ABSTRACT
In the second half of the century the piano gradually asserted itself as the main accompanying instrument. The earliest pianos (Hammerflügel) had the general shape of small modern grand pianos and looked, in fact, very like harpsichords. From about the 1760s onwards the square piano (HammerklavierFortepiano) grew in popularity as a domestic instrument. Although these early square pianos had nothing of the ornate decorative frippery of the grander type of harpsichord, they were neat and elegant pieces of drawing-room furniture, often beautifully inlaid. But it would be wrong to see a late eighteenth-century square piano as primarily a middle-class status symbol. If it was a status symbol at all, then an emotional one, belonging to the age of sensibility, like the copy of Night Thoughts or Werther on the bedside table. Hammerflügel and square piano alike were exceptionally well suited to the sort of intimate early song where the singer usually accompanied himself or herself, in communion with the instrument as it were.
