-day Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography. The Russian Ethnography Museum, which has been split from the Russian Museum, is devoted to the cultures of the people of Russia, the former Soviet Union and Russian Empire.
Other notable museums include the Central Naval Museum hosted in the building of the former stock exchange and Zoological Museum, the Railway Museum, Museum of the Siege of Leningrad, Saint Petersburg Museum of History in the Peter and Paul Fortress and Artillery Museum, which in fact includes not only artillery items, but also a huge collection of other military equipment, uniform and decorations.
The Grand Cascade.
Saint Petersburg is home to numerous parks and gardens, some of the most famous of which are situated in the southern suburbs, including one of the largest English gardens of Europe in Pavlovsk. Sosnovka is the largest park within the limits of the city proper, occupying 240 ha. The Summer Garden is the oldest one, dating back to the early 18th century and designed in the regular style. It is situated on the southern bank of the Neva at the head of the Fontanka and is famous for its cast iron railing and marble sculptures.
Among other notable parks are the Maritime Victory Park on Krestovsky Island and the Moscow Victory Park in the south, both commemorating the victory over Nazi Germany in the Second World War, as well as the Central Park of Culture and Leisure occupying Yelagin Island and the Tauride Garden around the Tauride Palace. The most common trees grown in the parks are the English oak, Norway maple, green ash, silver birch, Siberian larch, blue spruce, crack willow, limes and poplars. Important dendrological collections dating back to the 19th century are hosted by the Saint Petersburg Botanical Garden and the Park of the Forestry Academy.
Among the city's more than fifty theaters is the world-famous Mariinsky Theater (also known as the Kirov Theater in the USSR ), home to the Mariinsky Ballet company and opera. Leading ballet dancers, such as Vaslav Nijinsky, Anna Pavlova, Rudolph Nureyev, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Galina Ulanova and Natalia Makarova, were principal stars of the Mariinsky ballet.
Dmitri Shostakovich was born and brought up in Saint Petersburg, and dedicated his Seventh Symphony to the city, calling it the "Leningrad Symphony." He wrote the symphony while in Leningrad during the German siege. The 7th symphony was premiered in 1942; its performance in the besieged Leningrad at the Bolshoy Philharmonic Hall under the baton of conductor Karl Eliasberg was heard over the radio and lifted the spirits of the survivors. In 1992 a reunion performance of the 7th Symphony by the (then) 14 survivors was played in the same hall as they done half a century ago. The Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra remained one of the best known symphony orchestras in the world under the leadership of conductors Yevgeny Mravinsky and Yuri Temirkanov.
The Imperial Choral Capella was founded and modeled after the royal courts of other European capitals.
Saint Petersburg has been home to the newest movements in popular music in the country. The first jazz band in the Soviet Union was founded here by Leonid Utyosov in the 1920s, under the patronage of Isaak Dunayevsky. The first jazz club in the Soviet Union was founded here in the 1950s, and later was named jazz club Kvadrat. In 1956 the popular ensemble Druzhba was founded by Aleksandr Bronevitsky and Edita Piekha, becoming the first popular band in the 1950s USSR. In the 1960s student rock-groups Argonavty, Kochevniki and others pioneered a series of unofficial and underground rock concerts and festivals. In 1972 Boris Grebenshchikov founded the band Aquarium, that later grew to huge popularity. Since then "Peter's rock" music style was formed.
In the 1970s many bands came out from "underground" and eventually founded the Leningrad rock club which has been providing stage to such bands as Piknik, DDT, Kino, headed by the legendary Viktor Tsoi, Igry, Mify, Zemlyane, Alisa and many other popular groups. The first Russian-style happening show Pop mekhanika, mixing over 300 people and animals on stage, was directed by the multi-talented Sergey Kuryokhin in the 1980s.
Today's Saint Petersburg boasts many notable musicians of various genres, from popular Leningrad's Sergei Shnurov and Tequilajazzz, to rock veterans Yuri Shevchuk, Vyacheslav Butusov and Mikhail Boyarsky.
The White Nights Festival in Saint Petersburg is famous for spectacular fireworks and massive show celebrating the end of school year.
Over 250 international and Russian movies were filmed in Saint Petersburg. International Movie Database Well over a thousand feature films about tsars, revolution, people and stories set in Saint Petersburg were produced worldwide, but were not filmed in the city. First film studios were founded in Saint Petersburg in the 1900s, and since the 1920s Lenfilm has been the largest film studio based in Saint Petersburg. The first foreign feature movie filmed entirely in Saint Petersburg was the 1997 production of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, starring Sophie Marceau and Sean Bean, and made by international team of British, American, French and Russian filmmakers.
The cult comedy Irony of Fate (also ÐÑÐ¾Ð½Ð¸Ñ ÑÑдÑбÑ, или С лÑгким паÑом!) is set in Saint Petersburg and pokes fun at Soviet city planning. The 1985 film White Nights received considerable Western attention for having captured genuine Leningrad street scenes at a time when filming in the Soviet Union by Western production companies was generally unheard of. Other movies include GoldenEye (1995), Midnight in Saint Petersburg (1996), and Brother (1997). Onegin (1999) is based on the Pushkin poem and showcases many tourist attractions. In addition, the Russian romantic comedy, ÐиÑÐµÑ FM, showcases the cityscape significantly, almost as if it was a main character in the film.
Several international film festivals are held annually, such as the Festival of Festivals, St. Petersburg, as well as the Message to Man International Documentary Film Festival, since its inauguration in 1988 during the White Nights.
Saint Petersburg has a longstanding and world famous tradition in literature. Dostoyevsky called it âThe most abstract and intentional city in the world," emphasizing its artificiality, but it was also a symbol of modern disorder in a changing Russia. It frequently appeared to Russian writers as a menacing and inhuman mechanism. The grotesque and often nightmarish image of the city is featured in Pushkin's last poems, the Petersburg stories of Gogol, the novels of Dostoyevsky, the verse of Alexander Blok and Osip Mandelshtam, and in the symbolist novel Petersburg by Andrey Bely. According to Lotman in his chapter, 'The Symbolism of Saint Petersburg' in Universe and the Mind, these writers were inspired from symbolism from within the city itself. The effect of life in Saint Petersburg on the plight of the poor clerk in a society obsessed with hierarchy and status also became an important theme for authors such as Pushkin, Gogol, and Dostoyevsky. Another important feature of early Saint Petersburg literature is its mythical element, which incorporates urban legends and popular ghost stories, as the stories of Pushkin and Gogol included ghosts returning to Saint Petersburg to haunt other characters as well as other fantastical elements, creating a surreal and abstract image of Saint Petersburg.
Twentieth century writers from Saint Petersburg, such as Vladimir Nabokov, Ayn Rand, Andrey Bely and Yevgeny Zamyatin, along with his apprentices, The Serapion Brothers, created entire new styles in literature and contributed new insights to the understanding of society through their experience in this city. Anna Akhmatova became an important leader for Russian poetry. Her poem Requiem focuses on the tragedies of living during the time of the Stalinist terror. Another notable 20th century writer from Saint Petersburg is Joseph Brodsky, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1987). While living in the United States, his writings in English reflected on life in Saint Petersburg from the unique perspective of being both an insider and an outsider to the city in essays such as, "A Guide to a Renamed City" and the nostalgic "In a Room and a Half". Joseph Brodsky. Less Than One: Selected Essays, 1986
FC Zenit's home Petrovsky stadium
Leningrad hosted part of the football tournament during the 1980 Summer Olympics. The 1994 Goodwill Games were held here.
