Hammer struck keyboard actions were being developed elsewhere throughout Europe, without prior knowledge of Cristofori’s invention. At approximately the same time the Saxon designer and musician, Gottlieb Schroter ⁸⁰ was developing a similar idea, to implement dynamics via the keyboard. Schroter’s design was different to Cristofori’s. Schroter’s model was not the harpsichord, but the lighter simpler action of the clavichord. Schroter’s design eventually became known as the ‘Viennese action’ and was development by piano builders Andreas Stein and Anton Walter.

German organ builder, Gottfried Silbermann developed Cristofori’s design further with some guidance from J.S. Bach and his son C.P.E Bach. Silbermann was the first to give the new instrument the title forte piano in 1733.⁸¹ CPE Bach was an influential authority on how to play the new keyboard instrument, providing a manual of techniques and a tutor on musical style advising harpsichord players how to adapt musically to the new forte piano. ⁸² The Versuch uber die wahre Art, das Clavier zu speilen, (Essay on the True Manner Of Playing Keyboard Instruments 1753), makes comments on accompanying, the undamped nature of the piano particularly in the higher registers, its colourful resonance, and details on improvisation, an essential ingredient of music practice in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

The art of improvisation, or extemporisation, has virtually vanished among serious musicians (in the twentieth century it popped up in jazz).⁸³

^{80     5}Loesser. Men, Women and Pianos, 28.
⁸¹Eva Badura-Skoda, “SILBERMANN, GOTTFRIED,” in 7Palmieri, 352.
⁸²Geoffery Lancaster in 5“Innovations in Piano”. Know Your Music.
^{83     2}Schonberg,42.