The first competition here was the 1703 rowing event initiated by Peter the Great, after the victory over the Swedish fleet. Yachting events were held by the Russian Navy since the foundation of the city. Yacht clubs: St. Petersburg River Yacht Club, Neva Yacht Club, the latter is the oldest yacht club in the world. In the winter, when the sea and lake surfaces are frozen and yachts and dinghies cannot be used, local people sail on ice boats.
Equestrianism has been a long tradition, popular among the Tsars and aristocracy, as well as part of the military training. Several historic sports arenas were built for Equestrianism since the 18th century, to maintain training all year round, such as the Zimny Stadion and Konnogvardeisky Manezh among others.
Chess tradition was highlighted by the 1914 international tournament, in which the title "Grandmaster" was first formally conferred by Russian Tsar Nicholas II to five players: Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine, Tarrasch and Marshall, and which the Tsar had partially funded.
Kirov Stadium (now demolished) was one of the largest stadiums anywhere in the world, and the home to FC Zenit St. Petersburg in 1950-1993 and 1995. In 1951 the attendance of 110,000 set the record for the Soviet football. In 2007 Zenit became champions of the Russian Premier League, won the UEFA Cup 2007â08 season and the 2008 UEFA Supercup. Zenit now plays their home games at Petrovsky Stadium.
As of 2006/2007 there were 1024 kindergartens, 716 public schools and 80 vocational schools in Saint Petersburg. SPB.ru The largest of the higher education institutions are Saint Petersburg State University, enrolling approximately 32,000 undergraduate students, Saint Petersburg Polytechnical University and Herzen University. However, the universities are all federal property and don't belong to the city.
*List of consulates in Saint Petersburg
*List of museums in Saint Petersburg
*List of notable people from Saint Petersburg
*List of Saint Petersburg sister cities
*Amery, Colin, Brian Curran & Yuri Molodkovets. St. Petersburg. London: Frances Lincoln, 2006. ISBN 0711224927.
*Bater, James H. St. Petersburg: Industrialization and Change. Montreal: McGuill-Queenâs University Press, 1976. ISBN 0773502661.
*Berelowitch, Wladimir & Olga Medvedkova. Histoire de Saint-Pétersbourg. Paris: Fayard, 1996. ISBN 2213596018.
*Buckler, Julie. Mapping St. Petersburg: Imperial Text and Cityshape. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005 ISBN0691113491.
*Clark, Katerina, Petersburg, Crucible of Revolution. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995.
*Cross, Anthony (ed.). St. Petersburg, 1703-1825. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. ISBN 1403915709.
*George, Arthur L. & Elena George. St. Petersburg: Russia's Window to the Future, The First Three Centuries. Lanham: Taylor Trade Publishing, 2003. ISBN 1589790170.
*Glantz, David M. The Battle for Leningrad, 1941-1944. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002. ISBN 0700612084.
*Hellberg-Hirn, Elena. Imperial Imprints: Post-Soviet St. Petersburg. Helsinki: SKS Finnish Literature Society, 2003. ISBN 9517464916.
*Knopf Guide: Sat. Petersburg. New York: Knopf, 1995. ISBN 0679762027.
*Eyewitness Guide: St. Petersburg.
*Lincoln, W. Bruce. Sunlight at Midnight: St. Petersburg and the Rise of Modern Russia. New York: Basic Books, 2000. ISBN 0465083234.
*Orttung, Robert W. From Leningrad to St. Petersburg: Democratization in a Russian City. New York: St. Martinâs, 1995. ISBN 0312175612.
*Ruble, Blair A. Leningrad: Shaping a Soviet City. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. ISBN 0877723478.
*Shvidkovsky, Dmitry O. & Alexander Orloff. St. Petersburg: Architecture of the Tsars. New York: Abbeville Press, 1996. ISBN 0789202174.
*Volkov, Solomon. St. Petersburg: A Cultural History. New York: Free Press, 1995. ISBN 0028740521.
*St. Petersburg:Architecture of the Tsars. 360 pages. Abbeville Press, 1996. ISBN 0789202174
*Saint Petersburg: Museums, Palaces, and Historic Collections: A Guide to the Lesser Known Treasures of St. Petersburg. 2003. ISBN 1593730004.
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овÑкий Ð . Ð. Река Ðева и ÐевÑÐºÐ°Ñ Ð³Ñба, Leningrad, ÐидÑомеÑеоиздаÑ, 1981.
* Official presentation of Saint Petersburg
* Official Portal of the City Government: Saint Petersburg
* Encyclopaedia of Saint Petersburg
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* Saint Petersburg in 1900
* Saint Petersburg, entry in the World Monuments Fund's 2008 watchlist
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Saint_Petersburg | How to travel to work from the city to Moscow? | One way is through the Moscow-Saint Petersburg Railway. | data/set3/a10 | Saint_Petersburg
Saint Petersburg ( , ) is a city and a federal subject (a federal city) of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The city's other names were Petrograd ( , 1914â1924) and Leningrad ( , 1924â1991). It is often called just Petersburg ( ) and is informally known as Piter ( ).
Founded by Tsar Peter I of Russia on 27 May 1703, it was the capital of the Russian Empire for more than two hundred years (1713â1728, 1732â1918). Saint Petersburg ceased being the capital in 1918 after the Russian Revolution of 1917. Nicholas and Alexandra: An Intimate Account of the Last of the Romanovs and the Fall of Imperial Russia (Athenum, 1967) by Robert K. Massie, ASIN B000CGP8M2 (also, Ballantine Books, 2000, ISBN 0-345-43831-0 and Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, 2005, ISBN 1-57912-433-X) It is Russia's second largest city after Moscow with 4.6 million inhabitants, and over 6 million people live in its vicinity. Saint Petersburg is a major European cultural centre, and an important Russian port on the Baltic Sea.
Saint Petersburg is often described as the most Western city of Russia. V. Morozov. The Discourses of Saint Petersburg and the Shaping of a Wider Europe. Copenhagen Peace Research Institute. 2002. Ciaonet.org Among cities of the world with over one million people, Saint Petersburg is the northernmost. The Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments constitute a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Saint Petersburg is also home to The Hermitage, the largest art museum in the world. /ref> Russia's political and cultural centre for 200 years, the city is sometimes referred to in Russia as the northern capital. A large number of foreign consulates, international corporations, banks and other businesses are located in Saint Petersburg.
On 1 May 1703 (Julian calendar), during the Great Northern War, Peter the Great captured the Swedish fortress of Nyenskans on the Neva river in Ingria. A few weeks later, on 27 May 1703 (May 16, Old Style), lower on the river, on Zayachy (Hare) Island, three miles (5 km) inland from the gulf, he laid down the Peter and Paul Fortress, which became the first brick and stone building of the new city. He named the city after his patron saint, Saint Peter, the apostle. The original name was meant to sound like Dutch due to Peter's obsession with the Dutch culture. Peter the Great: His Life and World (Knopf, 1980) by Robert K. Massie, ISBN 0-394-50032-6
The city was built by conscripted serfs from all over Russia and also by Swedish prisoners of war under the supervision of Alexander Menshikov and later became the centre of Saint Petersburg Governorate. Peter moved the capital from Moscow to Saint Petersburg in 1712, before the Treaty of Nystad of 1721 ended the war.
The Bronze Horseman, monument to Peter the Great.
Palace Square, as the main square of the Russian Empire it was the setting of many events of great historical significance
Lenin statue outside the Finland station. Between 1924 and 1991 the city was known as Leningrad.
Map of Saint Petersburg, 1903.
Church of the Savior on Blood.
During the first few years of its existence the city grew spontaneously around Trinity Square on the right bank of the Neva, near the Peter and Paul Fortress. However, Saint Petersburg soon started to develop according to a plan. By 1716 Domenico Trezzini had elaborated a project whereby the city centre would be located on Vasilievsky Island and shaped by a rectangular grid of canals. The project was not completed, but is still evident in the layout of the streets. In 1716 Jean-Baptiste Alexandre Le Blond was appointed chief architect of Saint Petersburg by Peter the Great.
The style of Petrine Baroque, developed by Trezzini and other architects and exemplified by such buildings as the Menshikov Palace, Kunstkamera, Peter and Paul Cathedral, Twelve Collegia, became prominent in the city architecture of the early 18th century. In 1724 the Academy of Sciences, University and Academic Gymnasium were established in Saint Petersburg by Peter the Great.
However, in 1725 Peter died. His near-lifelong autocratic push for modernisation of Russia had met with considerable opposition from the old-fashioned Russian nobility â resulting in several attempts on his life and a treason case involving his own son. Matthew S. Anderson, Peter the Great (London: Thames and Hudson, 1978) Thus, in 1728, Peter II of Russia moved his seat back to Moscow. But four years later, in 1732, under Empress Anna of Russia, Saint Petersburg again became the capital of the Russian Empire and remained the seat of the government for 186 years.
In 1736-1737 the city suffered from catastrophic fires. In order to rebuild the damaged boroughs, in 1737 a new plan was commissioned by a committee under Burkhard Christoph von Munnich. The city was divided into five boroughs, and the city centre was moved to the Admiralty borough, situated on the east bank between the Neva and Fontanka.
It developed along three radial streets, which meet at the Admiralty and are now known as Nevsky Prospekt (which is now perceived as the main street of the city), Gorokhovaya Street and Voznesensky Prospekt. The style of Baroque dominated the city architecture during the first sixty years, culminating in the Elizabethan Baroque, represented most notably by Bartolomeo Rastrelli with such buildings as the Winter Palace. In the 1760s the Baroque architecture was succeeded by the neoclassical architecture.
The Commission of Stone Buildings of Moscow and Saint Petersburg established in 1762 ruled that no structure in the city be higher than the Winter Palace and prohibited spacing between buildings. During the reign of Catherine the Great in the 1760s-1780s the banks of the Neva were lined with granite embankments.
However, it wasn't until 1850 that it was allowed to open the first permanent bridge across the Neva, Blagoveshchensky Bridge. Before that, only pontoon bridges were allowed. Obvodny Canal (dug in 1769-1833) became the southern limit of the city.
Some of the most important neoclassical architects in Saint Petersburg (including those working within the Empire style) were Jean-Baptiste Vallin de la Mothe (Imperial Academy of Arts, Small Hermitage, Gostiny Dvor, New Holland Arch, Catholic Church of St. Catherine), Antonio Rinaldi (Marble Palace), Yury Felten (Old Hermitage, Chesme Church), Giacomo Quarenghi (Academy of Sciences, Hermitage Theatre, Yusupov Palace), Andrey Voronikhin (Mining Institute, Kazan Cathedral), Andreyan Zakharov (Admiralty building), Jean-François Thomas de Thomon (Spit of Vasilievsky Island), Carlo Rossi (Yelagin Palace, Mikhailovsky Palace, Alexandrine Theatre, Senate and Synod Buildings, General Staff Building, design of many streets and squares), Vasily Stasov (Moscow Triumphal Gate, Trinity Cathedral), Auguste de Montferrand (Saint Isaac's Cathedral, Alexander Column). The victory over Napoleonic France in the Patriotic War of 1812 was commemorated with many monuments, including Alexander Column by Montferrand, erected in 1834, and Narva Triumphal Gate.
In 1825 the suppressed Decembrist revolt against Nicholas I of Russia took place on the Senate Square in the city, a day after he assumed the throne.
By the 1840s the neoclassical architecture had given place to various romanticist styles, which were dominant until the 1890s, represented by such architects as Andrei Stackenschneider (Mariinsky Palace, Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace, Nicholas Palace, New Michael Palace) and Konstantin Thon (Moskovsky Rail Terminal). The Church of the Savior on Blood designed in the Russian revival style commemorated the place where Alexander II of Russia was assassinated in 1881.
With the emancipation of the serfs undertaken by Alexander II in 1861 and the industrial revolution the influx of former peasants into the capital increased greatly. Poor boroughs spontaneously emerged on the outskirts of the city. Saint Petersburg surpassed Moscow in population and industrial growth and grew into one of the largest industrial hubs and cities in Europe.
The Revolution of 1905 began in Saint Petersburg and spread rapidly into the provinces. With the start of World War I, the name Saint Petersburg was perceived to be too German, so in 1914 the city was renamed Petrograd. The Romanovs: The Final Chapter (Random House, 1995) by Robert K. Massie, ISBN 0-394-58048-6 and ISBN 0-679-43572-7 In 1917 the February Revolution, which put an end to the Russian monarchy, and the October Revolution, which ultimately brought Vladimir Lenin to power, broke out in Petrograd. Rex A. Wade The Russian Revolution, 1917 2005 Cambridge University Press ISBN 0521841550 The city's proximity to the border and anti-Soviet armies forced the Bolsheviks under Lenin to transfer the capital to Moscow on March 12, 1918.
In 1919 during the ensuing Russian Civil War Nikolay Yudenich advancing from Estonia was about to capture the city from the Bolsheviks, but Leon Trotsky ultimately managed to mobilise the population and make him retreat. Many people fled the city in 1917-1920 or were repressed in the Red Terror, Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe. By Robert Gellately, 2007, Random House, 720 pages. ISBN 1400040051 so its population decreased dramatically. On January 26, 1924, three days after Lenin's death, Petrograd was renamed Leningrad. For decades Leningrad was glorified by the Soviet propaganda as "the cradle of the revolution" and "the city of three revolutions", many spots related to Lenin and the revolutions, such as the cruiser Aurora, were carefully preserved. Many streets and other toponyms were renamed accordingly.
In the 1920s-1930s the poor outskirts were reconstructed into regularly planned boroughs. The constructivist architecture flourished around that time. The Soviets nationalised housing and forced many residents to share communal apartments (kommunalkas). With 68% living in shared apartments in the 1930s, Leningrad was the city with the largest number of kommunalkas. In 1935 a new general plan was outlined, whereby the city should expand to the south and its centre should move there. The constructivism was rejected in favor of the pompous Stalinist architecture. Stalin ordered the construction of the new city hall on Moskovsky Prospect thus making it the new main street of Leningrad during the Soviet rule.
Since December 1931 Leningrad has been administratively separate from Leningrad Oblast. At that time it included Leningrad Suburban District, some parts of which were transferred back to Leningrad Oblast in 1936 and turned into Vsevolozhsky District, Krasnoselsky District, Pargolovsky District and Slutsky District (renamed Pavlovsky District in 1944).
On December 1, 1934, Sergey Kirov, popular communist leader of Leningrad, was assassinated, which was used to start the Great Purge. Stalin's Terror: High Politics and Mass Repression in the Soviet Union by Barry McLoughlin and Kevin McDermott (eds). Palgrave Macmillan, 2002, p. 6 The sizeable minorities of Germans, Poles, Finns, Estonians and Latvians were almost completely expelled from Leningrad by the Soviet government during the 1930s. Martin, Terry (1998). The Origins of Soviet Ethnic Cleansing. The Journal of Modern History 70.4, 813-861.
During World War II, Leningrad was besieged by Nazi Germany and co-belligerent Finland. Siege of Leningrad. Encyclopædia Britannica The siege lasted 872 days from September 1941 to January 1944. Baldack, Richard H. "Leningrad, Siege of" World Book Encyclopedia, Chicago, 2002, vol.12, page 195 The Siege of Leningrad was one of the longest, most destructive, and most lethal sieges of major cities in modern history. It isolated the city from most supplies except those provided through the Road of Life across Lake Ladoga, and more than a million civilians died, mainly from starvation. Many others were eventually evacuated or escaped by themselves, so the city became largely depopulated. For the heroic resistance of the city and tenacity of the survivors of the Siege, in 1945 Leningrad became the first city in the Soviet Union awarded the title Hero City. In October 1946 some former Finnish territories along the northern coast of the Gulf of Finland captured in the Winter War and Continuation War were transferred from Leningrad Oblast to Leningrad and divided into Sestroretsky District and Kurortny District, including the town of Terijoki (renamed Zelenogorsk in 1948).
Leningrad and many of its suburbs were rebuilt over the post-war decades, partially according to the pre-war plans. The 1948 general plan of Leningrad featured radial urban development in the north as well as in the south. The Leningrad Metro, underground rapid transit system which was designed before the war in the 1930s, was opened in 1955 with its first seven stations decorated with marble and bronze. Meanwhile, in 1949-1951 a large number of prominent Leningrad members of the Communist Party and their families were charged with treason and intention to create an anti-Soviet organization out of their local party cell. Many were imprisoned or executed in the Leningrad Affair fabricated by the central Soviet leadership. Dmitri Volkogonov. Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy, 1996, ISBN 0761507183 Russian publication: ÐенингÑадÑкое дело â надо ли ÑÑавиÑÑ ÐºÐ°Ð²ÑÑки?: Contr-tv.ru
In 1953 Pavlovsky District of Leningrad Oblast was abolished, and parts of its territory including Pavlovsk merged with Leningrad. In 1954 the settlements Levashovo, Pargolovo and Pesochny merged with Leningrad.
After the death of Stalin the perceived ornamental excesses of the Stalinist architecture were abandoned. In the 1960s-1980s, as many new residential boroughs were built on the outskirts with few series of functionalist apartment blocks identical to each other, many families moved there from kommunalkas in the city centre in order to live in separate apartments. Uritsk was re-named Ligovo and merged with Leningrad in 1963, Lomonosov merged in 1978.
On June 12, 1991, in a referendum held on the same day as the first Russian presidential election, 54% of voters chose to restore the name "Saint Petersburg" (the change officially took effect on September 6, 1991). Many other Soviet-era toponyms in the city were also renamed soon afterwards. In the same election Anatoly Sobchak became the first democratically elected mayor of the city. Jack F. Matlock, Jr., Autopsy on an Empire: The American Ambassador's Account of the Collapse of the Soviet Union, Random House, 1995, ISBN 0679413766
By the end of 1991 the deteriorating planned economy of the collapsing Soviet Union had put the city on the verge of starvation. For the first time since World War II food rationing was introduced, and the city received humanitarian food aid from abroad. The city somewhat recovered with the market reforms in Russia. In 1995-2004 a northern section of the Metro's Kirovsko-Vyborgskaya Line was cut off by underground flooding, which was a major obstacle to the city development.
In 1996, Vladimir Yakovlev was elected as head of the Saint Petersburg City Administration. The title of the city head was changed in advance from "mayor" to "governor". In 2003, Yakovlev resigned a year before his second term expired. Valentina Matviyenko was elected governor. In 2006 she was reapproved as governor by the city legislature. The residential building had intensified again, real estate prices inflated greatly, and this situation causes many new problems for the historical part of the city.
In spite of the fact that the central part of the city is watched by UNESCO, the safety of its historical and architectural environment is in danger. Sergey Zagraevsky. Will Saint Petersburg share the same fate as Moscow? Zagraevsky.com There are still about 8000 architectural monuments in Saint Petersburg, but since 2005 the destruction of older buildings in the historical centre has continued. A number of new building projects are underway, including the Gazprom skyscraper in Okhta.
Territory of the federal subject of Saint Petersburg.
The area of Saint Petersburg city proper is . The area of the federal subject is , which contains the Saint Petersburg proper (consisting of 81 okrugs), nine suburban towns (Kolpino, Krasnoye Selo, Kronstadt, Lomonosov, Pavlovsk, Peterhof, Pushkin, Sestroretsk and Zelenogorsk) and 21 municipal settlements.
Saint Petersburg is situated on the middle taiga lowlands along the shores of the Neva Bay of the Gulf of Finland, and islands of the river delta. The largest are Vasilyevsky island (besides the artificial island between Obvodny canal and Fontanka, and Kotlin in the Neva Bay), Petrogradsky, Dekabristov and Krestovsky. The latter together with Yelagin and Kamenny island are covered mostly by parks. The Karelian Isthmus, North of the city, is a popular resort area. In the south Saint Petersburg crosses the Baltic-Ladoga Klint and meets the Izhora Plateau.
The elevation of Saint Petersburg ranges from the sea level to its highest point of at the Orekhovaya Hill in the Duderhof Heights in the south. Part of the city's territory west of Liteyny Prospekt is no higher than above sea level, and has suffered from numerous floods. Floods in Saint Petersburg are triggered by a long wave in the Baltic Sea, caused by meteorological conditions, winds and shallowness of the Neva Bay. The four most disastrous floods occurred in 1824 ( above sea-level, during which over 300 buildings were destroyed The level of flooding is measured near Saint Petersburg Mining Institute, which is normally a.s.l. ), 1924 , 1777 , 1955 and 1975 . To prevent floods, the Saint Petersburg Dam has been under construction since 1979. ÐежиÑ
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Since the 18th century the terrain in the city has been raised artificially, at some places by more than , making mergers of several islands, and changing the hydrology of the city. Besides the Neva and its distributaries, other important rivers of the federal subject of Saint Petersburg are Sestra, Okhta and Izhora. The largest lake is Sestroretsky Razliv in the north, followed by Lakhtinsky Razliv, Suzdal Lakes and other smaller lakes.
Saint Petersburg's position on the latitude of ca. 60° N causes variation in day length across seasons, ranging from 5:53 to 18:50. Twilight may last all night in early summer, from mid-May to mid-July, the celebrated phenomenon known as the white nights.
Snow falling on the morning of May 14, 2008 at Srednyaya Rogatka (district in the south of St. Petersburg)
Saint Petersburg experiences a humid continental climate of the cool summer subtype (Köppen: Dfb), due to the distinct moderating influence of the Baltic Sea cyclones, with warm, humid and short summers and long, cold winters.
The average daily temperature in July is ; summer maximum is about , winter minimum is about . The record low temperature is , recorded in 1883. The average annual temperature is . The River Neva within the city limits usually freezes up in November-December, break-up occurs in April. From December to March there are 123 days average with snow cover, which reaches the average of by February. The frost-free period in the city lasts on average for about 135 days. The city has a climate slightly warmer than its suburbs. Weather conditions are quite variable all year round. See Historical weather records for Saint Petersburg (since 1932) and Historical weather in Saint Petersburg for further information.
Average annual precipitation varies across the city, averaging per year and reaching maximum in late summer. Soil moisture is almost always high because of lower evapotranspiration due to the cool climate. Air humidity is 78% on average, while overcast is 165 days a year on average.
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Saint Petersburg is the second largest city in Russia. The 2002 census recorded a population of the federal subject of 4,661,219, or 3.21% of the total population of Russia. The 2002 census recorded twenty-two ethnic groups of more than two thousand persons each. The ethnic composition was: Russian 84.72%, Ukrainian 1.87%, Belarusians 1.17%, Jewish 0.78%, Tatar 0.76%, Armenian 0.41%, Azeri 0.36%, Georgian 0.22%, Chuvash 0.13%, Polish 0.10%, and many other smaller ethnic groups, while 7.89% of the inhabitants declined to state their ethnicity.
The 20th century saw hectic ups and downs in population. From 2.4 million in 1916 it had dropped to less than 740,000 by 1920 during the Russian Revolution of 1917 and Russian Civil War. The sizeable minorities of Germans, Poles, Finns, Estonians and Latvians were almost completely expelled from Leningrad by the Soviet government during the 1930s. From 1941 to the end of 1943, population dropped from 3 million to less than 700,000, as people died in battles, starved to death during the Siege of Leningrad, or were evacuated. After the siege, some of the evacuees returned, but most influx was due to migration from other parts of the Soviet Union. The city absorbed about 3 million people in the 1950s and grew to over 5 million in the 1980s. From 1991 to 2006 the city's population decreased to the current 4.6 million, while the suburban population increased due to privatization of land and massive move to suburbs. ЧиÑÑÑкова Ð. ТÑеÑÑе ÑокÑаÑение ÑиÑленноÑÑи наÑелениÑ... и поÑледнее? ÐемоÑкоп Weekly 163 â 164, August 1â15, 2004. Russian source: "Encyclopedia of Saint Petersburg" ЧиÑÑÑков Ð. Ю. ÐаÑеление (обзоÑÐ½Ð°Ñ ÑÑаÑÑÑ). ÐнÑÐ¸ÐºÐ»Ð¾Ð¿ÐµÐ´Ð¸Ñ Ð¡Ð°Ð½ÐºÑ-ÐеÑеÑбÑÑга The birth rate remains lower than the death rate; people over 65 constitute more than twenty percent of the population; and the median age is about 40 years. Russian statistics ÐÑновнÑе показаÑели ÑоÑиалÑно-демогÑаÑиÑеÑкой ÑиÑÑаÑии в СанкÑ-ÐеÑеÑбÑÑге
People in urban Saint Petersburg live mostly in apartments. Between 1918 and the 1990s, the Soviets nationalised housing and forced residents to share communal apartments (kommunalkas). With 68% living in shared flats in the 1930s, Leningrad was the city in the USSR with the largest number of kommunalkas. Resettling residents of kommunalkas is now on the way out, albeit shared apartments are still not uncommon. As new boroughs were built on the outskirts in the 1950s-1980s, over half a million low income families eventually received free apartments, and about an additional hundred thousand condos were purchased. While economic and social activity is concentrated in the historic city centre, the richest part of Saint Petersburg, most people live in commuter areas. For the first half of 2007, the birth rate was 9.1 per 1000.
Smolny Institute, the seat of the governor.
Saint Petersburg is a federal subject of Russia. The political life of Saint Petersburg is regulated by the city charter adopted by the city legislature in 1998. The superior executive body is the Saint Petersburg City Administration, led by the governor (mayor before 1996). Saint Petersburg has a single-chamber legislature, the Saint Petersburg Legislative Assembly.
According to the federal law passed in 2004, heads of federal subjects, including the governor of Saint Petersburg, are nominated by the President of Russia and approved by local legislatures. If the legislature disapproves the nominee, it is dissolved. The current governor, Valentina Matviyenko, was approved according to the new system in December 2006. She is currently the only woman governor in the whole of Russia.
Saint Petersburg city is currently divided into eighteen districts. Saint Petersburg is also the administrative centre of Leningrad Oblast, and of the Northwestern Federal District. The Constitutional Court of Russia moved to Saint Petersburg from Moscow in May 2008.
Saint Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast, being two different federal subjects, share a number of local departments of federal executive agencies and courts, such as court of arbitration, police, FSB, postal service, drug enforcement administration, penitentiary service, federal registration service, and other federal services.
The Old Saint Petersburg Stock Exchange, or Bourse, houses the Central Naval Museum
Saint Petersburg is a major trade gateway, financial and industrial centre of Russia specialising in oil and gas trade, shipbuilding yards, aerospace industry, radio and electronics, software and computers; machine building, heavy machinery and transport, including tanks and other military equipment, mining, instrument manufacture, ferrous and nonferrous metallurgy (production of aluminium alloys), chemicals, pharmaceuticals, medical equipment, publishing and printing, food and catering, wholesale and retail, textile and apparel industries, and many other businesses. It was also home to Lessner, one of Russia's two pioneering automobile manufacturers (along with Russo-Baltic), Lessner; founded by machine tool and boiler maker G. A. Lessner in 1904, with designs by Boris Loutsky, it survived until 1910. Georgano, G. N. Cars: Early and Vintage, 1886-1930. (London: Grange-Universal, 1985)
10% of the world's power turbines are made there at the LMZ, which built over two thousand turbines for power plants across the world. Major local industries are Admiralty Shipyard, Baltic Shipyard, LOMO, Kirov Plant, Elektrosila, Izhorsky Zavod; also registered in Saint Petersburg are Sovkomflot, Petersburg Fuel Company and SIBUR among other major Russian and international companies.
The Saint Petersburg docks at dawn.
Saint Petersburg has three large cargo seaports: Bolshoi Port Saint Petersburg, Kronstadt, and Lomonosov. International cruise liners have been served at the passenger port at Morskoy Vokzal on the south-west of Vasilevsky Island. In 2008 the first two berths were opened at the New Passenger Port on the west of the island. Discoverthebaltic.com Discover the Baltic online guide to Baltic cruise ports The new port is part of the city's "Marine Facade" development project Mfspb.ru St Petersburg "Marine Facade" development project and is due to have seven berths in operation by 2010.
A complex system of riverports on both banks of the Neva river are interconnected with the system of seaports, thus making Saint Petersburg the main link between the Baltic sea and the rest of Russia through the Volga-Baltic Waterway.
The Saint Petersburg Mint (Monetny Dvor), founded in 1724, is one of the largest mints in the world, it mints Russian coins, medals and badges. Saint Petersburg is also home to the oldest and largest Russian foundry, Monumentskulptura, which made thousands of sculptures and statues that are now gracing public parks of Saint Petersburg, as well as many other cities. Monuments and bronze statues of the Czars, as well as other important historic figures and dignitaries, and other world famous monuments, such as the sculptures by Peter Clodt von Jürgensburg, Paolo Troubetzkoy, Pavel Antokolsky, and others, were made there.
In 2007 Toyota opened a Camry plant after investing 5 billion dollars in Shushary, one of the southern suburbs of Saint Petersburg. General Motors, Hyundai and Nissan have signed deals with the Russian government to build their automotive plants in Saint Petersburg too. Automotive and auto-parts industry is on the rise there during the last decade. Saint Petersburg is also known as the "beer capital" of Russia, due to the supply and quality of local water, contributing over 30% of the domestic production of beer with its five large-scale breweries including Europe's second largest brewery Baltika, Vena (both operated by BBH), Heineken Brewery, Stepan Razin (both by Heineken) and Tinkoff brewery (SUN-InBev). Saint Petersburg has the second largest construction industry in Russia, including commercial, housing and road construction.
In 2006 Saint Petersburg's city budget was 179,9 billion rubles, and is planned to double by 2012. The federal subject's gross regional product as of 2005 was 667,905.4 million Russian rubles, ranked 4th in Russia, after Moscow, Tyumen Oblast, and Moscow Oblast, or 145,503.3 rubles per capita, ranked 12th among Russia's federal subjects, contributed mostly by wholesale and retail trade and repair services (24.7%) as well as processing industry (20.9%) and transportation and telecommunications (15.1%).
The Kresty prison.
Russia historically had a high level of crime that increased significantly after the October revolution. Edward Hallett Carr The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1923, 1985 ISBN 0393301990 Google preview Perestroika-time turmoils saw additional increase of the crime level.
Saint Petersburg experiences significant levels of street crime and bribery. In addition, in recent years there has been a notable increase in racially motivated violence, especially towards tourists and foreign students. One of the well known white supremacist groups Belaya Energia (White Energy, originally comes from White Power), has reportedly been one of the main gangs involved in murdering foreign university students. Russia: Racist Attacks Plague St. Petersburg Radio Free Europe September 30, 2005
At the end of the 1980s â beginning of the 1990s, Leningrad became home to a number of organised criminal groups as Tambov Gang, Malyshev Gang, Kazan Gang and ethnic criminal groups, engaged in a racket, extortion, paying off local government, and violent clashes with each other. Russian Mafia Shakes Down the Country by Steven R. Van Hook, Santa Barbara News-Press, November 20, 1994
In 2008, a car bomb killed three people (including a four-year old child), and injured one.
After the assassinations of City Property Committee Chairman and vice-Governor Mikhail Manevich(1997), State Duma deputy Galina Starovoytova (1998), acting City Legislature Speaker Viktor Novosyolov (1999) and a number of prominent businesspeople, Saint Petersburg was dubbed Capital of Crime in the Russian press. Trumbull, Nathaniel S. (2003) The impacts of globalization on Saint Petersburg: A secondary world city in from the cold? The Annals of Regional Science 37:533â546 Powell, Bill & Brian Whitmore. The Capital Of Crime.(Saint Petersburg, Russia). Newsweek International, May 15, 2000. There were a number of movies filmed in Saint Petersburg about the life of crime; , Brother (1997) reinforcing its image as the Crime Capital of Russia.
One of the oldest and most infamous remand facilities in Saint Petersburg, Kresty prison is located near downtown.
However, crime rates in St. Petersburg have declined since the end of the 1990s; the aforementioned criminal gangs have mostly dispersed. Even the Kresty prison is no longer in use, as more modern penal institutions are being built farther from the city centre.
The decoration of Saint Petersburg Metro (Kirovsky Zavod Station).
Saint Petersburg is a major transport hub. The first Russian railway was built here, in 1837. Today, the city is the final destination of a web of intercity and suburban railways, served by five different railway terminals (Baltiysky, Finlyandsky, Ladozhsky, Moskovsky, and Vitebsky), Until 2001, the Varshavsky Rail Terminal served as a major station; it now is a railway museum. Reconstruction of the Warsaw Railway Station as well as dozens of non-terminal railway stations within the federal subject. Saint Petersburg has international railway connections to Helsinki, Finland, Berlin, Germany, and all former republics of the USSR. The Helsinki railway was built in 1870, , commutes three times a day, in a journey lasting about five and a half hours. The Moscow-Saint Petersburg Railway opened in 1851, ; the commute to Moscow now requires about four and a half to nine hours. Saint Petersburg is also served by Pulkovo International Airport, Rossiya (Pulkovo): Pulkovo Aviation Enterprise and by three smaller commercial and cargo airports in the suburbs. There is a regular, 24/7, rapid-bus transit connection between Pulkovo airport and the city centre.
The city is also served by the passenger and cargo seaports in the Neva Bay of the Gulf of Finland, Baltic Sea, the river port higher up the Neva, and tens of smaller passenger stations on both banks of the Neva river. It is a terminus of the Volga-Baltic and White Sea-Baltic waterways. In 2004 the first high bridge that doesn't need to be drawn, a long Big Obukhovsky Bridge, was opened. Meteor hydrofoils link the city centre to the coastal towns of Kronstadt, Lomonosov, Peterhof, Sestroretsk and Zelenogorsk from May through October.
Pulkovo International Airport.
Saint Petersburg has an extensive city-funded network of public transport (buses, trams, trolleybuses) and several hundred routes served by marshrutkas. Trams in Saint Petersburg used to be the main transport; in the 1980s, Leningrad had the largest tramway network in the world, but many tramway rail tracks were dismantled in the 2000s. Buses carry up to 3 million passengers daily, serving over 250 urban and a number of suburban bus routes. Saint Petersburg Metro underground rapid transit system was opened in 1955; it now has five lines with 63 stations, connecting all five railway terminals, and carrying 3.4 million passengers daily. Metro stations are decorated in marble and bronze.
Traffic jams are common in the city, because of high daily traffic volumes between the commuter boroughs and the city centre, intercity traffic, and at times excessive snow in winter. Five segments of the Saint Petersburg Ring Road were opened between 2002 and 2006, and full ring is planned to open in 2010.
Saint Petersburg is part of the important transport corridor linking Scandinavia to Russia and Eastern Europe. The city is a node of the international European routes E18 towards Helsinki, E20 towards Tallinn, E95 towards Pskov, Kiev and Odessa and E105 towards Petrozavodsk, Murmansk and Kirkenes (north) and towards Moscow and Kharkiv (south).
Kazan Cathedral
Griboyedov Canal
A bridge over the river Neva
As of now, Saint Petersburg has no skyscrapers and a relatively low skyline. Current regulations forbid construction of high buildings in the city centre. The 310 metre tall Saint Petersburg TV Tower is the tallest structure in the city, while the 122.5 m Peter and Paul Cathedral is by far the highest building. However, there is a controversial project endorsed by the city authorities and known as the Ohkta Centre to build a 396 m supertall skyscraper. In 2008 the World Monuments Fund included the Saint Petersburg historic skyline within the watch list of 100 most endangered sites due to the expected construction, which threatens to alter it drastically.
Unlike in Moscow, in Saint Petersburg the historic architecture of the city centre, mostly consisting of Baroque and neoclassical buildings of the 18th and 19th centuries, has been largely preserved, although a number of buildings were demolished after the Bolsheviks' seizure of power, during the Siege of Leningrad and in recent years. The oldest of the remaining building is a wooden house built for Peter I in 1703 on the shore of the Neva near Trinity Square. Since 1991 the Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments in Saint Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast have been listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.
The ensemble of Peter and Paul Fortress with the Peter and Paul Cathedral takes dominant position on Zayachy Island along the right bank of the River Neva. Each noon a cannon fires a blank shot from the fortress. The Saint Petersburg Mosque, the largest mosque in Europe when opened in 1913, is situated on the right bank nearby. The spit of Vasilievsky Island, which splits the river into two largest armlets, the Bolshaya Neva and Malaya Neva, is connected to the northern bank (Petrogradsky Island) via the Exchange Bridge and occupied by the Old Saint Petersburg Stock Exchange and Rostral Columns. The southern coast of Vasilievsky Island along the Bolshaya Neva features some of the city's oldest buildings, dating from the 18th century, including the Kunstkamera, Twelve Collegia, Menshikov Palace and Imperial Academy of Arts. It hosts one of two campuses of Saint Petersburg State University.
On the southern, left bank of the Neva, connected to the spit of Vasilievsky Island via the Palace Bridge, lie the Admiralty Building, the vast Hermitage Museum complex stretching along the Palace Embankment, which includes the baroque Winter Palace, former official residence of Russian emperors, as well as the neoclassical Marble Palace. The Winter Palace faces Palace Square, the city's main square with the Alexander Column.
Nevsky Prospekt, also situated on the left bank of the Neva, is the main avenue in the city. It starts at the Admiralty and runs eastwards next to Palace Square. Nevsky Prospekt crosses the Moika (Green Bridge), Griboyedov Canal (Kazansky Bridge), Garden Street, the Fontanka (Anichkov Bridge), meets Liteyny Prospekt and proceeds to Uprising Square near the Moskovsky railway station, where it meets Ligovsky Prospekt and turns to the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. The Passage, Catholic Church of St. Catherine, Book House (former Singer Manufacturing Company Building in the Art Nouveau style), Grand Hotel Europe, Lutheran Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, Gostiny Dvor, Russian National Library, Alexandrine Theatre behind Mikeshin's statue of Catherine the Great, Kazan Cathedral, Stroganov Palace, Anichkov Palace and Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace are all situated along that avenue.
The Alexander Nevsky Lavra, intended to house the relics of St. Alexander Nevsky, is an important centre of Christian education in Russia. It also contains the Tikhvin Cemetery with graves of many notable Petersburgers.
On the territory between the Neva and Nevsky Prospekt the Church of the Savior on Blood, Mikhailovsky Palace housing the Russian Museum, Field of Mars, St. Michael's Castle, Summer Garden, Tauride Palace, Smolny Institute and Smolny Convent are located.
Many notable landmarks are situated to the west and south of the Admiralty Building, including the Trinity Cathedral, Mariinsky Palace, Hotel Astoria, famous Mariinsky Theatre, New Holland Island, Saint Isaac's Cathedral, the largest in the city, and Decembrists Square with the Bronze Horseman, 18th century equestrian monument to Peter the Great, which is considered among the city's most recognisable symbols.
Other symbols of Saint Petersburg include the weather vane in the shape of a small ship on top of the Admiralty's golden spire and the golden angel on top of the Peter and Paul Cathedral. The Palace Bridge drawn at night is yet another symbol of the city. Every night during the navigation period from April to November, 22 bridges across the Neva and main canals are drawn to let ships pass in and out of the Baltic Sea according to a schedule. Schedule for main drawbridges across the Neva river (Official Russian schedule): Mr-spb.ru It wasn't until 2004 that the first high bridge across the Neva, which doesn't need to be drawn, Big Obukhovsky Bridge, was opened. There are hundreds of smaller bridges in Saint Petersburg spanning across numerous canals and distributaries of the Neva, some of the most important of which are the Moika, Fontanka, Griboyedov Canal, Obvodny Canal, Karpovka and Smolenka. Due to the intricate web of canals, Saint Petersburg is often called Venice of the North. The rivers and canals in the city centre are lined with granite embankments. The embankments and bridges are separated from rivers and canals by granite or cast iron parapets.
Southern suburbs of the city feature former imperial residences, including Peterhof, with majestic fountain cascades and parks, Tsarskoe Selo, with the baroque Catherine Palace and the neoclassical Alexander Palace, and Pavlovsk, which contains a domed palace of Emperor Paul and one of the largest English-style parks in Europe. Some other residences situated nearby and making part of the world heritage site, including a castle and park in Gatchina, actually belong to Leningrad Oblast rather than Saint Petersburg. Another notable suburb is Kronstadt with its 19th century fortifications and naval monuments, occupying the Kotlin Island in the Gulf of Finland.
From XX century end in a city active building and reorganisation of old historical city districts is conducted.
The authorities are compelled to transfer control of private residences in city centre to private lessors.
Also sealing building and a superstructure of buildings is spent by penthouses.
Some of these structures, such as the Saint Petersburg Commodity and Stock Exchange" have been recognised as town-planning errors.
Interior of the Hermitage Museum.
Saint Petersburg is home to more than two hundred museums, many of them hosted in historic buildings. The largest of the museums is the Hermitage Museum, featuring interiors of the former imperial residence and a vast collection of art. The Russian Museum is a large museum devoted to the Russian fine art specifically. The apartments of some famous Petersburgers, including Alexander Pushkin, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Feodor Chaliapin, Alexander Blok, Vladimir Nabokov, Anna Akhmatova, Mikhail Zoshchenko, Joseph Brodsky, as well as some palace and park ensembles of the southern suburbs and notable architectural monuments such as St. Isaac's Cathedral, have also been turned into public museums.
The Kunstkamera, with its collection established in 1714 by Peter the Great to collect curiosities from all over the world, is sometimes considered the first museum in Russia, which has evolved into the present-day Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography. The Russian Ethnography Museum, which has been split from the Russian Museum, is devoted to the cultures of the people of Russia, the former Soviet Union and Russian Empire.
Other notable museums include the Central Naval Museum hosted in the building of the former stock exchange and Zoological Museum, the Railway Museum, Museum of the Siege of Leningrad, Saint Petersburg Museum of History in the Peter and Paul Fortress and Artillery Museum, which in fact includes not only artillery items, but also a huge collection of other military equipment, uniform and decorations.
The Grand Cascade.
Saint Petersburg is home to numerous parks and gardens, some of the most famous of which are situated in the southern suburbs, including one of the largest English gardens of Europe in Pavlovsk. Sosnovka is the largest park within the limits of the city proper, occupying 240 ha. The Summer Garden is the oldest one, dating back to the early 18th century and designed in the regular style. It is situated on the southern bank of the Neva at the head of the Fontanka and is famous for its cast iron railing and marble sculptures.
Among other notable parks are the Maritime Victory Park on Krestovsky Island and the Moscow Victory Park in the south, both commemorating the victory over Nazi Germany in the Second World War, as well as the Central Park of Culture and Leisure occupying Yelagin Island and the Tauride Garden around the Tauride Palace. The most common trees grown in the parks are the English oak, Norway maple, green ash, silver birch, Siberian larch, blue spruce, crack willow, limes and poplars. Important dendrological collections dating back to the 19th century are hosted by the Saint Petersburg Botanical Garden and the Park of the Forestry Academy.
Among the city's more than fifty theaters is the world-famous Mariinsky Theater (also known as the Kirov Theater in the USSR ), home to the Mariinsky Ballet company and opera. Leading ballet dancers, such as Vaslav Nijinsky, Anna Pavlova, Rudolph Nureyev, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Galina Ulanova and Natalia Makarova, were principal stars of the Mariinsky ballet.
Dmitri Shostakovich was born and brought up in Saint Petersburg, and dedicated his Seventh Symphony to the city, calling it the "Leningrad Symphony." He wrote the symphony while in Leningrad during the German siege. The 7th symphony was premiered in 1942; its performance in the besieged Leningrad at the Bolshoy Philharmonic Hall under the baton of conductor Karl Eliasberg was heard over the radio and lifted the spirits of the survivors. In 1992 a reunion performance of the 7th Symphony by the (then) 14 survivors was played in the same hall as they done half a century ago. The Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra remained one of the best known symphony orchestras in the world under the leadership of conductors Yevgeny Mravinsky and Yuri Temirkanov.
The Imperial Choral Capella was founded and modeled after the royal courts of other European capitals.
Saint Petersburg has been home to the newest movements in popular music in the country. The first jazz band in the Soviet Union was founded here by Leonid Utyosov in the 1920s, under the patronage of Isaak Dunayevsky. The first jazz club in the Soviet Union was founded here in the 1950s, and later was named jazz club Kvadrat. In 1956 the popular ensemble Druzhba was founded by Aleksandr Bronevitsky and Edita Piekha, becoming the first popular band in the 1950s USSR. In the 1960s student rock-groups Argonavty, Kochevniki and others pioneered a series of unofficial and underground rock concerts and festivals. In 1972 Boris Grebenshchikov founded the band Aquarium, that later grew to huge popularity. Since then "Peter's rock" music style was formed.
In the 1970s many bands came out from "underground" and eventually founded the Leningrad rock club which has been providing stage to such bands as Piknik, DDT, Kino, headed by the legendary Viktor Tsoi, Igry, Mify, Zemlyane, Alisa and many other popular groups. The first Russian-style happening show Pop mekhanika, mixing over 300 people and animals on stage, was directed by the multi-talented Sergey Kuryokhin in the 1980s.
Today's Saint Petersburg boasts many notable musicians of various genres, from popular Leningrad's Sergei Shnurov and Tequilajazzz, to rock veterans Yuri Shevchuk, Vyacheslav Butusov and Mikhail Boyarsky.
The White Nights Festival in Saint Petersburg is famous for spectacular fireworks and massive show celebrating the end of school year.
Over 250 international and Russian movies were filmed in Saint Petersburg. International Movie Database Well over a thousand feature films about tsars, revolution, people and stories set in Saint Petersburg were produced worldwide, but were not filmed in the city. First film studios were founded in Saint Petersburg in the 1900s, and since the 1920s Lenfilm has been the largest film studio based in Saint Petersburg. The first foreign feature movie filmed entirely in Saint Petersburg was the 1997 production of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, starring Sophie Marceau and Sean Bean, and made by international team of British, American, French and Russian filmmakers.
The cult comedy Irony of Fate (also ÐÑÐ¾Ð½Ð¸Ñ ÑÑдÑбÑ, или С лÑгким паÑом!) is set in Saint Petersburg and pokes fun at Soviet city planning. The 1985 film White Nights received considerable Western attention for having captured genuine Leningrad street scenes at a time when filming in the Soviet Union by Western production companies was generally unheard of. Other movies include GoldenEye (1995), Midnight in Saint Petersburg (1996), and Brother (1997). Onegin (1999) is based on the Pushkin poem and showcases many tourist attractions. In addition, the Russian romantic comedy, ÐиÑÐµÑ FM, showcases the cityscape significantly, almost as if it was a main character in the film.
Several international film festivals are held annually, such as the Festival of Festivals, St. Petersburg, as well as the Message to Man International Documentary Film Festival, since its inauguration in 1988 during the White Nights.
Saint Petersburg has a longstanding and world famous tradition in literature. Dostoyevsky called it âThe most abstract and intentional city in the world," emphasizing its artificiality, but it was also a symbol of modern disorder in a changing Russia. It frequently appeared to Russian writers as a menacing and inhuman mechanism. The grotesque and often nightmarish image of the city is featured in Pushkin's last poems, the Petersburg stories of Gogol, the novels of Dostoyevsky, the verse of Alexander Blok and Osip Mandelshtam, and in the symbolist novel Petersburg by Andrey Bely. According to Lotman in his chapter, 'The Symbolism of Saint Petersburg' in Universe and the Mind, these writers were inspired from symbolism from within the city itself. The effect of life in Saint Petersburg on the plight of the poor clerk in a society obsessed with hierarchy and status also became an important theme for authors such as Pushkin, Gogol, and Dostoyevsky. Another important feature of early Saint Petersburg literature is its mythical element, which incorporates urban legends and popular ghost stories, as the stories of Pushkin and Gogol included ghosts returning to Saint Petersburg to haunt other characters as well as other fantastical elements, creating a surreal and abstract image of Saint Petersburg.
Twentieth century writers from Saint Petersburg, such as Vladimir Nabokov, Ayn Rand, Andrey Bely and Yevgeny Zamyatin, along with his apprentices, The Serapion Brothers, created entire new styles in literature and contributed new insights to the understanding of society through their experience in this city. Anna Akhmatova became an important leader for Russian poetry. Her poem Requiem focuses on the tragedies of living during the time of the Stalinist terror. Another notable 20th century writer from Saint Petersburg is Joseph Brodsky, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1987). While living in the United States, his writings in English reflected on life in Saint Petersburg from the unique perspective of being both an insider and an outsider to the city in essays such as, "A Guide to a Renamed City" and the nostalgic "In a Room and a Half". Joseph Brodsky. Less Than One: Selected Essays, 1986
FC Zenit's home Petrovsky stadium
Leningrad hosted part of the football tournament during the 1980 Summer Olympics. The 1994 Goodwill Games were held here.
The first competition here was the 1703 rowing event initiated by Peter the Great, after the victory over the Swedish fleet. Yachting events were held by the Russian Navy since the foundation of the city. Yacht clubs: St. Petersburg River Yacht Club, Neva Yacht Club, the latter is the oldest yacht club in the world. In the winter, when the sea and lake surfaces are frozen and yachts and dinghies cannot be used, local people sail on ice boats.
Equestrianism has been a long tradition, popular among the Tsars and aristocracy, as well as part of the military training. Several historic sports arenas were built for Equestrianism since the 18th century, to maintain training all year round, such as the Zimny Stadion and Konnogvardeisky Manezh among others.
Chess tradition was highlighted by the 1914 international tournament, in which the title "Grandmaster" was first formally conferred by Russian Tsar Nicholas II to five players: Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine, Tarrasch and Marshall, and which the Tsar had partially funded.
Kirov Stadium (now demolished) was one of the largest stadiums anywhere in the world, and the home to FC Zenit St. Petersburg in 1950-1993 and 1995. In 1951 the attendance of 110,000 set the record for the Soviet football. In 2007 Zenit became champions of the Russian Premier League, won the UEFA Cup 2007â08 season and the 2008 UEFA Supercup. Zenit now plays their home games at Petrovsky Stadium.
As of 2006/2007 there were 1024 kindergartens, 716 public schools and 80 vocational schools in Saint Petersburg. SPB.ru The largest of the higher education institutions are Saint Petersburg State University, enrolling approximately 32,000 undergraduate students, Saint Petersburg Polytechnical University and Herzen University. However, the universities are all federal property and don't belong to the city.
*List of consulates in Saint Petersburg
*List of museums in Saint Petersburg
*List of notable people from Saint Petersburg
*List of Saint Petersburg sister cities
*Amery, Colin, Brian Curran & Yuri Molodkovets. St. Petersburg. London: Frances Lincoln, 2006. ISBN 0711224927.
*Bater, James H. St. Petersburg: Industrialization and Change. Montreal: McGuill-Queenâs University Press, 1976. ISBN 0773502661.
*Berelowitch, Wladimir & Olga Medvedkova. Histoire de Saint-Pétersbourg. Paris: Fayard, 1996. ISBN 2213596018.
*Buckler, Julie. Mapping St. Petersburg: Imperial Text and Cityshape. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005 ISBN0691113491.
*Clark, Katerina, Petersburg, Crucible of Revolution. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995.
*Cross, Anthony (ed.). St. Petersburg, 1703-1825. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. ISBN 1403915709.
*George, Arthur L. & Elena George. St. Petersburg: Russia's Window to the Future, The First Three Centuries. Lanham: Taylor Trade Publishing, 2003. ISBN 1589790170.
*Glantz, David M. The Battle for Leningrad, 1941-1944. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002. ISBN 0700612084.
*Hellberg-Hirn, Elena. Imperial Imprints: Post-Soviet St. Petersburg. Helsinki: SKS Finnish Literature Society, 2003. ISBN 9517464916.
*Knopf Guide: Sat. Petersburg. New York: Knopf, 1995. ISBN 0679762027.
*Eyewitness Guide: St. Petersburg.
*Lincoln, W. Bruce. Sunlight at Midnight: St. Petersburg and the Rise of Modern Russia. New York: Basic Books, 2000. ISBN 0465083234.
*Orttung, Robert W. From Leningrad to St. Petersburg: Democratization in a Russian City. New York: St. Martinâs, 1995. ISBN 0312175612.
*Ruble, Blair A. Leningrad: Shaping a Soviet City. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. ISBN 0877723478.
*Shvidkovsky, Dmitry O. & Alexander Orloff. St. Petersburg: Architecture of the Tsars. New York: Abbeville Press, 1996. ISBN 0789202174.
*Volkov, Solomon. St. Petersburg: A Cultural History. New York: Free Press, 1995. ISBN 0028740521.
*St. Petersburg:Architecture of the Tsars. 360 pages. Abbeville Press, 1996. ISBN 0789202174
*Saint Petersburg: Museums, Palaces, and Historic Collections: A Guide to the Lesser Known Treasures of St. Petersburg. 2003. ISBN 1593730004.
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* Official presentation of Saint Petersburg
* Official Portal of the City Government: Saint Petersburg
* Encyclopaedia of Saint Petersburg
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* Saint Petersburg in 1900
* Saint Petersburg, entry in the World Monuments Fund's 2008 watchlist
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